Claudia Angelos honored with the 2015 CLEA Award for Outstanding Clinical Teacher

On May 6, Clinical Professor of Law Claudia Angelos will be honored by the Clinical Legal Education Association (CLEA) with the 2015 Award for Outstanding Clinical Teacher.

Claudia Angelos

Per their mission statement, the CLEA aims to “advocate for clinical legal education as fundamental to the education of lawyers.” Given annually since 2002, the award recognizes an individual who has championed clinical legal education—by, for example, working with organizations that affect legal education, or writing and speaking about the subject—and has served as a voice for clinical teachers.

Angelos, who joined the NYU School of Law faculty in 1980, teaches the Civil Rights Clinic, the New York Civil Liberties Clinic, and the Racial Justice Clinic. A respected authority on prisoners’ rights, she and her students have litigated more than 100 civil rights cases in New York federal courts. A past president of the New York Civil Liberties Union, Angelos now serves as its general counsel and sits on the board of directors. She is also on the boards of the American Civil Liberties Union, the Prisoners’ Legal Services of New York, and the Society of American Law Teachers (SALT).

A CLEA announcement quoted her nominators, who described her as “the guiding force in countless board meetings, committee meetings, conference calls, and e-mail loops” in both SALT and the CLEA, where shehas served as a member of the board and executive committee. They praised her efforts on behalf of the clinical community in the American Bar Association accreditation standards revision process, lauding her as an “unflagging, zealous, and skilled” advocate for clinicians, helping to “lead the successful battle to reaffirm clinical status, to increase the minimum required skills credits, and to identify practical skills as a critical part of the learning outcomes to be expected of all students.”

“[C]linical education has come out of the comprehensive review in a much stronger position than we imagined at the beginning of the process,” her nominators wrote. “Claudia was the keystone and well deserves our recognition.”

Posted May 5, 2015