Academic Excellence Specialist
Nicole Coon is an academic excellence specialist in the Office of Academic Excellence at Mitchell Hamline. Professor Coon teaches Legal Methods, Bar Preparation Strategies: MPT, and Bar Preparation Strategies: MBE/MEE. Professor Coon also works as a one-on-one tutor with students, providing academic support throughout law school as well as bar preparation support.
She is also an associate adjunct professor of legal research and writing at the University of Minnesota Law School, where she teaches 1L students the process of communicating about the law, including but not limited to the foundational skills of critical reading, IRAC, rule synthesis, and legal analysis.
Professor Coon previously worked as a plaintiff-side employment and civil rights individual-plaintiff and class-action litigator with the firm of Schneider Wallace Cottrell Konecky Wotkyns in San Francisco. She represented individual employees as well as thousands of class members in employment discrimination, harassment, wrongful termination, wage and hour, and other related claims in both state and federal courts nationwide, recovering millions of dollars in damages. She clerked for courts in both California and Wisconsin. Specifically, she worked as a legal research attorney for Superior Court of California, County of San Francisco in the Presiding Judge, Civil, Probate, and Appellate Divisions. She also clerked for Chief Judge Maxine A. White of the Milwaukee County Circuit Court in Milwaukee.
Professor Coon has been dedicated to academia and writing. She committed her time to a number of law school’s in the country, including serving as a moot court practitioner coach at Marquette University of Law School and a moot court judge at Hastings College of Law and Golden Gate University School of Law—both in San Francisco. She also worked as a legal content delivery writer and editor for Rust Consulting, based in Minneapolis, writing journalistic legal articles for law firms throughout the country. She also served as the amicus briefs committee co-chair for the Queen’s Bench Bar Association in San Francisco, vetting and editing amicus briefs submitted to the United States Supreme Court.
Teaching Philosophy
“If you wish to be a lawyer, attach no consequence to the place you are in, or the person you are with; but get books, sit down anywhere, and go to reading for yourself. That will make a lawyer of you quicker than any other way.” —Abraham Lincoln
I believe that anyone with passion and interest in the law can be a successful lawyer. But, there are no shortcuts in learning the law: it is a grueling process that requires commitment and hard work, namely with respect to reading and writing. I carry these principles into my classroom and my one-on-one sessions with students, holding them to the highest pedagogical standards and knowing they can achieve great successes when they do the work. Relying on a variety of teaching techniques—including aural, visual, kinesthetic, and multimodal—I take a personable approach to students to help them understand how to effectively communicate the law and its applications.
Education
B.A., English Literature and Legal Studies, Comprehensive Honors, Honors in English Major, The University of Wisconsin-Madison
J.D., Pro Bono Society Honors, The University of Iowa College of Law; Editor, Iowa Law Review
Bar Admissions
California, 2012
Illinois, 2011
Massachusetts, 2016
Minnesota, 2017
Wisconsin, 2010
