HIGH PROFILE: Terri Beiner, Bowen law school’s first full-time female dean, remains passionate about learning

Beiner became a lawyer because she loved being a student

“I didn’t know anything about being a lawyer. I had no lawyers in my family, so I was really kind of flying blind. I just knew that I really had an innate sense of caring about justice, of caring about fairness, and it seemed to me that lawyers were in the best position to work on things.” -Terri Beiner
(Arkansas Democrat-Gazette/John Sykes Jr.)
“I didn’t know anything about being a lawyer. I had no lawyers in my family, so I was really kind of flying blind. I just knew that I really had an innate sense of caring about justice, of caring about fairness, and it seemed to me that lawyers were in the best position to work on things.” -Terri Beiner (Arkansas Democrat-Gazette/John Sykes Jr.)

Terri Beiner knew in fifth grade that she wanted to be a lawyer. "I didn't know anything about being a lawyer. I had no lawyers in my family, so I was really kind of flying blind," she says. "I just knew that I really had an innate sense of caring about justice, of caring about fairness, and it seemed to me that lawyers were in the best position to work on things."

Beiner was the first lawyer in her family. Her father, Ray, was a structural engineer, and her mother, Marylin, was a teacher. Her grandfather was chief of staff at the hospital in Passaic, N.J., where she was born.

She found her path, obviously, and as the first female full-time dean of the University of Arkansas at Little Rock William H. Bowen School of Law, she does what she can to help other young law students find theirs.

"We try to teach students here how to do the same things that I figured out how to do," she says. "There's all kinds of great stuff we're doing here. I think we are one of the most innovative law schools in the country, based on our curriculum, based on our approach to student success and wellness. We're doing a lot of things that are really kind of cutting edge in legal education."

Beiner grew up in New Jersey, with an older brother and sister and a younger brother.

"I'm the middle child," she says. "My next younger sibling is 10 years younger than me, so I have a lot of the features of the baby in the family."

Her mother, she says, was "essentially a 1950s housewife -- she was married in 1956 -- was very much kind of a little bit of a feminist in her own right, although she would probably never say that."

She told Beiner and her sister they could do anything they wanted and that marriage was by no means mandatory, much to her Polish-immigrant-grandmother's chagrin.

Her father often asked the two girls to make tea for him when he got home from work in the evenings, and she often balked at the request.

"I was like, 'And your sons, who are sitting right here, don't have the capability of making you a cup of tea?'" Beiner says. "I was always a why-are-we-doing-it-this-way type of person."

Her father, however, still asks her opinion on things and is willing to reconsider his stance based on her response.

"He really is a lovely man," she says. "He is 92. And to this day, he is willing to hear my perspective."

Beiner double majored in mathematics and rhetoric at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, Va., completing a Bachelor of Arts degree with the highest distinction in 1986.

She started out as an engineering major, and she likes buildings. So she took entry-level architecture courses to see if that was a path she should explore.

"I was willing to look at a bunch of different things," she says.

Her mother urged her to start a career in her chosen field right out of college rather than going to law school.

"I think she's just very pragmatic, and if you can be successful without spending more money on an education, then maybe you should do that," she says. "I was getting decent job interviews. And my senior year of college, and she was like, 'you know, you can get a good job without having to get more schooling.' And I said, 'No, but I think I really do want to be a lawyer. I've been thinking about this since I was a little kid.'"

She went to Northwestern University in Chicago and then clerked for John F. Grady, United States District Judge for the Northern District of Illinois.

"At the time, he was the chief judge for the Northern District of Illinois," Beiner says. "Lovely man, learned a lot from him."

She had not been to San Francisco before she interviewed with the boutique law firm Howard Rice Nemerovski Canady Falk and Rabkin.

"I just thought it was a great city and a great place to start practice. I was fortunate to get a job at a really interesting firm that had a really amazing practice," she says.

GENDER BIAS

As a trial and appellate lawyer, she handled a variety of cases. One case stood out. She told her daughter's boyfriend about it while they were raking leaves recently.

"I got a trial judge overturned. It was, to the best of my knowledge, only the second case in the country at the time, based on the gender bias of the trial judge directed at my client. I did not try the case. I just did the appeal on the case. And unfortunately, as far as the justice system is concerned, the judge had made quite a trial record of sex discrimination against my client during the course of the trial, and we successfully got him overturned by the California Court of Appeals based on gender bias."

The case, Catchpole vs. Brannon, is cited in Gender Bias Guidelines for Judicial Officers, Avoiding the Appearance of Bias, which was produced by the Judicial Council advisery Committee on Access and Fairness and the Orange County Bar Association Gender Equity Committee in August 1996. The text reminds judges to "treat all court staff, litigants, witnesses and attorneys with courtesy and dignity regardless of their sex, race or any other characteristic," and reminds them to "avoid remarks or conduct that reflect stereotypical attitudes about how men and women act."

"I was the lead counsel on the initial brief," Beiner says. "And then I actually moved here and another lawyer picked it up after me. I told her it would make her famous."

Beiner and her then-husband had a young daughter by 1994, and she had decided academics were a better fit for her goals. She got offers from a school in Oklahoma and one from the Bowen School of Law.

"We decided we liked Arkansas better," she says. "We thought Little Rock was a pretty place, and we decided this was a better fit for our lifestyle."

Most of the women in her practice who had children hired people to come in and care for them from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. because of their work schedules.

"Don't get me wrong -- some of those kids went on safaris in Africa for four weeks. Because their parents work so much and had so much wealth, they could afford to do really interesting things with their kids," she says. "I think being more hands-on in a little more of their daily existence was just really important to me."

On a lighter note, she jokes that she was drawn to the law school because she was such a driven student.

"I was very studious," she says. "I'm in school because I love school."

T-SHIRT AND OVERALLS

Lindsey Gustafson, a professor at the law school for about 20 years, says that when she arrived for her interview, Beiner was there wearing a Race for the Cure T-shirt and overalls.

"She was totally comfortable in that and she made me feel totally comfortable," Gustafson says.

"She was just there to kind of show me the school, and she made me feel, you know, comfortable and welcome. She didn't have to do that. She could have tried to intimidate me but that's just absolutely not who she is."

She has seen Beiner juggle numerous responsibilities over the years, always assured and confident.

"She just is very much able to be in the moment and to problem-solve in the moment. I don't know that I've ever seen her panicked. She just seems to always kind of see the long game and the goals there and figure out kind of a calm, measured approach to reach those goals," Gustafson says. "That's really a great perspective when you're trying to juggle family and work and all of her incredible service that she does in the community."

She remembers when Beiner became associate dean.

"That's when she became aware of kind of the breadth of student needs in the law school. She tapped into her natural empathy that she has for people," Gustafson says. "The associate dean gets all the problems of the law school. That kind of real close connection to the needs of the students is unique. It allows us to build a law school that is very student-focused."

Beiner still teaches one of the critical first-year classes -- usually constitutional law or civil procedure. To help students pace themselves and gauge their understanding, she offers more assessment opportunities than other professors might.

"Any kind of assessment, of course, requires that you do extra grading and that you conference more with students, and she's found ways to kind of work this into her class when she doesn't need to, but she knows that it benefits students. She continues to do really above and beyond what would be expected," Gustafson says.

WORKING OUT

There is a gym on the fifth floor of the law school building, for staff and student use.

In addition to the gym, Beiner says, "We have classes every semester, we have yoga, boxing, we have a high-intensity [interval] training, a HIIT class. It varies from semester to semester based on student interest. But we try to emphasize keeping yourself fit and healthy -- you know, don't go for beers, go for 30 minutes of cardio."

She encourages staff members to take yoga or exercise classes during the day when they can.

"Staff are allowed to use it and not dock their time because we haven't been able to get raises in a long time," she says. "It's 'I can't pay you more, but I can give you free gym time.'"

She serves on the board of the Judges and Lawyers Assistant Program, which addresses problems such as stress and burnout, substance abuse, grief and loss, anxiety, depression, anger management and work transitions.

"We know that lawyers have a higher rate of substance abuse and mental health issues, and we're trying to get people into good habits while they're in law school so they will carry those into practice," she says.

There is a student success program that divides first-year students into teams of six, with each team assigned to an upperclassman as a mentor. Teams meet weekly during their first semester of law school, learning the basics of briefing cases, outlining and more.

"There are things like, you have to show up the first day and be prepared for class, ready to go. I didn't know that," Beiner says. "So there are things I didn't know that we will prepare them for."

That also includes teaching students about metacognition and intentional learning, the best practices for learning materials, she says.

"The beginning things you learn in the first year and a half of law school are things that are on the bar exam, so we really want them to know them cold," she says. "We teach them techniques and how to learn for long-term memory purposes. It's a very intentional curriculum and it also builds on itself."

REAL-WORLD EXPERIENCE

After the first year, the emphasis moves to practice-oriented skills -- simulations of what lawyers do -- and in the third year, students represent clients in legal clinics.

"With the help of a clinical professor, they have real client experiences in a variety of clinics, or through externships, in which case they are placed in a field placement at a nonprofit or government office where they shadow a lawyer and help that lawyer do their job," Beiner says. "We want to make sure everybody has a real, live lawyer/live client experience before they graduate."

The Veterans Legal Services Clinic was added last fall, a $1.5 million project funded by Gov. Asa Hutchinson and Attorney General Leslie Rutledge, and will help represent veterans in the Veterans Affairs disability appeals process and the process for reconsideration of discharge status. The money came from the Attorney General's office and the state's rainy day fund.

The veterans clinic is the seventh in the law school's offerings. There are also litigation, consumer protection, business innovations, tax, mediation and Delta clinics.

"We have an access to justice mission," Beiner says. "Arkansas has the fewest number of lawyers per capita of any state -- we compete with West Virginia for that distinction," Beiner says. "There [is] a lot of access to justice problems. There have been people in the Delta waiting to get divorced for 30 years, and they can't find lawyers. And the students go represent those clients and get them divorced. The students get that real firsthand experience of the significance of being willing to do free cases for people who really need help. We hope to build that as part of their culture."

Jacob Wickliffe, a third-year law student, says Beiner creates an environment of inspiration. He has gotten to know her as a professor and as his adviser over the last few years. She spent countless hours helping him edit his law review note.

"She is there to reinforce you and to make you feel like what you're doing is worthy and that you're bettering yourself and bettering the legal community in everything that you do," Wickliffe says.

Beiner's children -- Erin is finishing her Ph.D. at the University of Texas at Austin, Ryan is a business consultant in Washington and Daniel is a freshman at the University of Oklahoma at Norman -- are scattered across the country. But when they all come home, they often enjoy Beiner's bolognese (she isn't Italian but she learned a lot about Italian food growing up in New Jersey) and play trivia.

When they have more time together, they enjoy road trips to the beach.

Julie Chavis, who works in the Arkansas Attorney General's office, has been Beiner's friend for 10 years.

"We walk together with a group of friends every Saturday morning, and then we have breakfast," Chavis says. "It's just kind of a time for all of us to get together. It's a very diverse group, and we just get together and hash out the week and laugh and decompress and get a little exercise."

Their conversation often turns to what's happening at the law school.

"I was a law student at Bowen before Terri went to work there. And when I hear her talk about all of the supportive services that she's a part of that are offered to students these days, it really lets me know that she has a heart for the students and that she wants everyone to have an opportunity to succeed -- and not just succeed, but excel.

"Also, there are parts of law school that are just sheer drudgery. I think that she and her administration and staff go out of their way to provide different services and different events that sort of help alleviate all the stresses that are related to law school," Chavis says. "I'm really impressed with the different programs that they have going there."

SELF PORTRAIT

Terri Beiner

• DATE, PLACE OF BIRTH: Jan. 2, 1964, Passaic, N.J. (in the hospital where my grandfather was the chief of staff)

• MY FAVORITE TIME OF DAY: Mornings. I wake up happy. The first thing I do is throw on some workout clothes and grab a cup of coffee, and I go walk my dog.

• I WISH I COULD: Speak a foreign language. I hate that I can't speak another language other than English.

• I LOVE TO EAT: Pizza. I'm a girl from Jersey, man. There was pizza everywhere. I love New York-style pizza -- pepperoni mushroom is my favorite.

• MY MOST PRECIOUS CHILDHOOD MEMORY: Sitting around my paternal grandmother's table on the holidays -- my grandparents were immigrants from Poland -- with all my cousins and my aunts and uncles.

• FIVE PEOPLE I WOULD INVITE TO A ROUNDTABLE DISCUSSION ON CURRENT EVENTS: Paul Krugman, Barack Obama, Bobby Kennedy, Gloria Steinem and Barbara Jordan.

• A BOOK I RECENTLY READ AND LIKED: The Price of Inequality by Joseph E. Stiglitz

• SOMETHING FEW PEOPLE KNOW ABOUT ME: I love the Jonas Brothers, Nick Jonas in particular.

• I THINK EVERYONE SHOULD: Know basic civics. Every American should understand how our government works.

• AN EXPRESSION I USE A LOT: "It is what it is."

• MY FAVORITE PLACE ON EARTH: The beach -- any beach.

• ONE WORD TO SUM ME UP: Confident

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“I think we are one of the most innovative law schools in the country, based on our curriculum, based on our approach to student success and wellness. We’re doing a lot of things that are really kind of cutting edge in legal education.” -Terri Beiner (Arkansas Democrat-Gazette/John Sykes Jr.)

High Profile on 01/19/2020

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