Carrie Hempel
Founding Faculty
Associate Dean for Clinical Education and Service Learning

Why did you decide to join the University of California, Irvine School of Law?
What motivated me was the opportunity to work with Dean Chemerinsky and the other founding faculty of the UC Irvine School of Law to create the highest quality clinical education and service learning programs possible. We intend to provide an outstanding experiential learning course for every UC Irvine School of Law student within a well-integrated service learning program that offers a variety of opportunities in many areas of legal practice.

What are your plans for the clinical education and service learning program at the University of California, Irvine School of Law?
For decades, the legal profession has called for significant reform in legal education, particularly in addressing a lack of preparation for the actual practice of law. As a startup law school, UC Irvine has a meaningful opportunity to really change the nature of how lawyers are educated—building on the best of the traditional approaches while ensuring that law students develop hands-on experience with real clients on real cases and issues. And at UCI we’ll be able to really integrate service learning and the development of practical legal skills into the curriculum. Having a full year for planning before the first students even arrive on campus is unprecedented and has allowed us to build a unique program that we hope will become a model for other law schools.

Carrie Hempel
Contact info
chempel@law.uci.edu
949-824-3575
401 East Peltason Drive, Law 3500-F
Irvine, CA 92697-8000

Faculty Assistant Angie Middleton Grantham
amiddleton@law.uci.edu
(949) 824-0975

CV
Education
  • Yale University School of Law, J.D.
  • University of Southern California, B.A.
Prior faculty appointments
  • University of Southern California, 1993-2008
Expertise
  • Clinical legal education, post-conviction practice,criminal law, and gender law
Publication highlights
  • Battered and Convicted, 25-WTR Crim. Just. 24 (2011)
  • An Innovative Approach to Legal Education and the Founding of the University of California, Irvine School of Law, chapter in The Paradox of Professionalism: Lawyers and the Possibility of Justice (Scott L. Cummings ed., Cambridge University Press, 2011) (with Caroll Seron).
  • Lawrence and Shaputis and Their Impact on Parole Decisions in California, 22 FED. SENT. R. 176 (2010).
Affiliations/honors
  • Southern California American Civil Liberties Union, Board member, 1994-2010
  • American Bar Association’s Central and East European Law Initiative programs in Kazakstan, Uzbekistan and Yugoslavia, clinical legal specialist, 2000
  • California State Bar, Standing Committee on Legal Services for Prisoners, 1996-1998
Prior legal practice
  • Hon. Richard A. Gadbois, United States District Court, Central District of California, law clerk
  • Center for Law in the Public Interest, fellow
  • Tuttle & Taylor, Los Angeles
  • Leonard, Street & Deinard, Minneapolis