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Alumni Magazine for the University of Wisconsin Law School

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Incorporating Innovative Yet Proven Teaching Techniques to UW Law Classroom

Headshot photo of Teresa Bruce.
Teresa Bruce, Teaching Professor

Teresa Bruce has worked as a law clerk and practiced commercial litigation at three law firms. But her work as a professor over the past 20 years ties back to why she pursued law in the first place.

“I decided to go to law school for altruistic reasons,” said Bruce, who earned her J.D. at Cornell Law School. “Nobody in my family was a lawyer, and I probably had a somewhat negative view of lawyers — sort of the ‘ambulance chaser’ version of the profession. My views changed, and my desire to attend law school began when Thurgood Marshall retired from the Supreme Court. That event reminded me that lawyers could be much more than ambulance chasers; they could be a force for good in our society.”

In becoming a litigator, Bruce appreciated the intellectual stimulation of varied cases and fact patterns across wide swaths of the law.

“I enjoyed finding solutions to problems, and deciding, for open questions of law, what rules would best resolve those questions,” she explained.

In 2004, Bruce transitioned into academia for work she thought would better suit her personality and lifestyle for the foreseeable future. She was right, as she spent the next two decades teaching legal writing at University of Denver Sturm College of Law and then University of Colorado School of Law.

This fall, Bruce joined University of Wisconsin Law School, where she is teaching appellate advocacy, property law and a litigation practicum based on a real case.

When she thinks about the importance of her work, Bruce cites feedback she received a year ago from a student who worked in a firm over the summer. “The toughest appellate attorney” there remarked:

“You are one of the best writers of any student I’ve seen go through our program…. You do not need more seasoning to warrant a first-year associate offer. The flow and structure of your arguments make sense. You eliminate fluff. You avoid passive voice. You provide thoughtful fact comparisons. Your naming conventions elevate your work and are key to your storytelling ability. Your bluebooking is on point. Your work is easy to follow. Keep it up.”

Bruce said these words echo the results she aims for her students.

Over the past four years, Bruce has transformed her traditional, lecture-based courses to incorporate two innovative teaching techniques.

One is flipped-classroom, in which students watch lectures on video at home and work on exercises traditionally regarded as homework in class.

“The advantage of the flip is that students can get immediate instructor feedback,” Bruce explained.

The second technique is team-based learning (TBL) in which students do their in-class work in small, instructor-selected groups.

“The advantage of TBL is that adult learners prefer it: TBL allows them to be active rather than passive in the classroom,” she said. “It is especially well-suited for skills classes, like mine, that involve complex problem-solving and critical thinking. In a TBL classroom, students teach one another to some degree. They learn the material at a higher level.”

Bruce said she is excited to join the “friendly” and “hardworking” community at UW Law.

“It is truly a community where people care for and respect one another and where everyone has a common goal of academic excellence,” she said.

 

Headshot photo of Zoe Engberg.
Zoe Engberg, Clinical Assistant Professor

Alongside Students, Transforming Lives of People Convicted as Children

Listening to clients. Working in a community of committed advocates. And making a difference on both an individual and systemic basis.

These are throughlines of Zoe Engberg’s work since earning her J.D. from New York University School of Law, where she was a Root-Tilden-Kern public interest scholar. Since arriving at University of Wisconsin Law School in August 2023, she has shared those experiences with students.

Engberg, who started as clinical teaching fellow at UW Law’s Frank J. Remington Center, is now working as a clinical assistant professor.

“My desire to pursue a career in clinical education came from my own experiences as a clinic student in law school,” she said. “Clinics were a fundamental part of my own education. They pushed me to become a zealous and creative advocate. Here at UW, it’s beyond wonderful to work alongside students and see these smart, passionate and committed young lawyers gain confidence and transform into advocates for our clients.”

Engberg’s desire to work alongside people enmeshed in the criminal legal system drew her to two roles that built the foundation for her work at UW Law.

At the Orleans Public Defenders Office, she helped found the office’s first capital division to work with clients facing the death penalty in Louisiana. The role helped deepen Engberg’s understanding of how the legal system operates and “how people become caught up in it,” she said.

Spending years getting to know her clients, their families and their communities made her even more passionate about fighting alongside them. Victories, like getting capital murder charges dropped for an innocent client, proved she could make a difference.

Engberg also worked as a trial attorney at The Bronx Defenders, a nationally renowned public defender’s office that has employed three other UW Law faculty members: Renagh O’Leary, Christopher Lau and Lisa Washington.

“That time was formative for me,” she said. “It was an opportunity to work alongside a community of people committed to fighting for our clients and equally committed to changing the system that was harming our clients in the first place.”

As a trial attorney, Engberg learned lessons she now shares with her students: To think of clients as experts you can learn from. And to become comfortable admitting when you don’t know things.

When she arrived at UW Law, Engberg co-taught the Second Look Advocacy Clinic, working with incarcerated individuals to get them resentenced or released.

“It’s a really powerful movement to be a part of because so many of our clients were sentenced and then forgotten about by the legal system,” she said. “They’re in prison for decades, and they don’t have a chance to show how they’ve changed and who they are today. Students can see why it’s so important to have a judge or parole board or somebody take a second look to see if someone should be sent back home to their family and their community.”

Last year, three clients were released from prison thanks to the clinic’s advocacy.

Engberg, who is teaching with the Wisconsin Innocence Project this fall, will continue focusing on a “massive” problem in Wisconsin: people convicted as children. The state has the second-highest percentage of individuals incarcerated for crimes committed as children in the country.

“A lot of people convicted as children were sentenced in the 1990s, the tough-on-crime era,” she said. “Experts at the time argued that children convicted of crimes were essentially irredeemable, and many were sentenced to spend the rest of their lives in prison as a result. Now we know that is not true. Science shows that children’s brains are not fully developed, and they are more impulsive and susceptible to outside influences. They’re uniquely capable of rehabilitation.”

Engberg hopes that her advocacy for people in Wisconsin convicted as children will be one step toward ending our crisis of mass incarceration.

 

Headshot photo of Torey Dolan.
Torey Dolan, Hastie Fellow

From Hastie Fellow to Assistant Professor With Emphasis on Federal Indian Law, Elections

Torey Dolan found her “Goldilocks” fit at University of Wisconsin Law School.

Dolan, a member of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma, will teach federal Indian law at UW in the spring, a little over a year after arriving in Madison to work as a William H. Hastie Fellow.

“With so many accomplished scholars — in election law with Dean Dan Tokaji, Rob Yablon and Miriam Seifter, as well as in Indian law with Great Lakes Indigenous Law Center (GLILC) Director Amanda White Eagle — who could mentor me, I was dreading leaving such a strong intellectual community,” Dolan said. “So when I was hired to join the faculty here, I was ecstatic to continue at a place that was ‘just right.’”

Dolan published two papers in her fellowship year, including “Where’s Mr. Postman? The Struggles of Voting by Mail in Indian Country” in the Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review.

It describes the disparities in access to the U.S. Postal Service that Tribal communities face and how that impacts their ability to vote.

“After doing voting rights work on behalf of Native communities from 2019 to 2023, I saw firsthand how difficult it was for reservation-based voters to vote by mail,” said Dolan, who served as a Native Vote Fellow at Arizona State University Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law’s Indian Legal Clinic. “The threat of COVID-19, combined with the lack of access to water, electricity and internet, were seriously isolating issues for Indigenous voters. I wanted to explore why it was this way and how we should think about voting by mail differently for Indigenous voters.”

Dolan, who earned her J.D. from Arizona State University in 2019, was exposed to the law at a young age; her father is a lawyer, and her mother worked as a paralegal when he started his practice.

“I learned from watching his practice that the law can be used to find justice when all other avenues have failed,” said Dolan. “When I took a government class in high school, I became passionate about public policy issues and law as a tool of justice. I decided then that I would pursue a political science degree in college and eventually pursue law school.”

Since then, Dolan has continued to follow her passions with the guidance of mentors and the infectious energy of students. Most of all, she takes inspiration from Indigenous women: her mother, her fellow tribal members and other female leaders.

“They are constantly excelling in their own lives and continually opening doors for others, thinking about the community and finding ways to serve Indian Country more broadly,” she said. “They inspire me to be an excellent academic, attorney, person, and to always carry my community with me in my work.”

Dolan emphasized the importance of federal Indian law for all Americans.

“It impacts everyone,” she said. “Many people erroneously assume that it only impacts Indians. But if you are living in the United States, then you have an interest in Indian treaties. If you drive through Indian lands, then your life is touched by Indian law. And if you ever work with Tribal governments or businesses, then you’ll want to know Indian law.”

By Jennie Broecker

 

Other Notable Comings & Goings at UW Law