Catherine Coleman

Catherine Coleman joined USC Gould School of Law in Fall 2004 as an adjunct teaching first-year legal writing. After four years in that program, she joined the Academic Support staff in 2008 as academic support counselor and adjunct assistant professor of law. She served as interim director of Academic Support from July 2012 to February 2013 and was appointed director in March 2013.  In February 2015 she was appointed associate professor of lawyering skills and director of academic support, and in 2018 she was appointed professor of lawyering skills.

Coleman counsels first-year and upper-division students on improving their academic performance and exam-taking skills. She also team-teaches the Academic Support Program's course on Legal Analysis of Evidence. Outside the Academic Support Program, she teaches the Advanced Legal Writing Practicum for upper-division students and writing-skills workshops for first-year students.

Coleman was formerly an associate, partner, managing partner and of counsel with Kinsella, Boesch, Fujikawa & Towle in Los Angeles, practicing civil litigation with the firm for 15 years. From 1980-83 she was a trial attorney with the Federal Programs Branch, Civil Division, of the U.S. Department of Justice in Washington, D.C., handling cases that were the first court challenges to new federal programs. She previously clerked for the Honorable Herbert F. Murray of the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland.

A graduate of Stanford University, Coleman received her JD from Harvard University, where she was senior comments editor of the Harvard Civil Rights – Civil Liberties Law Review and published “Re-Emergence of a Controversy: Enforcing Acreage Limitation” (Harvard Environmental Law Review, 1978).

FACULTY IN THE NEWS

The Wall Street Journal
October 14, 2019
Re: Edward Kleinbard

Edward Kleinbard was quoted on how to distribute taxes across income group. He commented on Messrs. Saez and Zucman’s book on this topic. "Book is best appreciated as a window into the burdens imposed at the very top end and there, of course, the book is devastating” in showing low tax rates, said Kleinbard. “It’s simply not asking or answering the separate question, which is: What is the net well-being of America’s lowest-income people?"

RECENT SCHOLARSHIP

Nomi Stolzenberg
July, 2019

Nomi Stolzenberg, "Anne Dailey and the New Fictionalism," 36th Annual Congress of Law and Mental Health, Rome, Italy.

Thomas D. Lyon
July, 2019

"Effects of the Putative Confession Instruction on Perceptions of Children's True and False Statements" (with Jennifer Gongola and Nicholas Scurich), Applied Cognitive Psychology 33 (2019): 655.

Thomas D. Lyon
July, 2019

"Children’s Concealment of a Minor Transgression: The Role of Age, Maltreatment, and Executive Functioning" (with Shanna Williams and Kelly McWilliams), Journal of Experimental Child Psychology.