Professor of Law
A national leader in critical and clinical pedagogy, narrative theory, and critical lawyering, Carolyn Grose has been a professor at Mitchell Hamline School of Law (and previously William Mitchell College of Law) since 2006. She has developed and taught courses in Family Law, Evidence, Trusts & Estates, Advocacy, and Critical Lawyering. She has designed teaching materials that challenge students to engage their critical thinking skills and expand their understanding of themselves as adult learners and legal professionals. She loves teaching; and she loves what she learns from her students as a result of her engagement as a teacher. She has published extensively over the past 20 years, in legal and academic journals and books, mainly on equity and power issues, narrative, and pedagogy. Her most recent publications are “Braiding the Strands . . .” in the Hennepin Lawyer and the Clinical Law Review; and “Lawyers, Clients & Narrative” (2ed. Carolina Academic Press 2023).
What I love about teaching law is the challenge of helping students become intentionally critical thinkers and actors. I think of this as a two-step process. The first step is getting them to ask critical questions about whatever subject I am teaching them—skills, clinic, professional responsibility, family law. The next step is helping them find their identities as powerful actors in the legal system who can and must make choices about the kind of professionals they want to be. The goal of all this, of course, is to show that Law—or The Legal System—doesn’t simply exist out there to be ‘found,’ but that it is constructed by people just like us—teachers, students, ordinary citizens, who pay attention and care about improving the lives of everyone around them.”
Education
B.A., 1988, Middlebury College
J.D., 1994, Brooklyn Law School
Experience
Mitchell Hamline School of Law: professor of law, 2015-.
William Mitchell College of Law: professor of law, 2011-2015; associate professor of law, 2006-2011.
Practitioner in residence, Women and Law Clinic, Washington College of Law, American University, 2004-2006.
Collaborative law attorney, Divorce Done Differently, 2003-2004.
Assistant clinical professor of law, University of Connecticut School of Law, 1999-2004.
Adjunct professor, Western New England College of Law, 1997-1999.
Staff attorney, Skadden Fellow, Western Massachusetts Legal Services, 1996-1999.
Clerk, Judge Whitman Knapp, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York, 1994-1996.
Leadership and Service
Member, Board of Editors, Clinical Law Review.
Member, Women and Law Section, Association of American Law Schools; Sexual Orientation Section, Association of American Law Schools; Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging Section, Association of American Law Schools.
Member, Clinical Legal Education Association (CLEA) Board of Directors.
