Professor and writer Heidi K. Brown joined Brooklyn Law School as Director of the Legal Writing Program in 2016. A prolific scholar and author on the art and science of legal writing, she has published four books on predictive and persuasive legal writing and federal litigation as well as scholarly articles for law journals. In 2019, she published her sixth book, Untangling Fear in Lawyering: A Four-Step Journey Toward Powerful Advocacy (ABA Publishing, 2019), a follow-up to The Introverted Lawyer: A Seven-Step Journey Toward Authentically Empowered Advocacy (ABA Publishing, 2017). Inspired by her own experience conquering fear of public speaking during her litigation career, she is passionate about helping law students and lawyers “find their authentic lawyer voices” and overcome anxiety about Socratic legal discourse and performance-based lawyering tasks.
Prior to joining the Law School, Brown served as Associate Professor of Law at New York Law School where she taught in the school’s Legal Practice program. Before that, she was an Associate Professor of Legal Research and Writing at the Chapman University Dale E. Fowler School of Law in Orange, California.
Brown spent more than two decades in law practice. She served as Of Counsel with Moore & Lee, LLP, a boutique litigation firm with offices in the Washington, D.C., area and New York City where she managed all aspects of litigation and arbitration of complex construction contract and building development disputes. She specialized in brief writing for state and federal cases throughout the United States and mentored the firm’s junior associates in civil procedure, litigation strategy, and legal writing. Before that, she was an associate at the Manhattan firm of Thacher, Proffitt & Wood and at the Washington, D.C., area firm Watt, Tieder, Hoffar & Fitzgerald, LLP.
In 2014, Brown was appointed to the Fulbright Specialist Roster through the J. William Fulbright Scholars Program. She studies Italian and has taught legal writing in Italy at the University of Trento and at Tuscia University. She earned her bachelor’s degree in foreign affairs and French literature at the University of Virginia and her J.D. at the University of Virginia School of Law.
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