Pathways to Practice in Pennsylvania: Exploring New Options to Bridge Education and Legal Practice 2026

Catherine Bramble is an Associate Professor at BYU Law School who teaches courses in advanced legal writing and first-year Torts. Professor Bramble joined BYU Law School in 2011 as part-time faculty teaching first-year writing courses. In 2019, she was appointed the first Director of Academic Advisement and Development; during her tenure in the position, the law school achieved historically high rates in bar passage. For the 2022-2023 academic year, Professor Bramble was a Visiting Assistant Professor at the University of Utah before joining the full-time faculty at BYU Law School in the fall of 2023.
From 2020-2025, Professor Bramble served as a member of the Utah Supreme Court Working Group on Attorney Licensure and played a critical role in Utah’s eventual adoption of an alternate path to bar licensure.
Professor Bramble graduated summa cum laude from the J. Reuben Clark Law School in 2005 and worked for eight years as a practicing attorney prior to entering academia. Professor Bramble’s research interests include law school pedagogy and innovative attorney licensure.

Brian Gallini earned his bachelor of arts degree from College of the Holy Cross, his master of laws degree from Temple University Beasley School of Law and his juris doctor from the University of Michigan Law School.
Gallini joined the Quinnipiac University School of Law as dean and professor of law in July 2024. Prior to Quinnipiac, Gallini served as dean and professor of law at Willamette University College of Law. During his four-year tenure as dean, he recruited the largest and most academically well-credentialed 1L class in more than a decade, secured the second largest gift in the Willamette University College of Law’s history, posted the highest 10-month gold standard employment numbers on the West Coast, and critically evaluated its approach to diversity, equity and inclusion. Through his service on Oregon’s Alternatives to Bar Exam Task Force, he appeared several times before the Oregon Supreme Court prior to the court’s historic vote in November 2023 to approve a new pathway to attorney licensure.
Gallini previously served in a variety of administrative roles while on the faculty at the University of Arkansas School of Law teaching courses in criminal law and procedure. Among his administrative leadership appointments, he served as director of distance learning initiatives, senior associate dean for faculty and associate dean for research and faculty development.
Gallini is a leading scholar in criminal law and has developed seminars, taught overseas, and is regularly interviewed by local, state, national and international media outlets to provide expert legal commentary. His scholarship focuses on law enforcement discretion issues in the context of interrogation methods, consent searches and profiling. He is also the two-time winner of the Southeastern Association of Law Schools Call-for-Papers competition and, in 2017, was named the Southeastern Conference Faculty Achievement Award Winner.
Gallini serves on ABA site-inspection teams, as an AccessLex liaison regarding student service initiatives, and remains active in a number of Association of American Law Schools and Southeastern Association of Law Schools (SEALS) committees.
Outside of academia, Gallini served for more than a decade as the head coach for two men’s college ice hockey teams, compiling more than 200 wins during separate tenures with the University of Pennsylvania and Arkansas. While coaching at Arkansas, he amassed five conference titles, three appearances at the Division III National Tournament and was voted the 2013-14 SECHC Coach of the Year.

Donna Gerson is the Director of Western Pennsylvania Bar Services for the PBA. Before joining the PBA executive staff, Donna was the Associate Dean for Career Strategies at Drexel University Thomas R. Kline School of Law from 2014 – 2024. Her book, “Choosing Smart: Job Search Strategies for Lawyers in the Small Firm Market,” published by NALP, is in its third edition. The second edition of “The Modern Rules of Business Etiquette,” which she co-authored with David Gerson, was published by ABA Publishing in 2014. Her book about networking skills, “Building Career Connections”, was published by NALP in 2007. She is a former contributing editor for Student Lawyer magazine, a publication of the ABA Law Student Division where she wrote an award-winning career advice column. From 1993 to 2001, Gerson she worked in the Office of Career Services at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law. Gerson received a BA, cum laude, from the University of Pennsylvania, her JD from Temple University Beasley School of Law, and an MLIS degree from the University of Pittsburgh. She clerked for a judge in Philadelphia and worked in private practice in Pittsburgh prior to her work in student services. She was awarded the prestigious National Association for Law Placement Service Excellence Award in 2024.

Nachman earned his J.D. from the University of Miami School of Law, and his M.M. from the Frost School of Music at the University of Miami. Prior to joining the William S. Boyd School of Law, he served as Director of Accreditation and Associate Professor of Academic Success and Bar Preparation at St. Thomas University College of Law. He previously spent 8 years in the legal education-focused, corporate, national bar review industry supporting law schools from Puerto Rico through the southeast United States.
As a recognized bar exam substantive and skills expert, Professor Gutowski has successfully passed multiple bar exams and has scored high enough on the Uniform Bar Exam to meet the required score for all 41 UBE jurisdictions. His scholarship focuses on academic success in law school, discrimination related to the bar exam, and licensure requirements for legal educational institutions. In addition, he has written and spoken about Generative Artificial Intelligence in higher education, as well as the complexities of data collection and reporting.
He served on the Association of American Law Schools Section on Academic Support as a member of the Board of Directors. He currently serves as President as well as a member of the Bar Advocacy, and Scholarship Committees for the Association of Academic Support Educators. Additionally, he is a member of the American Bar Association Section on Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar, and a member of the Society of American Law Teachers. His data-driven and student-centered approach to student success informs his leadership.

Ashley M. London serves as Associate Professor of Law and Director of Bar Studies at the Thomas R. Kline School of Law of Duquesne University. In this capacity, she teaches courses including Professional Responsibility, Introduction to Law and the Legal Profession, and a range of bar readiness courses. She also designs and implements comprehensive bar preparation programming, with a pedagogical emphasis on improving student performance and bar passage outcomes. Ashley is also a lecturer at Carnegie Mellon Institute for Strategy & Technology.
Her teaching and scholarship center on legal ethics, professional identity formation, the intersection of legal ethics and new technologies, and innovative, evidence-based pedagogical methods for legal education and bar examination readiness. Professor London’s research and academic interests include legal ethics, law school pedagogy, the Multistate Bar Examination (MBE), the Uniform Bar Exam (UBE), and the broader landscape of bar admissions and licensure requirements. Additional areas of substantive expertise include character and fitness requirements, family law, guardian ad litem representation in special proceedings, estate planning, landlord/tenant law, housing code enforcement, and legal media relations. Before entering academia, she practiced law in the housing division at Legal Aid of North Carolina and later established her own civil litigation practice, with a particular focus on guardian ad litem appointments for elderly and incapacitated clients.
Professor London began her legal career in Washington, D.C., as a volunteer legal intern in both the Bankruptcy Judges Division and the Article III Judges Division, through a selective post-graduate program.
Before entering the legal profession, Professor London worked for over a decade as an award-winning journalist in North Carolina. Her work appeared across print, radio, and television platforms, and included interviews with public figures ranging from Sarah, Duchess of York, and Joan Rivers to Kate Spade and Wolfgang Puck, as well as executives from multinational corporations. She often reflects on the unique experiences of that career as formative to her interdisciplinary perspective.
Professor London holds leadership roles in the Association of Academic Support Educators (AASE) and serves on the executive committee of the American Association of Law Schools (AALS) Section on Professional Responsibility. Professor London also serves on the Pennsylvania Bar Association’s Legal Academics Committee. She presents ethics CLEs at conferences across the country.