Prof. Sha-Shana N.L. Crichton
Assistant Professor of Lawyering Skills Director, Legal Writing Center
Professor Sha-Shana N.L. Crichton is the co-recipient of the 2024 ALWD Diversity Award. Prof. Crichton is an Assistant Professor of Lawyering Skills and Director of the Legal Writing Center at Howard University School of Law.
The Diversity Award honors individuals who have made significant accomplishments in the area of DEI or has demonstrated a strong commitment to promoting DEI, including efforts to improve the status of historically underrepresented groups. ALWD created this award in furtherance of its continued commitment to contributing to a legal writing discipline that is equitable and inclusive. The meaningful inclusion of diverse voices and experiences is necessary for ALWD to succeed in its mission of improving legal education and the analytic, reasoning, and writing abilities of lawyers.
Several of Prof. Crichton’s colleagues in the legal writing academy wrote separately to nominate her for the award. Despite their writing separate nominations, each nomination highlighted a common theme: Prof. Crichton’s passion for DEI and the empathy that she shows her colleagues and students who need her assistance.
All of Prof. Crichton’s nominators cite her unique position as professor of legal writing and former director of legal writing at Howard Law, one of only six historically black (HBCU) law schools. At Howard Law, Prof. Crichton pours into her students and prepares them to meet the challenges of the legal profession that does not look like many of them. Despite wide-ranging administrative duties and the type of uncompensated extra work loads professors who engage with DEI face, all of Prof. Crichton’s nominators note her untiring willingness to share her knowledge and insights with her colleagues and students. Her nominators left no doubt that Prof. Crichton is a “very special person” who “has brought her experiences from teaching to a diverse population at Howard Law to her work for our legal writing community and the broader legal academy.”
Notably, Prof. Crichton’s scholarship highlights issues of diversity in legal teaching, including “Teaching in the Time of Disruption: A Case for Empathy and Honoring Diversity,”[1] “Incorporating Race into the First-Year Legal Writing Course,”[2] and “Incorporating Social Justice into the 1L Legal Writing Course: A Tool for Empowering Students of Color and of a Historically Marginalized Group and Improving Learning.”[3] She has presented this scholarship at regional and national conferences, and was recognized as one of ALWD’s Distinguished Speakers in 2021. As noted by one of her nominators, Prof. Crichton often takes time to explain to interested colleagues some “best practices” for incorporating DEI and social justice issues into their teaching. More specifically, all nominators highlighted Prof. Crichton’s work with LL.M. students and other non-native English-speaking students at Howard Law, and Prof. Crichton’s assistance with one of her non-native English-speaking students at George Washington Law.
Unsurprisingly, Prof. Crichton is equally engaged with service. She has been active with LWI and ALWD for many years, which includes serving on the ALWD Board and numerous ALWD and LWI committees. Specific to diversity, Prof. Crichton served as both the chair and co-chair of the LWI Diversity and Inclusion Committee (Co-Chair 2018 -2020; Chair 2016-18), during which she focused on challenges in hiring and retaining legal writing faculty of color. Moreover, she is also a member of W.A.R., which supports existing legal writing faculty of color by seeking ways to make them more visible and finding ways to encourage and support them in producing scholarship. Finally, Prof. Crichton also promotes diversity initiatives in the larger practice community. She is currently a Board Member for Giles S. Rich Inn of Courts and is currently a co-chair of its Diversity, Alliance, and Outreach Committee.
[1] 25 Legal Writing: J. Legal Writing Inst. 4 (2021).
[2] The Oxford Handbook of Race and Lw in the United States (Devon Carbado, Khiara Bridges, & Emily M.S. Houh eds. Oxford University Press 2021).
[3]24 Mich. J. Race & Law 251 (2019).
