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The Ruth Bader Ginsburg Lecture Series and the annual Women and the Law Conference are only two aspects of the important role of women at Thomas Jefferson School of Law. At Thomas Jefferson, faculty, administration, staff and students work together to create a unique learning atmosphere in which women are given the opportunity to excel.

Empirical research demonstrates that female students at many other law schools may not perform as well as male students who entered law school with comparable academic credentials. The same is not true of women who choose to attend Thomas Jefferson. In recent years, approximately half of our student population has been women. Seven of the last ten valedictorians have been women and in recent graduating classes, women have made up approximately one-half of the summa cum laude and magna cum laude graduates. In 2011, seventy percent of the summa cum laude graduates were women. Female law students also are chosen for positions of honor by their peers. Women always have a significant presence on the managing board of the Thomas Jefferson Law Review.

A Law School Admission Council study ranked Thomas Jefferson eleventh in the nation for percentage of women on the faculty, but this number does not tell the whole story. Many law schools have increased the number of female faculty members they have hired. Recent studies indicate that these women are often hired into non-tenure track, lower-paying and lower prestige jobs. At Thomas Jefferson, however, women have long comprised approximately one-half of the tenured, tenure track, and emeritus professors. Few, if any, law schools in the country have come close to matching this consistently high percentage of successful female faculty members.

Finally, almost one-third of the full-time Thomas Jefferson faculty members include gender as a special focus of their research and teaching. Their scholarship includes articles and books on workplace sex discrimination; women and human rights law; gay, lesbian, transgender and other sexual identity issues; women migrants; sexual privacy issues; women’s treatment by the medical profession; assisted reproductive technologies; sex slavery and trafficking; the intersection of gender, race and intellectual property; and women’s rights and cultural groups.

The category of family law has come to encounter a wide array of legal services, including divorce, custody disputes, adoption, domestic violence, and surrogacy. Many family lawyers also include transactional work in their practice, particularly in the area of estate planning. Thomas Jefferson School of Law provides a thorough curriculum and a wealth of advanced practice opportunities, enabling graduates to develop thriving family and estate planning law practices.

Courses

Community Property

Comparative Family Law

Family Law

Field Placement

Mediation

Veterans Legal Assistance Clinic

Wills & Trusts

Our family law and estate planning faculty members have an open-door policy and are willing to provide guidance to any student who wants to pursue an intellectual property specialty.

Professor Julie Greenberg (Sexuality, Gender & the Law, Women & the Law, Comparative Family Law) is an internationally recognized expert on the legal issues relating to gender, sex, sexual identity and sexual orientation. Her path-breaking work on gender identity has been cited by a number of state and federal courts, as well as courts in other countries. Her most recent work, Intersexuality & the Law: Sex Matters, was  published in 2011 by the New York University Press.

Professor Ellen Waldman (Mediation) founded and supervises the school's mediation program, which affords students an opportunity to mediate disputes in small claims court. Prior to joining TJSL she clerked for the Honorable Myron Bright of the Eighth Circuit in Fargo, North Dakota, and practiced law in Washington, D.C., where she received mediation training. She was subsequently awarded a scholarship in 1990 to pursue an LL.M. in mediation and served as a fellow at the Institute of Law, Psychiatry, and Public Policy in Charlottesville, Virginia and at the medical ethics department at the University of Virginia Medical School. Professor Waldman speaks, trains and publishes in the areas of mediation and medical ethics.

Professor Steven Berenson (Family Law, Veterans Legal Assistance Clinic) has taught family law at TJSL for a decade and is the founder and supervisor of TJSL's Veterans Legal Assistance Clinic, which provides a range of legal services, including a variety of family law matters, to veterans living in San Diego communities. Following graduation from law school (where he served as Trial Operations Director of the Harvard Defenders), Professor Berenson clerked for Justice Edith W. Fine of the Massachusetts Appeals Court. He then spent more than five years as an Assistant Massachusetts Attorney General, where he focused on civil litigation in the areas of administrative, constitutional and consumer protection law. During that time, Professor Berenson also served as a Supreme Court Fellow with the National Association of Attorneys General. He regularly publishes work dealing with the role of lawyers in protecting individuals civil and constitutional rights.

Associate Professor Kaimipono David Wenger (Wills & Trusts) a graduate of Columbia Law School and an active blogger on the popular law site Concurring Opinions clerked for Judge Jack B. Weinstein of the Eastern District of New York.  Before coming to TJSL to teach business associations, practiced corporate securities law with Cravath, Swaine & Moore, LLP, in New York City.

Associate Professor Luz Herrera (Wills & Trusts) has worked at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development on empowerment zones and at the Southwest Voter Registration Education Project, the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, and the Los Angeles City Attorney's Office. Before coming to Thomas Jefferson, she opened her own practice serving the under-privileged community in Compton, California.

Director JudyBeth Tropp (Field Placements) received her law degree from Fordham University School of Law and her bachelors degree from Smith College (cum laude). She is a former assistant district attorney with the Appeals Bureau in Brooklyn, New York and former deputy public defender, with the County of Los Angeles.

Adjunct Professor Zuzana Colaprete (Accounting for Lawyers, Federal Income Taxation, Estate Planning & Taxation, Estate & Gift Tax, Accounting for Lawyers, and Trusts) received her Masters in Law Degree in Taxation from the University of San Diego School of Law; her MSBA in Accounting, San Diego State University and her B.A. from Hofstra University. She is a Certified Public Accountant and a former tax attorney with the District Counsel Office of the Internal Revenue Service. Previously employed with PricewaterhouseCoopers, she is currently in private practice with an emphasis in all levels of I.R.S. representation, tax planning and estate planning.