Reflecting on a 40-Year Career

ALBANY LAW SCHOOL’S clinical, lawyering, and field placement programs are stronger thanks to Professor Nancy Maurer.

Almost 40 years after helping start these programs, Maurer is reflecting on those decades as she heads into retirement after the Spring 2023 semester.

Maurer’s influence is infused into the Albany Law School experience. She co-led the creation of the landmark Introduction to Lawyering program, which is designed to expose first year law stu-
dents to essential research, writing, and lawyering skills  in context, and teach them to think like professionals.

“We did it as a pilot program. We wanted students to put themselves in a lawyer’s role make some connections between the things that they were researching and writing about. I feel like the law school was really at the forefront. It was a good way to connect the first-year students with the clinics. It added more preparation so students could start thinking about their professional respon-sibility to a client or to an issue and to, at least, be a little bit more professional attitude before they came to the clinic and started representing people in real life.”

She also helped grow the Field Placement Program to give students an opportunity to build on classroom skills and apply them at external organizations.

“I’m proud of how the law school has made our field placement program an integral part of our clinic and experiential program. The fact that it’s integrated, taught by a faculty member, I think that puts Albany in a good place. And it started from sort of a small program to one where I think that there’s now recognition that teaching students to learn from experience in a different way than just direct supervision is important.”

Clinical education at Albany Law School was in its early stages when Maurer joined the faculty and she saw a growing need to provide legal help to people with disabilities. Prior to Albany Law, she practiced with Legal Services in Charleston, S.C. and was staff attorney for New York State Commission on Quality of Care and  Advocacy for People with Disabilities.

In 1983, she founded and directed the Civil Rights and Disabilities Law Clinic where law students, working under faculty supervision, represented clients in discrimination, public entitlements, education or other disability rights matters.

In the years that followed, more clinics began and grew into a present-day lifeline for many in the Capital Region. Watching the clinical and field placement offerings grow, Maurer said, has been one of the most satisfying parts of her career.

“It has been fun to see some of our grads that we’ve nurtured through their experience assume leadership positions in state government and other offices where we then place students. To have field placement students who are now supervised by alumni who’ve gone through the program has been a nice way to see it all come around,” she said.

Maurer is a member and former co-chair of the New York State Bar Association Committee on Disability Rights and former member and chair of the Board of Directors of Disability Rights New York, Inc. She also serves on the Boards of Bethlehem Youth Court and the Legal Equity Advocacy Firm, Inc. She is an editor of the 3rd edition of LEARNING FROM PRACTICE: A TEXT FOR EXPERIENTIAL LEGAL EDUCATION. She is also co-editor of the New York State Bar Association three book series DISABILITY LAW AND PRACTICE. Maurer received the AALS Clinic Section William Pincus Award for Outstanding Contributions to Clinical Legal Education in January 2021 and the 2015 Albany Law Faculty Excellence in Service Award.

As for retirement? Maurer is looking forward to having more time to visit her three children in their respective cities, Atlanta, Salt Lake City, and Jerusalem.