JoNel Newman

CORAL GABLES, Fla. – UM School of Law’s JoNel Newman, professor of clinical education and director of the Health Rights Clinic, has been selected as the 2015 recipient of the AALS Section on Clinical Legal Education’s M. Shanara Gilbert Award.

Newman will be presented the award on May 5 at the Conference on Clinical Legal Education in Rancho Mirage, California.

The M. Shanara Gilbert Award honors an “emerging clinician” with ten or fewer years of experience who has:
– a commitment to teaching and achieving social justice, particularly in the areas of race and the criminal justice system
– a passion for providing legal services and access to justice to individuals and groups most in need
– service to the cause of clinical legal education or to the AALS Section on Clinical Legal Education
– an interest in international clinical legal education
– an interest in the beauty of nature (desirable, but not required)

Newman is committed to social justice, creative pedagogical approaches, and to serving marginalized communities in the Miami area and beyond, and her initiatives have focused on the Haitian diaspora, veterans’ rights, pediatric care, and more.

One nominator wrote of the significant contributions of the Health Rights Clinic, noting that students “have served over two thousand vulnerable health-impaired clients …. and have secured over $2 million in entitlements and public benefits for their clients.”

Newman’s students wrote that she “embodies the qualities sought in the recipient of the Shanara Gilbert Award” and her colleagues at Miami Law noted her “extraordinary efforts and contributions to clinical legal education, service, and justice.”