UW Law School Clinical Professor Michele LaVigne has been named the Clinical Teacher of the Year for 2008, the first winner of the newly established award honoring professors who supervise and teach in the Law School’s extensive program of clinical legal education.

LaVigne, a former State Public Defender in Madison, is director of the Public Defender Project at the Law School’s Frank J. Remington Center. She is also the founder of the highly successful Mock Trial Program at the Wisconsin School for the Deaf in Delavan, Wisconsin.

She teaches criminal law, constitutional litigation, and trial advocacy, in addition to supervising law students placed as interns in public defender offices throughout Wisconsin. She is a member of the faculty of the National Criminal Defense College and the Wisconsin Public Defender Trial Skills Academy, and has given presentations to defense attorneys around the country on trial advocacy.

LaVigne comments, "What I like best about clinical teaching is watching the students fall in love with practicing law. The students have such energy and enthusiasm that I am constantly reminded what an honor it is to be involved in this whole endeavor."

She adds, "The other great kick is running into former students who have turned into top-notch lawyers, and who tell me how they are still using what they learned in their law school clinical work."

During most of her tenure at the Law School, LaVigne has also been involved in research and litigation on the rights of deaf defendants. She co-authored "An Interpreter Isn't Enough: Deafness, Language and Due Process," (with McCay Vernon), published in the Wisconsin Law Review, which discusses deafness and language acquisition and their combined effects on deaf and severely hard-of-hearing individuals in the criminal justice system. She has lectured to organizations of the deaf and hard-of-hearing, and to interpreter groups. In 2005, she received the Distinguished Member of the Year Award from the Wisconsin Association of the Deaf.

LaVigne earned her J.D. degree at George Washington University Law School.

Submitted by on November 13, 2008

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