How many lawyers insist that they have the “best law job in America?” This is how Alan Kirtley, until recently the longtime director of the clinics at the University of Washington School of Law, describes his work.
Kirtley had an incredibly interesting and unique childhood. Growing up, he moved every two to three years of his life. His father was a self-educated man who started out as a welder and ultimately became a mechanical engineer. His mother became very good at packing.
Kirtley was born in Chicago, but lived in Port Arthur and Beaumont, Texas; Ukiah, California; Monroe, Louisiana; Imatra, Finland (where he learned Finnish over a summer and attended public schools); Malaga, Spain; and, finally, Amish country in Shipshewana, Indiana, for high school, where there were 32 students in his senior class. He even had a stint in Longview during the 1949 earthquake (in which he still remembers being scared to death, and can’t believe he actually ended up back here).
After attending a small college for a year on a track scholarship, where he competed in the high hurdles, Kirtley transferred to Indiana University. He had always thought about going to law school, but not to be a practicing lawyer; rather, because of all his international experience, he planned to enter the diplomatic service. Instead, he took a job at a corporate firm in Michigan after law school and made partner there after only three years.
Like most attorneys who end up in academia, Kirtley only stayed at the firm for a relatively short period of time. After making partner, it was now time for another goal.
One of Kirtley’s partners left the firm to become a clinical instructor at the University of Michigan Law School. He told me: “He seemed to be having a great time working with enthusiastic students representing people who couldn’t afford a lawyer.” When his former partner left to be a clinic director elsewhere, Kirtley replaced him at Michigan in 1976.
Clinical education was just getting off the ground and not warmly received in America’s law schools in those days. Michigan limited clinical instructors to three-year appointments, fearing that these newcomers would try to “backdoor” their way into tenured faculty positions. Michigan’s loss proved to be a new Northwest law school’s gain.
Although I know Kirtley from his work at UW, during this interview I learned that not only did he help build the UW law clinics, but he also was instrumental in getting the University of Puget Sound (now Seattle University) law clinics off the ground. In a U-Haul truck, with Sunny the Wonder Dog, Kirtley left Michigan and headed west to bring clinical education to the University of Puget Sound School of Law. As the school’s first clinical director, he established a program that continues to thrive there. With that work finished, it was time to for another challenge at the University of Washington.
Former Washington Supreme Court Justice Charles Z. Smith, with the help of U.S. District Court Judge?Marsha Pechman (before either was a judge), had established the University of Washington School of Law’s University District Defender Clinic, but the program had ended due to lack of funding. Kirtley successfully conspired with UW faculty member John Junker and Bob Boruchowitz, former director of the Public Defender Association, to re-establish a criminal defense clinic at the UW.
In the early days, the new Criminal Law Clinic was housed at the defender’s office in the Smith Tower. Kirtley’s office faced an alley and there was only one telephone line for him and his eight students. He had to yell out to the students’ work room every time a call came in for one of them. But this was just the beginning of Kirtley’s plans for the UW.
Kirtley decided that there should be a civil law clinic at the UW, too. With the first of many successful grant applications, he hired Jackie McMurtrie to take over the Criminal Law Clinic and Debbie Maranville to run the new Civil Law Clinic with him. McMurtrie now directs the school’s Innocence Project Northwest Clinic, which is well known for its work in securing the release of innocent people held in Washington prisons. Maranville now heads the Unemployment Compensation Clinic, and student interest and involvement in clinics has continued to grow to this day.
Due to Kirtley’s vision, graceful politicking and tireless effort, the UW is now a leader among American law schools in offering students a comprehensive program of clinical legal education. Clinics bridge legal theory and legal practice, developing in students the essential skills to succeed as attorneys, and at the same time providing critically needed legal services. Working with real clients, students hone such skills as interviewing; counseling; negotiation; trial, appellate and legislative advocacy; mediation; and legal research and writing. From a criminal clinic started 23 years ago, the UW program has blossomed into 12 clinics available to 115 students and hundreds of clients each year.
Last summer, Kirtley stepped down as director of clinics and handed the reins over to Maranville. Kirtley told me he made the change because “the program is in great shape, very stable. We have already filled our terrific new space in Gates Hall, so there was no place for me to put any new clinics. It’s been a great run [and] seemed like a good time to quit while I was ahead.”
“This has been the best law job in America,” Kirtley says. “I get to work with students, and have one foot in practice and one in the academy. What could be better?”
Kirtley will continue to teach negotiation and ADR courses at UW and work with students in the Mediation Clinic. He also has a private mediation practice and conducts trainings for law firms and other organizations in negotiation skills and mediation.
Kirtley has served as chair (1992-93) of the ADR Section of the Washington State Bar Association. He has published several articles in the field of alternative dispute resolution, including an article concerning mediation privilege statutes that won first prize in the 1995 CPR (Conflict Prevention & Resolution) Institute for Dispute Resolution Awards for Excellence in Alternative Dispute Resolution.
While sometimes called the “Father” of the UW Clinical Law Program, today Kirtley is best known as “Grampie” to his adorable 7-month-old grand-?daughter, Lilian Rose (his first). He looks forward to remembering how to sail, seeing the world with his wife, Lon-Marie Walton, and taking better care of his vegetable garden. æ
