Biography
Kathryn Boling is the Director of the Legal Writing Program and an Assistant Professor of Law at Seattle University School of Law. She primarily teaches the first-year legal writing course, “Legal Writing, Skills, and Values,” which teaches objective legal writing as well as introducing students to foundational lawyering skills like client interviewing, client counseling, negotiation, and fact development. She is passionate about taking full advantage of the course to expose students to the realities, skills, difficulties, and joys of practicing law in the first year of law school. She has spoken at multiple conferences about her people-centered approach to teaching legal writing, including best practices for teaching reflection and professionalism. She also researches and writes about quotation practices in the law.
Professor Boling studied cultural and social anthropology for her Bachelor of Arts at Stanford University, focusing her studies on globalization and law. She later attended Seattle University School of Law for her J.D., graduating summa cum laude in 2007. She spent her first two years after graduation as a judicial law clerk to Judge David Armstrong on the Washington Court of Appeals. From there, she was hired through the DOJ Honors Program to be a Trial Attorney in the Civil Division of the U.S. Department of Justice in Washington, D.C. At DOJ, Professor Boling litigated complex tort cases around the United States that arose out of environmental contamination. Missing Seattle, however, Professor Boling moved back in 2013 and joined a private civil defense firm where she spent nearly six years litigating insurance coverage and bad faith matters. In 2019, she began teaching legal writing full-time as a visiting professor, and in 2022 she began serving as the program’s Associate Director. In 2024, she joined the career faculty on the tenure track and took on the director role for the Legal Writing Program.
