Press Release
Contact:
Jim Greif
[email protected]
(202) 296-1593

Washington, D.C. (April 30, 2018) – The Association of American Law Schools (AALS) has selected Loyola Law School, Los Angeles Professor Sean M. Scott as its new Associate Director. During her two-year appointment, set to begin in August 2018, Scott will be on leave from Loyola Law School, Los Angeles, working for AALS at its Washington, D.C. headquarters. She will be charged with developing and overseeing programs to further the association’s goal of improving legal education. In this role, Scott will staff several key AALS committees, advise staff on legal education issues, and work with the association’s faculty volunteers.
 
“I am honored to be appointed to a leadership role in the AALS, with which I share many of the same values: promoting diversity in the academy and the legal profession, innovating in the classroom and improving awareness of the role law schools play in society,” said Scott. “I look forward to working toward these and other goals on behalf of my colleagues and peers nationwide.”
 
An author of numerous op-eds on advances in legal education, Scott has a long history of innovation as a law school administrator and professor. Scott has been instrumental in the re-engineering of Loyola’s curriculum to add subject-matter concentrations and first-year electives.
 
As a professor of Contracts, Gender & the Law and Law of Sales, Scott has received several honors from law student groups including the Excellence in Teaching Award by the school’s Student Bar Association and the Distinguished Faculty Award by the Black Law Students Association. She also played an integral role in the restructuring of the school’s Career Development Office, including bolstering its staff and helping to create a social-justice incubator for recent graduates.
 
Scott serves on the Board of Governors of the Society of American Law Teachers (SALT) and is a past member of the Board of Directors of the California Women’s Law Center. Before joining academia, Scott was an associate in the Los Angeles office of Manatt, Phelps & Phillips, LLP. She earned a JD from New York University.
 
Scott succeeds retired Georgetown Law professor Elizabeth “Ginger” Hayes Patterson, who will be wrapping up her third separate term as associate director this summer.
 
About the AALS
The Association of American Law Schools (AALS), founded in 1900, is a nonprofit association of 179 law schools. Its members enroll most of the nation’s law students and produce the majority of the country’s lawyers and judges, as well as many of its lawmakers. The mission of AALS is to uphold and advance excellence in legal education. In support of this mission, AALS promotes the core values of excellence in teaching and scholarship, academic freedom, and diversity, including diversity of backgrounds and viewpoints, while seeking to improve the legal profession, to foster justice, and to serve our many communities–local, national and international.