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The Life and Career of Naomi Harlin Goodno: Assistant Professor of Law at Pepperdine University School of Law, Malibu, CA

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  6. The Life and Career of Naomi Harlin Goodno: Assistant Professor of Law at Pepperdine University School of Law, Malibu, CA

published December 04, 2006

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<<"I felt like it was a profession where it gave you the skills to really make a change or to make a difference," she said. "I was one of those idealistic first-year law students that really thought the skills I would learn would help make a change. And also, I grew up in a really bad neighborhood, and so I saw criminal justice issues firsthand, so to speak."

Since she began practicing law seven years ago, Goodno has gained a broad view of the legal profession, as she has seen it from two very different perspectives: a litigator's and a law professor's. Before joining the faculty at Pepperdine University School of Law in 2003, she worked as an associate for four years at litigation boutique Quinn, Emanuel, Urquhart, Oliver & Hedges in its Los Angeles office. There, she worked on a number of civil and criminal cases, including white-collar crime, bankruptcy, class action, breach of contract, fraud, trademark, criminal embezzlement, and property and employment disputes.


Goodno said that she got a significant amount of courtroom experience at Quinn Emanuel.

"I think for an associate at my level, I spent a lot of time in court," she said. "The last year I was at the firm, they let me run some smaller cases. Obviously, I had a partner over me. But they were all mine, so I could pretty much manage them how I wanted to manage them. That was such a great experience."

Goodno also helped with two trials while at the firm. The first one was a wiretapping case, for which she assisted with trial preparation. The second was a bench trial, in which the firm's client was being sued by his former attorney for breach of contract. The firm countersued for breach of fiduciary duty.

"As the only associate on the case, I worked it up for trial and also drafted the appellate brief," she said. "We won the bench trial, which was appealed to the California Appellate Court; we also won the appeal."

Goodno explained why she joined Quinn Emanuel:

"The reason why I went to that firm was because it's hard to get trial experience or even in-court experience, depositions, or anything like that with your larger firms," she said. "I had a wonderful time at the firm, and I learned so much. All of what I teach I picked up from there."

Goodno said she got into teaching accidentally and originally had no plans to make a career of it. She had planned to work for the U.S. Attorney's Office after leaving Quinn Emanuel but got sidetracked.

"Initially, it was kind of by accident," she said. "I heard about a position open at Pepperdine, and I was thinking of just doing it for a year. And that was the same year I was getting married, and I thought it would be a nice job to have while I was planning my wedding. And then I just loved it. I never thought in my life that I would want to teach law students."

Goodno said two of the main factors in her decision to continue teaching were the students' enthusiasm and the freedom she had to research subjects that interested her.

"[The students] were just so intelligent and energetic, and the first-years, in particular, are so excited about being in law school," she remarked. "And it was exciting to me, so I loved that. And as far as the research side goes, it's just terrific. Whatever I'm interested in I can decide, on my own, to research. And I've just gotten interested in a bunch of human rights issues, and my job allowed me to do it, and I went to Africa over the summer to work with some attorneys in Kenya."

Goodno teaches legal research and writing to first-year law students. She also teaches an academic support class in the spring called "Supplemental Property."

"It is a class designated not really to teach properties but more to help students learn how to outline and prepare for exams," she explained. "So it's usually targeted for students who apply because they think they need the extra help maybe in getting outlines together…those types of things."

Additionally, Goodno started the Academic Success Program at Pepperdine this year. She said the program is designed to help first-year law students make the "transition between college and law school."

"[For] students who come right out of college and go to law school, the first semester is sort of a shock because it's a lot more like a job," she said. "I mean, you really do have to work eight hours a day and go to class. So we try to get them to treat it like a job right off the bat."

She added that she and her colleagues present lectures on how to take tests, and they give students practice exams. They also provide students with tips on how to study for finals.

Goodno said that in the first semester of her legal research and writing class, she teaches objective writing, and in the second semester, she teaches persuasive writing. During the objective writing portion of the course, Goodno gives her students three memos to write.

"They're hypothetical, but they're usually fun," she said. "Like this year, we did a false imprisonment claim, and it was hypothetical. I had a law professor tell students that they couldn't leave the classroom, and we were wondering if they felt [...] that was false imprisonment or not, and so they [had to] write out a memo."

Goodno said that during the persuasive writing portion of her course, she has each student write a motion for summary judgment and then an appellate brief that usually involves a constitutional issue on which the student actually presents an oral argument in front of mock judges.

In addition, Goodno co-coaches Pepperdine's trial advocacy teams. The school sends out three teams every semester to different trial competitions against other schools.

"I've done it for three years, and we managed to win regionals a couple of times and win a couple of other awards," she said. "So that's a lot of fun."

Goodno said that one of the things that she emphasizes in her classes is concise writing.

"There seems to be a real movement to write very simple, straightforward [...] writing, which is hard for first-year law students," she said. "One reason is they're coming out of college usually, so they've actually never been critiqued sentence by sentence, so they tend to write [in a] long, flowery type of language. And they also read these cases in their first semester of law school that are usually really old, and they're written in long sentences, and they're hard to get through. And then, what we're teaching them is to write in plain English. I really wish that when I was in law school, somebody had taught me some tricks on how to just write simple, plain, concise writing because, again, I think more than ever, and even more so when they graduate, it's going to all be about the arguments made on paper [...]. I really think to be a successful attorney, you have to be able to write really well, not to just the judges but also to your clients. Nowadays, so many judges decide things on paper without really entertaining oral arguments."

Goodno also explained what she teaches her students with regard to research to help them achieve better and faster results:

"We try to teach them just to really have a plan and methodically approach it," she said. "And eventually they'll get there, and if they have a plan, we try to emphasize that they'll get there a lot faster than just doing a random search. But I think even more than when I was in law school, you know, because of the Internet, they feel that they can type in one term and get what they need. And they can, but it just takes three times longer and three reams of paper."

Goodno said she often invites her former colleagues from Quinn Emanuel to come down and speak to her students. She said that name partner Eric Emanuel has visited her class every year since she began teaching.

"The students love him!" Goodno exclaimed. "He's very charismatic, and, of course, he's a partner at a huge law firm. They're very excited to hear what he has to say, and he backs me up on everything, which is really nice."

Goodno said that this will be her last year teaching at Pepperdine, as she plans to clerk next year for the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.

"I tell my students how important it is to do your clerkship," she said. "And I feel somewhat of a hypocrite because I never did it myself, and I thought it would be a good opportunity for me."

Although Goodno plans to go back to teaching after she finishes her clerkship, she said it probably won't be at Pepperdine because she and her husband are thinking about moving. She's also not sure if she'll continue to teach legal writing and research, since she'd like to have more time to do her own research.

"Legal research and writing takes a lot of time in the semester to grade papers because you're giving so much feedback," she explained. "And the only way you can really have your students learn is by giving good feedback. I'd like to just spend more time doing some research, so I'm hoping to teach substantive courses, which would allow me time to do research on my own. But certainly, as a law school, I can't speak highly enough about my colleagues at Pepperdine—a really good group of people who really care about their students."

Goodno recently completed an article on cyberstalking, which is scheduled to be published next spring in the Missouri Law Review. And she has another article about California's Three Strikes Law that is scheduled to be published in the Golden Gate University Law Review next spring, as well. Furthermore, she is currently working on an article about how "international law is intercepting with criminal law and human rights issues."

Goodno completed her undergraduate work at Princeton University, graduating with an A.B. in History in 1995. Following graduation, she taught for a year at King's Kids Inner-City High School Academy in Phoenix, AZ. Goodno said the school was for troubled kids who had been involved in gang-related crimes and were expelled from public schools. She had about 32 students in her class, and their ages ranged from 14 to 20. Goodno taught her students history, English, math, and Spanish.

"It was such a great experience for me," she said. "But it was tough—tougher than any law student could ever be."

One of Goodno's high school students went on to college and is now a social worker.

"She was the first in her family to ever graduate high school," Goodno said. "I mean, we lost a couple back to the streets. But if you can see one success story, it's worth it."

After her teaching assignment was up, Goodno began attending UC Berkeley's Boalt Hall School of Law in August of 1996 and graduated in May of 1998. She spent her last year of law school studying at Harvard Law School through the Harvard Law Exchange Program. Goodno was also involved in the Harvard Mediation Program and worked as an advocate in the domestic violence unit of the Cambridge Police Department. She joined Quinn Emanuel in September of 1999.

Goodno had the following advice for recent law school graduates:

"I would just say that they should not feel as if the only track for them is to be in a firm," she said. "You know, certainly it's a great experience to have, and I would encourage every law student after law school to maybe do some kind of work in the private industry or at a firm. But I think they have to keep in mind [that] that certainly does not have to be the end of their career. It can just be a stepping stone to many other things. So I would say, 'Keep your options open,' because I never in my wildest dreams thought I would want to be a law professor or that I would be able to be a law professor, but I'm doing it, and it's gratifying."

Goodno was born in Albuquerque, NM. She was an only child and was raised by her mother.

"She deserves a lot of credit for being a great mother," Goodno said. "She was really a big part of encouraging me to pursue a career in law."

Goodno and her husband, who is an aerospace physicist, just celebrated their third anniversary. They don't have any kids yet, but they have what she calls a "Rottweiler cross-mutt that's 80 pounds of love."
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  6. The Life and Career of Naomi Harlin Goodno: Assistant Professor of Law at Pepperdine University School of Law, Malibu, CA

published December 04, 2006

( 108 votes, average: 4.7 out of 5)
What do you think about this article? Rate it using the stars above and let us know what you think in the comments below.

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