Expanding upon the success of Northeastern Law’s signature Women in the Law Conference, the Brown Forum, named in honor of Professor Emerita Judith Olans Brown, was established by Brown and her husband, Jim, in 2021 to support the advancement of women attorneys and students at Northeastern Law. The Practitioner-in-Residence program was launched in 2022 with leading civil rights and employment lawyer Debra Katz as the first Practitioner-in-Residence.
November 14 - 16, 2023
The Honorable Anita Earls, associate justice of the North Carolina Supreme Court, has been named by Northeastern Law’s Judith Olans Brown Forum for Women in the Law (WIL) as its Practitioner-in-Residence for 2023-2024. She will visit the law school for three days, from November 14 to 16. While in residence at Northeastern, Judge Earls will focus on sharing her insights about voting rights. Her visit will include class lectures, meetings with groups such as the school’s Women’s Law Caucus, and she will hold office hours to build personal connections with students, graduates, staff and faculty.
Prior to joining the bench on January 1, 2019, Judge Earls was a civil rights attorney litigating voting rights, police misconduct and other civil rights cases for 30 years. Following her graduation from Yale Law School in 1988, Judge Earls was recruited by civil rights champion James Ferguson II to join North Carolina's first integrated law firm, Ferguson, Stein, Watt, Wallas, Adkins & Gresham, where she practiced civil rights litigation first as an associate and later as partner. She later founded and served as executive director of the Southern Coalition for Social Justice, a nonprofit legal advocacy organization in Durham, North Carolina. Appointed by President Clinton, Judge Earls was a deputy assistant attorney general in the US Department of Justice, Civil Rights Division, from 1998 to 2000. She has served on the North Carolina State Board of Elections, the North Carolina Equal Access to Justice Commission and currently co-chairs the Governor’s Task Force on Racial Equity in Criminal Justice. Judge Earls has taught as an adjunct professor at the University of North Carolina and University of Maryland law schools and in the Department of African & African American Studies at Duke University. Judge Earls lives in Durham with her husband Charles Walton. She has two grown sons and two grandchildren.
“This beneficial program is now in its third year and we are truly honored to have Judge Earls join us in residence in November,” said Mielle Marquis, director of external affairs and co-founder of the Women in the Law program. “With her illustrious background in voting and civil rights, our community will be richer by having her be this year’s Brown Forum Practitioner in Residence. Voting rights are the underpinning of democracy and vital for the success of our nation. As always, we are grateful for the support from Jim and Judy Brown and many other WIL supporters who make this opportunity possible.”
November 16 - 18, 2022
Brigitte Amiri ’99, deputy director at the ACLU’s Reproductive Freedom Project and one of the nation’s leading litigators for reproductive freedom, visited the law school for three days in November 2022 as the Judith Olans Brown Forum for Women in the Law Practitioner-in- Residence for 2022. While at Northeastern, Amiri shared comments and insights about her high-profile cases, including successfully advocating for a pregnant teenage immigrant who was barred from accessing abortion services during the Trump administration and her efforts in the wake of the Dobbs decision, including a lawsuit in Kentucky seeking to block two abortion bans by asserting the Kentucky Constitution protects the right to privacy and bodily autonomy.
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Watch Video: Brigitte Amiri Speaks at Professor Jonathan Kahn’s Torts Class
March 9 - 11, 2022
Debra Katz, founding partner of Katz, Marshall & Banks and a nationally recognized civil rights and employment lawyer, visited campus in March 2022 as Northeastern Law's inaugural Brown Forum Practitioner-in-Residence.
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Katz is a founding partner of Katz, Marshall & Banks, where she concentrates her practice on employment discrimination, sexual harassment, whistleblower and Title IX matters. She has developed extensive litigation experience in federal and local courts and has achieved significant courtroom successes in a number of high-profile cases. She has been recognized as Civil Rights Lawyer of the Year for Washington, DC, by The Best Lawyers In America for 2018, as one of the “toughest” employment lawyers in Washington, DC, by Washingtonian magazine and as an expert in sexual harassment, employment and whistleblower law by The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, TIME magazine and others.