• Faculty

Margaret Martin Barry

Titles

• Professor of Law Emerita

Degrees

• JD, University of Minnesota Law School, 1980
• BA, Luther College, 1975

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Biography

Professor Margaret Martin Barry came to Vermont Law School as a visiting professor and associate dean for clinical and experiential programs in 2011 and joined the regular faculty in 2012.  She served as associate dean for clinical and experiential programs until December 2016.  Her current teaching responsibilities include criminal law, professional responsibility, and a seminar on race and the criminal justice system.

Professor Barry was previously a professor at Columbus School of Law at the Catholic University of America. She has published in the areas of legal education and family law, and has served on numerous professional panels discussing clinical teaching and legal representation. She served as chair of the Association of American Law Schools Section on Clinical Legal Education and as president of the Clinical Legal Education Association (CLEA). Both the AALS Clinical Section and CLEA are the leading professional organizations for clinical legal educators in the United States.



Professor Barry also served as co-president of the Society of American Law Teachers (SALT). She served as vice chair of the ABA Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar Standards Review Committee; she has also served on the Section’s Nominations Committee and Clinical Skills Committee, and has served on a number of Section’s law school site evaluation teams. She was a member of the Board of Editors of the Clinical Law Review from 2008-2013.

In addition to her academic activities, she has served on Vermont’s Access to Justice Coalition, Vermont Supreme Court’s Self-Represented Litigants Committee, and she collaborated with the Vermont Bar Association on the joint law school VBA incubator project for recent law school graduates.  While at Catholic University, she co-chaired the D.C. Bar’s Family Law Section and its Family Law Representation Committee, was active in developing pro bono and pro se services for D.C. residents who have limited access to legal representation, and served on committees and working groups addressing domestic violence and domestic relations issues.

Professor Barry graduated magna cum laude from Luther College and received her JD degree from the University of Minnesota. After working on Capitol Hill and doing pro bono representation for several years, she joined the faculty of CUA’s Columbus Community Legal Services (CCLS) in 1987. She taught in CCLS’s Families and the Law Clinic since its inception in 1993. She also taught family law at CUA and the litigation process in CUA’s American Law Institute in Krakow, Poland. In summer 2005, she taught as a Fulbright senior specialist at NALSAR Law University in Hyderabad, India, and lectured as a Fulbright Scholar at the University of Montenegro in 2007. In addition to her current courses, she has taught mediation, civil procedure I and II, interviewing counseling and negotiation, and supervised students in the externship program and general practice clinic at VLS.

Expertise

• Clinical Legal Education
• Domestic Violence
• Family Law

Courses Taught

• Civil Procedure I
• Civil Procedure II
• Dispute Resolution Seminar: Interviewing, Counseling, and Negotiation
• Mediation
• Externships, South Royalton Legal Clinic