Danielle Tully

Expertise:

Legal Analysis and Communication; Legal Education History and Reform, Legal Profession

Background:

Danielle Tully is a Visiting Assistant Professor of Lawyering Skills at UC Irvine School of Law. Professor Tully's scholarship critically interrogates how law schools function as institutions that shape the law, the profession, and access to justice in American society. Her research examines the evolution and transformation of legal education through three interconnected lenses: assessment methodologies that measure student growth, student-centered pedagogical approaches that promote inclusion, and the culturally responsive lawyering framework that prepares law graduates to serve diverse communities effectively. Her scholarly work has been published in the Stanford Journal of Civil Rights & Civil Liberties, the Utah Law Review, and the North Carolina Law Review Forum.  

Drawing on historical analysis and new empirical research, her most recent article, Behind the Curve: Rethinking Norm-Referenced Grading in First-Year Legal Writing Courses, was the lead article published in the Spring 2025 volume of the peer-reviewed journal, Legal Writing: The Journal of the Legal Writing Institute. In addition to reporting on the current grading landscape, this article contextualizes this data within a grade curve trend that began in the 1970s. It also argues that law schools should reevaluate grading policies and adopt new methods for communicating student achievement to meet their student equity and belonging goals as well as the needs of the profession and the public. 

Professor Tully is also active in national organizations and regularly presents on topics related to curriculum development, assessment, and cultural competence in the lawyering skills curriculum and legal profession. Among other activities, she is currently a member of ALWD’s ABA Task Force, which monitors revisions to the ABA accreditation standards and the Legal Writing Institute’s Survey Committee, which creates, distributes, and reports on the ALWD/LWI Institutional Survey and the ALWD/LWI Individual Survey. She also serves as the Book Review Editor for Legal Communication & Rhetoric: JALWD, a peer reviewed journal in the field of legal communication.  

Professor Tully joins us from Brooklyn Law School where she is also the Co-Director of the Edward V. Sparer Public Interest Law Fellowship. Before entering law teaching, she worked in public interest law both domestically and internationally. She also served as a law clerk for the Hon. D. Brock Hornby, U.S. District Judge for the District of Maine and owned a bike shop in Harlem. 

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