Susan L. Kay

Biography

Sue Kay has headed the law school's clinical and experiential legal education program since 2001, having joined the clinical faculty in 1980. In addition to teaching in the Criminal Practice Clinic, Dean Kay supervises the Trial Advocacy courses and teaches courses on Criminal Law and Evidence. She is active in many professional and service activities and has served as president of the Clinical Legal Education Association, a national association that represents more than 600 law faculty, and as president of the board of the Tennessee Alliance for Legal Services and the Legal Aid Society of Middle Tennessee and the Cumberlands. For ten years, she chaired the board of the American Civil Liberties Union of Tennessee. Dean Kay is a member of the Council of the American Bar Association's Section on Legal Education and Admission to the Bar, having formerly served as a member of the Section's Accreditation Committee and Standards Review Committee. 

Within the clinic, she has conducted major public law litigation concerning jail overcrowding, inmates’ rights, and juvenile justice. She recently served as a member of the Tennessee Supreme Court's Indigent Representation Task Force. In 2007, she completed an assignment as a court-appointed monitor in federal litigation challenging the state’s compliance with its responsibilities to children enrolled in the TennCare program. In 2005, Dean Kay was co-reporter with on the Tennessee Bar Association Criminal Justice Section's study of effectiveness of counsel in death penalty cases. Dean Kay has been elected as a fellow of both the Nashville Bar Foundation and the Tennessee Bar Foundation and is a recipient of the ACLU of Tennessee’s Lifetime Achievement Award.