Overview
Faculty
Thomas Martin Esq.
Tom is an attorney, CEO and Founder of LawDroid, and Legal AI author and speaker.
Carolyn Elefant Esq.
Carolyn Elefant,
Esquire (PUC, May 2013) Ms. Elefant is principal attorney of the Law Offices
of Carolyn Elefant in Washington DC and creator of the blog, MyShingle.com
for solo and small firm practice. She is co-author, with Nicole Black of the
ABA Bestseller, Social Media for Lawyers: The Next Frontier and a frequent
speaker at bar events on solo practice in the 21st century, social media and
21st century legal ethics.
Amy Emerson
Amy A. Emerson is
Assistant Dean for Library and Information Services and Associate Professor
of Law at Villanova University Charles Widger School of Law.
Professor Emerson manages law library operations and strategic planning,
oversees the legal research curriculum, and teaches courses in law and
technology, including Law Practice Technology and Leveraging Technology to
Promote Access to Justice, a course in which students use open-source
software to build legal tech solutions for community partners. In
January 2023, Bloomberg Law named her Leveraging Technology to Promote Access
to Justice course a top ten law school
innovation. Professor Emerson’s
personal scholarship interests draw upon her decade of experience as an
attorney and focus on open access to legal information as it informs access
to justice. A list of Professor Emerson’s publications is
set forth in the link to her CV. She
serves on the Executive Board of the Technology, Law, and Legal Education
Section of the Association of American Law Schools (AALS), as a member of the
Board of Directors of the Center for Computer-Assisted Legal Instruction
(CALI), as a Site Visit Team Member for the American Bar Association (ABA)
Section on Legal Education, as immediate past Chair of the Government
Relations Committee of the American Association of Law Libraries (AALL), as
past president of the Association of Law Libraries of Upstate New York, and
as a founding officer of the International Legal Research Interest Group of
the American Society of International
Law. Professor Emerson received her B.A. with
honors from Wells College, and dual J.D. and M.L.S. degrees with honors from
Syracuse University.
Abraham Gafni
Judge Gafni was a
Professor of Law (now Emeritus) at Villanova University Charles
Widger School of Law from 1994 until 2020. He had been a
member of the Court of Common Pleas of Philadelphia County from 1977 until
1994. Prior to his leaving the bench, he had been an adjunct professor of law
at both the Temple Beasley and Villanova law schools for many
years. In addition, he served as the Deputy District Attorney for
Law in Philadelphia County, as an appellate law clerk, in private practice
and as an attorney for the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. He is a
past Chair of the Alternative Dispute Resolution and the Professionalism
Committees of the PBI. He also served as the President of the Arbitration
Tribunal of the International Commission on Holocaust Era Insurance Claims.
Judge Gafni has remained active in the ADR field and continues to lecture and
author articles both related and unrelated to it.
Richard Klein (Ret.)
Judge Klein spent 28 years as a trial and eight years as an appellate court judge in Pennsylvania. He served as a trial judge in all parts of Philadelphia’s courts. When first appointed, he was the youngest judge in the history of Pennsylvania. When Judge Klein was elected to the Superior Court of Pennsylvania, its intermediate appellate court, he received a “highly recommended” rating from the Pennsylvania Bar Association and the endorsement of every major newspaper in the State that made judicial endorsements. Retired from the bench, he is serving as a mediator, arbitrator and appellate consultant as “Of Counsel” with McElroy and Deutsch in Philadelphia. He is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Amherst College and an honor graduate of Harvard Law School. He won a National Merit Scholarship when he graduated from Friends’ Central School. He is co-author of the West Publication book, Trial Communication Skills, written with Body Language author Julius Fast and international lawyer Roberto Aron. He was awarded the Pennsylvania Bar Association’s Sir Francis Bacon award, given to an individual who excels in the area of alternative dispute resolution and has had a significant professional impact in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania in the area of ADR. He also received the Pennsylvania Bar Association’s highest award for effective writing, the Clarity Award. He served for ten years as co-chair of the Philadelphia Bar Association Alternative Dispute Resolution committee. He is founder and co-chair of the Pennsylvania Bar Association Plain English Committee. He is chair of the Pennsylvania Futures Commission in the 21st century, starting again to review and update a long-term plan for the Pennsylvania Justice system originally prepared 20 years ago. He served as educational leader for legal-study tours sponsored by the Corporation for Professional Conferences, having led 18 such trips, including trips to Russia, China, Greece, Thailand, Vietnam, France, Egypt, and the Czech Republic and Hungary, and South Africa. He served for fifteen years as an adjunct lecturer at Temple University Law School. Judge Klein frequently lectures on Alternative Dispute Resolution, Effective Writing, Trial and Appellate Advocacy, Legal Ethics, and other topics. He is past president of the Philadelphia Chamber Orchestra. He also is the drummer and leader of the jazz groups, “The Reading Terminals” and “The Moonlighters.”
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