Teaching Professor
Kari Milligan is a teaching professor of law and academic excellence specialist at Mitchell Hamline School of Law. Professor Milligan teaches Torts: The Common Law Process, Legal Methods, Bar Preparation Strategies: MPT, and Bar Preparation Strategies: MBE/MEE. Professor Milligan also works as a one-on-one instructor with students, providing academic support throughout law school, as well as bar preparation support.
Professor Milligan’s goal at Mitchell Hamline is to help students grow to be skilled legal practitioners who thrive in their communities. She cares deeply about providing each student with a rigorous educational experience. She aims to identify each student’s skill level as early as possible in the semester, and to challenge each student through the provision of individualized feedback and, as needed, one-on-one tutoring. Professor Milligan continually leverages her previous practice experience to challenge students and convey to them the practical application of their efforts. She cares deeply about fostering student wellness and communicating to students that she values them personally, beyond their ability to provide skilled legal work.
Professor Milligan’s favorite part of teaching at Mitchell Hamline is helping students grow and thrive and the intellectual challenge of working with a variety of legal subjects to teach students critical academic skills.
Experience
Mitchell Hamline School of Law: teaching professor, 2024–; associate teaching professor of law, 2021–24; academic excellence specialist, Office of Academic Excellence, 2018–
Faegre Baker Daniels: associate, 2017–18
Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton, Washington, DC: associate, 2012–17
U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit: law clerk, Judge James B. Loken, 2011–12
Jerome N. Frank Legal Services Organization, New Haven, Conn.: student director, Advocacy For Children and Youth Clinic, 2009–11
U.S. Department of Justice: intern, civil division, commercial litigation branch, 2010
Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom, Chicago: summer associate, 2010
American Bar Association, Rule of Law Initiative, Monrovia, Liberia: legal intern, 2009
United States Senate: legislative correspondent, finance and international trade, Office of Senator James Inhofe, 2007–08
White House Summit on Malaria (private-sector side): deputy director of planning reporting to the executive director, 2006–07
Education
J.D., Yale Law School, 2011
B.A., summa cum laude, Taylor University, 2005
Bar admission
Illinois, 2012
District of Columbia, 2013
Minnesota, 2018
Community service
Professor Milligan has been dedicated to teaching, mentoring, and coaching for numerous years. This has manifested itself in different forms, including teaching at the law school in Liberia, mentoring law firm associates, judging oral arguments at the University of Minnesota Law School, mentoring at-risk youth, and coaching an all-Somali sixth grade girls’ basketball team.
Membership
Association of Academic Support Educators
