Heidi Gorovitz Robertson, Steven W. Percy Distinguished Professor of Law, will be speaking as part of the AALS’s Arc of the Career Program on a panel entitled “The AALS In Spite of Itself: How to Use the AALS for Professional Development Even If It Sometimes Makes You Mad.” This program is scheduled for Saturday, January 9 from 8:30-10:15 a.m. during the AALS 2016 Annual Meeting. The other panelists in this program include former C|M|LAW faculty member David Snyder (American), Stephen Ware (Kansas), and Christina Wells (Missouri).

This session will take on some of the difficulties the AALS presents for many faculty members. The idea is to help faculty overcome the problems of the AALS and to use the organization to advance their careers. Panelists will discuss strategies to address some of the difficulties, for example a culture of insiders, political correctness, scholarly faddishness, hierarchy, and bureaucracy. The goals are to help the people whom the AALS power structure seems to ignore, to allow them to feel less alone, to move them amicably past the problems, and thus to learn more about their fields, to have their ideas heard, to make contacts, and to advance their careers. Also, panelists will discuss how the AALS might improve itself for the benefit of all of its members.