Friedman Fellow Elenore Wade Receives Appointment at Rutgers Law School


January 25, 2022

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GW Law alum and Friedman Fellow Elenore Wade, JD '18, has been appointed as a tenure-track associate professor of law at Rutgers Law School. Professor Wade is completing her two-year Friedman Fellowship in the GW Clinics, where she has been teaching with Professor Jessica Steinberg in the Prisoner and Reentry Clinic

She will be teaching criminal law, health law, and legal research and writing. “Rutgers Law is the perfect fit for my teaching and scholarship goals,” said Professor Wade. 

“Rutgers is a public university accessible to students from a wide array of backgrounds, including those not traditionally well-represented in law school and the legal profession, and the School of Law provides a host of supports for new faculty members,” said Professor Wade. 

“And, as the child of a proud UAW member, I look forward to joining a unionized faculty.” 

As a first-generation college graduate, Professor Wade feels excited about working with first-generation students. “At Rutgers, I will teach a larger-than-average proportion of first-generation students, and my experience here at GW has helped me refine my teaching and teaching philosophy in a way that I hope will be effective for those and all other students, she said. 

Although she entered GW Law with the intention of pursuing a career as a public defender, her legal interests evolved during the course of her studies. “I learned about the impact of civil legal services and benefited from Professor Steinberg’s expertise and mentorship in that area as I chose a career path,” she said. 

She enjoyed experiences such as serving as an articles editor on the Law Review. Through Field Placement, she was able to explore many different types of practice, including spending her 1L summer interning at a public defender office in Virginia and working on impact litigation at the NAACP Legal Defense Fund office in the District. 

Her experiences as a Friedman Fellow served to prepare her for the next career challenge. “The best part of this experience has been helping students learn to translate their great ideas and passion onto the page in a way that’s effective and dignifies their incarcerated clients,” said Professor Wade. 

She looks forward to carrying the skills she fostered at GW Law into the classroom at Rutgers Law, and thanks all of the GW Law faculty who have supported her throughout her time as a fellow. 

“Professor Wade has been an enormous asset to the clinical program over the two-years both in her role in the Prisoner and Reentry Clinic and on the faculty of the Social Justice and Racial Equity Reading Group that she helped design,” said Professor Laurie S. Kohn, Associate Dean of the Jacob Burns Community Legal Clinics, and Director of the Family Justice Litigation Clinic and Civil Access to Justice Clinic. 

“Rutgers Law is so fortunate to gain Professor Wade, who will no doubt bring her passion, innovation, and insight to the classroom and to the community,” said Professor Kohn.

Professor Wade joins Friedman Fellows who have moved on from their fellowship into full-time teaching positions, both doctrinal and clinical, including, Professor Andrew Budzinski, Professor Etienne Toussaint, Professor Jacqueline Lainez-Flanagan, Professor Annie Smith, Professor Katy Ramsey, Professor Mira Edmonds, Professor Claire Donohue, Professor Shana Tabak, and Professor Amanda Spratley. 

Former fellow Juliana Siconolfi is the Director of Experiential Education at Georgetown Law Center, and Professor Caroline Rogus now teaches Family Law at GW Law and co-teaches the new Civil Access to Justice Clinic. 

“Kudos go to the clinical faculty these fellows worked with as well as former Clinic Dean Phyllis Goldfarb who launched the Friedman Fellow Program and mentored so many of the fellows while they were in residence at GW,” said Professor Kohn.