FEATUREDARTICLE he ties that bind Legal Writing Director Brenda Gibson and Law Library Director Nichelle “Nikki” Perry are deep. They go back to their days as students at NCCU School of Law some…well that’s not relevant. Nikki was two years ahead of Brenda, but they knew each other through mutual acquaintances. They were friendly, if not friends. After graduating, Nikki clerked for the late Judge Clifton E. Johnson at the North Carolina Court of Appeals before coming back to NCCU School of Law to serve as the law school’s Academic Support Specialist. She served in that capacity for some years before becoming a librarian and moving to the Law Library, where she now serves as Director.
Brenda followed a similar path—she graduated from NCCU, went to work for Judge Johnson after Nikki, and ended up back at the law school as its first Legal Writing Director. When Brenda arrived back at NCCU, Nikki was a Reference Librarian and willing (at least for a brief time) to assist her in any way that she could. And so, she taught legal writing with Brenda for a year while she got familiar with her new job. Nikki has been described as a lifesaver that year because Brenda was very unfamiliar with the dictates of the legal academy. While Brenda knew a lot about legal writing, she knew little about drafting assignments and dealing with first-year law students. This time bonded us as colleagues and friends. It didn’t hurt that we are both proud members of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc. and the mothers of two boys! 30 | NCCU SCHOOL OF LAW • OF COUNSEL MAGAZINE
ties that
BIND and
HISTORY t h at i s d e e p After that year, Nikki informed Brenda that she would not teach legal writing anymore. But that did not mean that the partnership would end, because Legal Writing and Legal Research are taught together in the first-year curriculum at NCCU School of Law. Accordingly, we worked together for several years to ensure that research instruction covered the fundamentals while being innovative. Brenda specifically remembers the time that they pushed to have legal research included in the first and second semester of the first-year legal writing curriculum, thinking that such a move would increase the level of retention of the material if research materials were introduced in spaced segments to somewhat track legal writing instruction. It was an “epic failure.” Nikki and Brenda were so sure that it would work and be better for the students, but it was not! In fact, the students didn’t seem to remember ANYTHING taught during the first semester legal writing course. It was like the material had never been introduced! Nikki and Brenda went back to the drawing board on that one. Since then, however, they have had more successes than failures working together and developing their units. As Director of the Legal Writing Program, Brenda has moved the once fully adjunct-based program to a hybrid model. As the legal writing academy moves to a full-time legal writing professional model, NCCU’s Legal Writing Program has been moving along that same continuum. In addition to former Dean and Professor Mary Wright, the program currently has two very dedicated full-time legal writing professors, Professors Shelly DeAdder (c/o ‘08) and Lisa Kamarchik (c/o ‘11). They all work alongside Brenda and several very experienced
