The Lewis & Clark Advocacy Center reinforces the school’s strong commitment to preparing students to be practice-ready advocates, with new classes, expanded competitions and a new courtroom for practice.
The Lewis & Clark Advocacy Center reinforces the school’s strong commitment to preparing students to be practice-ready advocates, with new classes, expanded competitions and a new courtroom for practice.
Most law school graduates have heard the adage, “Law school trains you to think like a lawyer, not how to be a lawyer.”
Those days are long gone. Today’s legal marketplace demands practice-ready graduates, who both think like a lawyer and know how to be one.
This shift in outlook has pushed law schools to provide students with a mix of legal doctrine courses and experiential learning opportunities. Lewis & Clark has answered that call and is re-upping the ante with the launch of the Advocacy Center this fall.
The Advocacy Center further solidifies Lewis &Clark Law School’s leading role in experiential learning opportunities for students.
“Our nationally renowned program including clinics, expansive externship opportunities, simulation courses, competition moot court and mock trial teams has served and continue to serve as excellent training grounds for our students,” explained Dean Jennifer Johnson. “But we knew we needed to offer more opportunities and the new Advocacy Center is dedicated to doing just that.”
Joanna Perini-Abbott, the director of the center as well as a Professor of Practice, has been working for the past year to define and develop the Advocacy Center. She has close ties to both Lewis & Clark and the Portland legal community having worked in the Portland legal community for the past decade representing clients in criminal and civil matters.
“The Center will expand simulation courses in areas related to litigation, including trial, pre-trial litigation, negotiations, appeals, and client counseling,” she explains. “[It] will also support the growth of our competition teams for moot court, mock trial, negotiation, and client counseling. These expanded simulation courses and competition teams will give students a place to learn practical skills in a low-stakes setting, to prepare students for externships, clinics, and the practice of law upon graduation.“
In connection to launching the Advocacy Center this fall, the law school will unveil its new Bergman Courtroom. A transformation of “Classroom 5,” the courtroom will serve as the center of training activities and give students the opportunity to learn and practice litigation skills in the same setting where they will ultimately use those skills in practice.
Opportunities to Get Involved
The Advocacy Center cannot function without significant support from our alumni and the Portland legal community. Attorney volunteers and adjunct professors are needed for lectures, judging student trials, providing student feedback on skills practice, coaching competition teams, working with students as mentors, and more. Numerous lawyers across the Portland community—judges, prosecutors, criminal defense attorneys, plaintiffs attorneys, and civil defense attorneys—have all shown an interest in getting involved. As adjunct professor the Hon. Judith Matarazzo explained about her passion for teaching students advocacy: “To be an advocate is to have courage and passion for the things that matter and justice matters for all of us!”
If this interests you please contact Jo Perini-Abbott at jperini-abbott@lclark.edu.
The Advocacy Center is also interested in suggestions on how we can serve the Portland legal community. If you have ideas for programs or materials that would be helpful, we’d love to hear them.
Training the Next Generation
While jury trials have been waning in recent years—the increase in arbitration clauses and the increased cost of litigating a case to trial have added strong pressure to settle—the American justice system still remains the great leveling force in our society.
In 2022, 490,159 cases were filed in Oregon courts: 96,289 civil, 324,881 criminal, 41,249 domestic relations, and about 27,000 other types. Oregon state courts held 10,553 trials. Whether they went to trial or not, in each of those cases, real people with real problems turned to the courts to seek justice. Each of those parties needed someone to tell their story and to be their advocate.
Lewis & Clark alumni have a long history of standing up for justice in the courtroom as plaintiff attorneys. In the 1990s and 2000s, a number of alums, including Bill Gaylord ’73, a contributor to the Advocacy Center, led the efforts on behalf of the widow of Jesse Williams to hold big tobacco accountable for her husband’s death. Their $80 million verdict was upheld as one of the largest verdicts against big tobacco at that time. Alumnus and contributor to the Advocacy Center Matt Bergman ’89 has spent his career fighting for individuals affected by mesothelioma due to asbestos. Recently, alumni with Keller Rohrback and Stoll Bern (Dan Mensher ’07,Yoona Park ’07, Kate McCallum LLM ’22, Jen Wagner ’02) were involved in the lawsuit against Monsanto on behalf of the State of Oregon that resulted in a $700 million settlement for people to redress environmental contamination caused by the company.
Lewis & Clark alumni are also leaders throughout the criminal justice system. Our alums include two state supreme court justices, numerous federal and state judges, elected district attorneys and many prosecutors and defense attorneys along with those who lead nonprofits involved in improving criminal justice.
In the area of civil litigation, alums are actively involved in protection of natural resources, public lands, animal rights, intellectual property rights, contractual disputes and more.
The Advocacy Center aims to ensure that the next generation of graduates are prepared to carry on this legacy.
Jeni Baez ’26 speaks to “Judge” Matt Bergman ’89.
Current and Future Plans
Advocacy Center programs will be led by experienced and dedicated trial lawyers, litigators, negotiators and mediators, giving students the opportunities to learn and practice those skills—mistakes and all—in a low-stakes setting before they have a client’s interest on the line. Perini-Abbott quotes a colleague from University of Denver which has a similar center: “In litigation you will make a thousand mistakes, our goal is for you to make your first hundred here.”
As a starting point for new courses, the Advocacy Center offers two new classes for the 2023–24 school year:
Integrated Evidence and Trial Advocacy: Students will learn the rules of evidence alongside the rules of trial practice and build to a final pretrial conference to argue evidentiary motions and end with a final mock trial. They will have weekly opportunities to practice trial skills and evidentiary arguments in front of practicing lawyers.
Pretrial Advocacy: Students, working in small groups, will take a case from an initial client interview through drafting pleadings, taking discovery, and ultimately filing and arguing dispositive motions. Groups will meet weekly with mentor attorneys weekly to develop case strategy, learn litigation techniques, and discuss ethical issues that arise in the course of litigation.
In addition to courses, the Center will provide expanded opportunities for students to compete in inter-school advocacy competitions.
A new Certificate in Advocacy will recognize students who dedicate a significant portion of their time at Lewis & Clark to advocacy courses and excel in them.
Right now, 50 attorneys have made a commitment to be a mentor, judge, or guest lecturer. We’ll need to double that as we fully realize our plans.”
The Pacific Northwest legal community has a vital part to play in all of this. “I am actively calling on volunteers to support these efforts,” explained Perini-Abbott. “Right now, 50 attorneys have made a commitment to be a mentor, judge, or guest lecturer.
We’ll need to double that as we fully realize our plans.” In addition to seeking individual volunteers, she is working with the Oregon State Bar to co-host the Trial Advocacy College in 2024 and discussing ways to support training opportunities with the Oregon Criminal Defense Lawyers Association.
The Center aims to give back as well. “Our website will be a resource for the Oregon legal community, posting educational materials on key litigation topics drawn from Oregon cases,” explained Perini-Abbott.
The People Behind the Advocacy Center
Andy Johnson-Laird and Kay Kitagawa. Andy Johnson-Laird and Kay Kitagawa
The Advocacy Center was made possible by a generous gift from Andy Johnson-Laird and Kay Kitagawa. Johnson-Laird was an English-American computer forensic scientist and the president of Portland-based digital forensics firm Johnson-Laird Inc. His gift was motivated by his vision for Lewis & ClarkLaw students to be well-equipped to build logical, fact-based arguments; effectively question witnesses to develop the record of the case; and present complex legal arguments in common sense and accessible ways.
Matt Bergman ’89 with his daughter Maddie Bergman ’19 at her L&C commencement. Matt Bergman ’89
Matt Bergman, through his Bergman Courtroom endowment fund, has transformed Classroom 5 into a teaching courtroom that is the focal point for Advocacy Center programs. Bergman has represented over 850 individuals and families affected by asbestos-related diseases and now holds social media companies accountable with his Social Media Victims Law Center.
Jo Perini-Abbott Jo Perini-Abbott, Director of the Advocacy Center
Professor of Practice and Director of the Advocacy Center, Joanna Perini-Abbott, has close ties to both Lewis & Clark and the Portland legal community, having worked in the Portland legal community for the past decade representing clients in criminal and civil matters.
A graduate of the Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law, she clerked for the Honorable Joel M. Flaum on the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, and has since dedicated her career to representing clients as they face some of their most difficult points in life in litigation, arbitration, and regulatory investigations.
Perini-Abbott also served on the Oregon Board of Bar Examiners from 2017–2023. In that time she was part of the committee that drafted Oregon’s Essential Eligibility Requirements and chaired the Alternative to the Bar Exam Task Force and the Licensing Pathways Development Committee. She has been an advocate for licensure reform work in the legal field and often speaks throughout Oregon on the topic.
