University of Maryland Francis King Carey School of Law Professor Leigh Goodmark is the recipient of the 2024 Outstanding Advocate for Clinical Teachers Award from the Clinical Legal Education Association (CLEA). The award recognizes those who have served as a voice for clinical teachers and contributed to the advancement of clinical legal education.
Goodmark is the Marjorie Cook Professor of Law and director of the Clinical Law Program at Maryland Carey Law where she has taught the Gender, Prison, and Trauma Clinic for over a decade.
She received the award at a ceremony on May 3 during the Association of American Law Schools (AALS) Clinical Conference in St. Louis. The CLEA awards committee’s announcement cited Goodmark’s long history of clinical law teaching, extensive scholarship, and leadership in experiential education pedagogy in her selection, adding, “She is a dedicated teacher who has helped countless young lawyers become fierce advocates for justice.”
Maryland Carey Law Dean Renée McDonald Hutchins was proud to nominate Goodmark for the award and sang her praises in a special video. “She [Goodmark] is passionately committed to clinical legal education; she is an international, national, and local leader in her field; she holds an unwavering dedication to the advancement of clinical pedagogy; and she always, always in word and deed pushes us to continue striving toward excellence,” said Hutchins.
A prolific scholar, Goodmark is the author of Imperfect Victims: Criminalized Survivors and the Promise of Abolition Feminism (University of California Press 2023); Decriminalizing Domestic Violence: A Balanced Policy Approach to Intimate Partner Violence (University of California Press 2018), and A Troubled Marriage: Domestic Violence and the Legal System (New York University 2012), which was named a CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title of 2012.
She is the co-editor of The Criminalization of Violence Against Women: Comparative Perspectives (Oxford 2023) and Comparative Perspectives on Gender Violence: Lessons from Efforts Worldwide (Oxford 2015). Goodmark’s work on intimate partner violence has appeared in numerous journals, law reviews, and publications, including The New York Times, the Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review, the Harvard Journal on Gender and the Law, and the Yale Journal on Law and Feminism.
Before coming to Maryland Carey Law, she was on the faculty at the University of Baltimore School of Law, where she served as director of clinical education and co-director of the Center on Applied Feminism. Previously, she was director of the Children and Domestic Violence Project at the American Bar Association Center on Children and the Law and represented clients in the District of Columbia in custody, visitation, child support, restraining order, and other civil matters.
Goodmark is a dedicated member of the Clinical Legal Education Association, serving as the organization’s president in 2012 and as chair of the Per Diem Project Committee for nearly a decade.