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 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.