Prof. J.D. King Appointed Director of Experiential Education at W&L Law
Washington and Lee law school dean Brant Hellwig has announced the appointment of J.D. King as director of experiential education.
According to Dean Hellwig, this new position was created to foster and further cultivate W&L Law’s experiential course offerings by promoting the integration of experiential components into doctrinal areas of the curriculum and ensuring a robust selection of high-quality experiential offerings.
“J.D.’s extensive experience both as a practitioner and educator make him the perfect person to take up this new post for W&L Law,” said Dean Hellwig. “As we continue the expansion of our experiential offerings across the curriculum, we need a thoughtful, experienced and dedicated member of our faculty member to steward our institutional commitment to practice-based legal education.”
King has been a member of the W&L Law faculty since 2008 and currently directs the school’s Criminal Justice Clinic, in which law students represent indigent people facing criminal charges in local trial courts. He regularly teaches Evidence and Criminal Procedure, and he has participated as a small-section instructor in the school’s two-week litigation skills immersion course.
The Criminal Justice Clinic is just one offering in W&L Law’s extensive experiential curriculum, which includes six in-house clinics, a wide variety of practicum simulation courses and externship opportunities, two innovative practice skills courses, and an experiential semester-in-residence in Washington, DC.
“W&L is well known as a leader in experiential legal education, having been in the vanguard of law schools to increase substantially the practice-based offerings available to upper-level law students,” said King. “With experiential opportunities now available to second-year law students and the upcoming development of experiential supplements for core courses, our curriculum continues to evolve to best meet the needs of our students in order to prepare them for the legal profession.”
In addition to overseeing the ongoing assessment and evaluation of the experiential curriculum, King will also arrange faculty enrichment opportunities, such as workshops or presentations, on the topic of experiential education.
King holds a B.A. in History and Religious Studies from Brown University, a J.D. from the University of Michigan Law School, and a LL.M. in Advocacy from Georgetown University Law Center.
Prior to teaching, King was a supervising attorney at the Public Defender Service for the District of Columbia, a Prettyman Fellow at Georgetown University Law Center, and a law clerk to United States District Judge Richard H. Kyle.
King’s scholarly research focuses on criminal defense ethics and the right to counsel. In 2014, he received a Fulbright Scholarship to study the evolving role of the public defender in Chile as the country’s criminal justice system underwent a transition from an inquisitorial system to an adversarial system.
