Assistant Professor Tiffany D. Atkins L’11 will help amplify the voices of underrepresented groups as the first Leadership Experience and Advancement Pipeline (LEAP) Board Member on the LWI Board of Directors.
An Elon Law faculty member has been named to an inaugural leadership position for one of the nation’s largest professional associations committed to the advancement of legal writing and communication.
Assistant Professor Tiffany D. Atkins L’11 was named the first Leadership Experience and Advancement Pipeline (LEAP) Board Member for the Legal Writing Institute’s Board of Directors.
Founded in 1985, the Legal Writing Institute is a nonprofit organization “dedicated to improving legal communication by supporting the development of teaching and scholarly resources and establishing forums to discuss the study, teaching, and practice of professional legal writing.”
The Legal Writing Institute developed the LEAP program as a way to bring new voices onto its board and to provide the LEAP board member a springboard into other leadership positions.
Atkins’s two-year term begins at the institute’s next biennial meeting. Describing herself as an amplifier of minority voices, she said she looks forward to bringing new perspectives, ideas, and creative solutions to a highly regarded organization.
“When the position was posted, I thought it was a wonderful opportunity for a fairly new professor to get involved in the work of the Legal Writing Institute,” Atkins said. “I also thought it was an opportunity for me to continue the work of amplification. As an educator who intentionally elevates the experience of minorities in large group settings, this affords me the opportunity to help the Board shape its priorities and policies for the next two years.
“In the current social, political, and educational climate, these decisions are critical, and I am honored to help shape them in some way.”
Atkins said she also anticipates using her new role to raise awareness in the legal writing community of the many ways Elon Law’s Legal Method & Communication Program supports and trains students to be persuasive writers and advocates in the profession.
This isn’t the first time Atkins caught the eye of the Legal Writing Institute. She wrote her first article on amplification in LWI’s Second Draft journal in 2018, and one year later, she was among four recipients of a Legal Writing Scholarship Grant, a collaborative program of the Association of Legal Writing Directors, the LWI, and LexisNexis.
Atkins graduated from Elon Law in the Class of 2011 where she was the recipient of the David Gergen Award for Leadership and Professionalism. She later served her law school alma mater as a Legal Method & Communication Fellow from 2016-2018. Atkins taught in Wake Law’s Legal Analysis, Writing and Research program from 2018-19 before rejoining the Elon Law faculty.
Prior to her entry into legal education, Atkins worked for several years in Greensboro at Legal Aid of North Carolina. She is a graduate of UNC Greensboro’s Political Science and African-American Studies programs.