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 Brown Forum Practitioner-in-Residence program, launched in 2022, annually brings a nationally recognized woman attorney to Northeastern Law to share wisdom and insights about her field of law. The three-day visit includes class lectures, meetings with groups such as the school’s Women’s Law Caucus and related student organizations, and office hours to build personal connections with students, staff and faculty. Graduates are also invited to related activities.
November 13-25, 2024
Carrie Goldberg, founder of leading victims’ rights law firm C.A. Goldberg, has been named by Northeastern Law’s Judith Olans Brown Forum for Women in the Law (WIL) as its Practitioner-in-Residence for 2024-2025. Goldberg will visit the law school for three days, from November 13 to 15, 2024. While in residence at Northeastern, Goldberg will share her experiences fighting for survivors of sexual violence and representing victims of catastrophic injuries caused by tech giants. 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.
Goldberg’s firm leads the nation in landmark cases challenging Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which protects internet platforms from lawsuits over content posted by their users. As lead counsel in Herrick v. Grindr, she introduced the novel legal approach of applying product liability law to dangerous tech products. In A.M. v. Omegle, the firm’s advocacy resulted in a new precedent in the realm of product liability and sex trafficking, the first case to overcome Section 230 where the plaintiff sued a platform for injuries caused by a malicious user. The firm also overcame Section 230 immunity in January 2024 against Snap for its role in fentanyl deaths in Neville, et al. v Snap and is appealing to the 9th Circuit in Doe v. Grindr relating to the foreseeable child rapes caused from the app marketing to children. Goldberg is lead counsel for 23 families suing Amazon for selling suicide kits to their children and has been an advocate around the country to regulate household sales of the chemical. Goldberg also serves on the plaintiff steering committee in multi-district litigation against Snap, Google, TikTok and Meta regarding the platforms designing products intended to addict children.
C.A. Goldberg’s clients include former Congresswoman Katie Hill and five Harvey Weinstein accusers, including Lucia Evans, whose accusations helped launch the #MeToo movement and resulted in Weinstein’s arrest. Some of the firm’s proudest successes, though, are the ones that stay out of the headlines: recoveries for adult survivors of child sexual abuse and restraining orders for A-list celebrities against their stalkers. In K.M. v. City of New York, C.A. Goldberg achieved the highest known recovery in a Title IX case in New York City.
Goldberg’s advocacy for victims of nonconsensual porn is featured in the documentary Netizens and her work is profiled in The New Yorker, Elle, Cosmo, Wired, Glamour and more. She is the author of Nobody’s Victim: Fighting Psychos, Stalkers, Pervs & Trolls, a 2019 New York Times Editor’s Choice. A fictionalized series about Goldberg and the firm is in development. Goldberg attended Vassar College and Brooklyn Law School.
“We’re thrilled to have Carrie Goldberg join us our Brown Forum Practitioner-in-Residence,” said Mielle Marquis, director of alumni/ae engagement and initiatives, and co-founder of the Brown Forum for Women in the Law. “Her victims’ rights work at the intersection of sex, privacy and tech liability is making a critical difference in the lives of women and vulnerable people across the nation. We look forward to hearing more about how her personal experiences led her to focus on protecting women from stalking, harassment, sexual abuse, and horrific tech-facilitated injuries.”
November 14 - 16, 2023
The Honorable Anita Earls, associate justice of the North Carolina Supreme Court, served as our practitioner-in-residence for 2023-2024.. While in residence at Northeastern, Judge Earls focused on sharing her insights about voting rights.
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.