UIC Law Welcomes Three New Ivy League Faculty for Fall 2023
UIC Law is proud to introduce three new Ivy League professors to our distinguished faculty for the 2023-24 academic year: Professor Yolanda King, Professor Jenna Prochaska, and Professor Conley Wouters. Each professor displayed excellent characteristics, accolades, and capabilities that we know will not only enrich the education of our students, but also positively impact the city we serve. We are thankful for the opportunity to welcome them to our community of thought-seekers and change-makers and look forward to seeing all that they will contribute!
Professor Yolanda King Heading link
Professor King most recently served as Associate Dean for Academic Affairs and Associate Professor of Law at Northern Illinois University where she also taught property, intellectual property law related courses and entertainment law.
Before joining the NIU faculty, Professor King practiced intellectual property law at Husch Blackwell Sanders Welsh & Katz and Brinks Hofer Gilson & Lione in Chicago, Illinois, where she engaged in domestic and international copyright and trademark prosecution, handled licensing issues and represented clients in domain name matters. In addition, she was an attorney in the City of Chicago Department of Law. Professor King is currently of counsel at Advitam IP, an intellectual property law firm in Chicago.
Professor King is a member of the Intellectual Property Law Association of Chicago, International Trademark Association, and Society for American Law Teachers. She is a recipient of the 2009 Corporate Woman of Achievement Award by the National Association of Women Business Owners and the 2012 Outstanding Professor of the Year Award by the NIU College of Law Alumni Council. She is also a 2012 inductee of the Pike High School Alumni Hall of Fame.
Professor King is a 2002 graduate of Harvard Law School, where she was a member of the Committee on Sports and Entertainment Law and Orientation Co-Chair of the Black Law Students Association. She is a member of the Illinois Bar. In 1999, she received her B.A. in Journalism, with Highest Distinction, from Indiana University-Purdue University at Indianapolis, where she was a Chancellor’s scholar, Central Newspapers Foundation scholar, Minority Achievement scholar and an Outstanding Woman Student Leader Award recipient.
Professor Jenna Prochaska Heading link
Jenna Prochaska joins the University of Illinois Chicago School of Law faculty as an Assistant Professor and will teach first-year Property. Professor Prochaska’s research focuses on issues related to fair housing and access to justice, and she serves on the Association of American Law Schools Section on Poverty Law. Prochaska received a Bachelor’s Degree in Urban and Regional Planning from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign in 2010; a law degree from Harvard Law School in 2014; and a Masters of Social Work from Loyola University Chicago in 2023.
Prior to joining the faculty at UIC Law, Professor Prochaska was a Clinical Teaching Fellow with Loyola University Chicago’s Health Justice Project clinic, where she supervised law students, medical students, and social work students representing low-income clients in a medical-legal partnership. She also taught interdisciplinary seminar courses focused on lawyering skills and a range of issues at the intersection of health, housing, and poverty law.
Professor Prochaska has a broad range of public interest legal experience in Chicago. At Legal Aid Chicago, she represented low-income Chicagoans in housing and consumer matters. At the ACLU of Illinois, she worked to protect and expand access to reproductive health care through litigation, legislative and regulatory advocacy, and community education. At the Shriver Center on Poverty Law, she engaged in focused advocacy to reform policies that harm low-income tenants. While at the Shriver Center, Prochaska helped to develop cutting edge fair housing litigation and legislation, collaborating with movement partners and lawmakers, leading to the enactment of a law protecting domestic violence survivors and individuals with disabilities from being evicted based on calls for emergency assistance. Professor Prochaska has drawn on her practice experience to inform her teaching and research. Her article, Breaking Free from “Crime-Free”: State-Level Responses to Harmful Housing Ordinances, 27 Lewis & Clark L. Rev. 259 (2023), was recently published in the Lewis & Clark Law Review.
Professor Conley Wouters Heading link
Conley Wouters is an Assistant Professor, teaching Lawyering Skills I, Contracts I, and other courses. Professor Wouters received a B.A. in English from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, an M.A. and Ph.D. in English from Brandeis University, and a J.D. from Cornell Law School. Previously, he taught legal writing at Suffolk University Law School and the University of Detroit Mercy School of Law. As a lecturer in the English department at Brandeis University, he taught courses in composition and literature. Before moving to legal academia, he practiced commercial litigation in Los Angeles and Chicago. His current research interests include legal storytelling and animal law. His work has been published or is forthcoming in Studies in the Novel, Perspectives: Teaching Legal Research and Writing, and the Northeastern University Law Review. He maintains an active pro bono practice with a focus on animal law.