The legal profession has no better friend than Kellye Y. Testy. She has dedicated her entire professional life to ensuring that the legal profession and justice system will be populated by outstandingly well-educated and public-spirited lawyers who will serve our communities as leaders for a just and humane world.
Under her leadership, the Seattle University School of Law is strengthening and diversifying the legal profession, combining academic excellence with education for justice. Dean Testy fosters in students and faculty a desire to serve the poorest and most disadvantaged people in our society, and the cause of justice. She is determined that graduates of the law school are superbly prepared to enter the legal and justice community. She also works to engender a devotion to serve the public good, social justice and the profession through leadership and service to the King County Bar Association, WSBA, minority bar associations and the justice community, no matter where graduates’ professional careers and life journeys take them.
Linda Strout, a 1979 graduate of the law school and former KCBA president, said Dean Testy’s leadership inspires and brings out the best in others, that she always stands up for what she believes in, and “walks the talk” of social justice.
Under Dean Testy’s leadership, the S.U. law school has made tremendous strides in hiring outstanding faculty, strengthening diversity and expanding opportunities in international study and other areas so that students and alumni can live out the academic and justice values of the law school. The school also offers externships at the Catholic Community Services Legal Action Center; scholarly and service learning at the Ronald A. Peterson Law Clinic, providing representation to poor and disadvantaged people who otherwise would go unrepresented; summer internships with the equal justice community through Public Interest Law Foundation grants; and activities and initiatives through the Access to Justice Institute in concert with the KCBA Community Legal Services Programs.
In an effort to increase the ranks of underrepresented groups among law school faculty and deans, Dean Testy serves on the Committee on the Recruitment and Retention of Minority Law Teachers of the Association of American Law Schools. To encourage women and minorities to pursue deanships, she hosted a two-day workshop at the law school to increase the ability of non-traditional dean candidates to break through the glass ceiling that keeps these groups underrepresented in decanal ranks.
Testy joined the faculty in 1992 and was an effective and popular teacher. She has long been working for justice. An expert in corporate governance, who lectures internationally and is widely published, her corporate governance experience ranges from consulting with mom-and-pop shops before going to law school to being an expert witness in a groundbreaking suit by Myanmar villagers who sued oil giant Unocal over human rights violations.
Before becoming dean, she was instrumental in the founding of the law school’s Access to Justice Institute, the Seattle Journal for Social Justice and the Center on Corporations, Law & Society. As dean, she implemented the Scholars for Justice Awards, which provide two full scholarships each year to students committed to working in the public interest.
“Dean Testy understands the vitality and strength that inclusion and diversity bring to the legal profession and justice system, not just for her faculty, students and staff, but for the broader justice community,” said King County Deputy Prosecutor Bonnie Glenn. “She radiates a powerfully caring spirit that inspires and challenges the people she meets to ask themselves, ‘What more can I do to ensure a more just and humane world?’”
Ada Shen-Jaffe is a senior advisor at Seattle University School of Law. Bonnie Glenn is deputy chief of staff in the King County Prosecuting Attorney's Office.
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