Adjunct Teachers in Animal Law: Tips and Tricks for Efficient Grading

Join us for another installment in our Animal Law Adjunct webinar series. In this panel, we’ll share experience-based ideas for using writing assignments as a tool for enhancing student learning, encouraging original and inspired animal law scholarship, and ensuring fair and efficient grading.

Although this series is designed for adjunct teachers, all are welcome including full-time teachers, students, and others.

The panelists include:

• Conley Wouters, University of Illinois Chicago School of Law
• Amanda Elyse, Seattle University School of Law
• Rebecca Cary, Humane World for Animals
• Adam Cook, GW Law (moderator)

Speaker Bios:

Conley Wouters is an Assistant Professor of Law at the University of Illinois Chicago School of Law, where he teaches Animal Law, Contracts, and Lawyering Skills. His scholarship has been published or is forthcoming in journals including the Northeastern University Law Review, Animal Law, and the Animal and Natural Resource Law Review. Conley maintains an active animal law pro bono practice and was an inaugural recipient of the Animal Legal Defense Fund’s Compassionate Counsel Award.

Rebecca Cary is a managing attorney for the Animal Protection Law section of The Humane Society of the United States, where she has worked since 2010. Her practice includes farm animal welfare and constitutional defense issues, and she has been the lead attorney on multiple challenges to state farm animal confinement and sales initiatives, including the NPPC v. Ross case in which the Supreme Court upheld California’s Proposition 12 against a pork industry challenge. Rebecca is a 2009 graduate of Northeastern University School of Law, and a 2005 graduate of the University of California San Diego, where she was a founder of a student animal welfare group. She has taught animal law courses at George Mason and George Washington School of Law, and she is the co-chair of the District of Columbia Bar’s animal law section. Rebecca lives in Maryland with her two rescue cats.

Amanda Elyse is a Visiting Assistant Professor who teaches legal writing, animal law, and social movement courses. Her scholarship focuses on animal law issues. Amanda L. Elyse works to provide her students with a supportive, student-centered experience in which they can thrive in learning lawyering skills, being their whole selves and developing community, and becoming passionate advocates for both individual clients and social justice causes. Her experiences with grassroots social movements inform and inspire her career in law and the relationships she builds with students. She appreciates teaching in the Legal Writing Program because of her understanding of how legal writing and oral advocacy contribute to strong advocacy and creating positive social change.

Adam Cook (Moderator) is a 3L from Pleasant Grove, Utah. He studied music and philosophy at Utah Valley University and came to law school to solve complex problems and address the disparate treatment of animals and other marginalized groups.

About the Adjunct Teachers in Animal Law Series

Adjunct, rather than full-time, law professors do the majority of animal law teaching in the U.S. and globally. Yet this community does not have the same access to academic resources and support as their full-time counterparts. That can make developing and maintaining animal law courses more challenging. This series is designed to remedy some of that inequity and offer support and resources to expand and improve animal law teaching. The series will focus pragmatic as well as pedagogical matters designed to help those interested in starting or continuing to teach animal law.