Levin College of Law
Welcome to UF LAW

Judy Clausen

Senior Lecturer and Senior Legal Skills Professor
Director, Veterans and Servicemembers Legal Clinic

CV

SSRN

Phone:
(352) 273-0631

Expertise

Appellate Advocacy  • Commercial Litigation  • Contracts  • Legal Writing  • Veterans Law  • 

About

Professor Judy Clausen serves as Legal Skills Professor and Supervising Attorney for the Veterans and Servicemembers Legal Clinic. In the clinic, she teaches and supervises students who assist in representing Veterans in appeals to the U.S. Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims and discharge upgrades. Students also deliver Know Your Rights presentations to Veterans, prepare legal memoranda for judge advocates, draft wills and advance directives for Veterans, and assist with claims and appeals within the Department of Veterans Affairs, and landlord-tenant, guardianship, and consumer law matters.

Prior to teaching at UF Law, Professor Clausen was a professor at Florida Coastal School of Law where she taught Regulation of the Healthcare Industry (Advanced Legal Writing), Lawyering Process for Litigation Practice (Persuasive Writing, Oral Advocacy, and Mediation and Negotiation Skills), Pre-trial Drafting, Contracts I & II, Sales, Securities Regulation (Distance Education), Domestic Violence (Advanced Legal Writing), Criminal Law, and Criminal Procedure.

Prior to becoming a law professor, she served as Of Counsel for Murphy & Anderson, P.A. where she litigated in state and federal court, representing corporate and individual plaintiffs and defendants in complex commercial cases. Prior to becoming a commercial litigator, she served as Associate General Counsel for the University of North Florida where she drafted and promulgated Florida Administrative Code rules, negotiated and drafted business and educational contracts, and advised on First Amendment and privacy law issues.

Before she worked as a university lawyer, she served as Senior Attorney for the Government Accountability Office, Office of General Counsel. She began her legal career active duty Army in the Pentagon where she served in the Honors Program as an Assistant to the General Counsel of the Department of the Army. In this position, she prepared Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrant applications and Freedom of Information Act and Privacy Act appeal opinions, and advised the General Counsel and Office of the Secretary of the Army concerning intelligence operations, counterintelligence and sensitive criminal investigations, special operations, special access program oversight, classification of information, personnel security, information operations, and Title 10 organizational issues. In law school, she served as a judicial intern for Judge Susan Crawford of the U. S. Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces.

 

Education

J.D., University of Florida Levin College of Law
B.A., Georgetown University

Teaching and Scholarship

Appellate Advocacy, Contracts, Legal Writing, Veterans and Service Members Legal Clinic

Courses

  • Veterans and Servicemembers Legal Clinic

Publications

  • Top 10 Discharge Upgrade Practice Tips, 7 Stetson J. Adv. & L. (forthcoming 2022) (with Colleen Miller and Danica Gonsalves).
  • Regulate Physician Restrictive Covenants to Improve Healthcare, 108 Ky. L. J. 111 (2019). [SSRN]
  • An Americans with Disabilities Act Critique of Advance Directive Override Provisions, 71 N.Y.U. Ann. Sur. Am. L. 25 (2015). [SSRN]
  • Bring Ulysses to Florida: Proposed Legislative Relief for Mental Health Patients, 16 Marq. Elder’s Advisor 1 (2014). [SSRN]
  • Making the Case for a Model Mental Health Advance Directive Statute, 14 Yale J. Health Pol., L., & Ethics 1 (2014) (peer-reviewed journal). [SSRN]
  • “Your Honor, May I Have That in Writing?” – A Proposed Response to Violations of the Federal Sentencing Written Reasons Requirement, 42 U. Tol. L. Rev. 705 (2011). [SSRN]
  • Personal Jurisdiction Based on Internet Activities: Oldfield v. Pueblo De Bahia Lora, S.A. – The Eleventh Circuit Finally Discusses Zippo but Leaves Lower Courts Needing More Guidance, 11 Fla. Coastal L. Rev. 53 (2009). [SSRN]
  • Beware – Florida’s Long Arms Can Reach Through Cyberspace and Grab Unsuspecting Professionals: Personal Jurisdiction in Professional Malpractices Cases, 10 Fla. Coastal L. Rev. 505 (2009).
  •  Empower Mental Health Patients to Prevent Crisis, Jacksonville Daily Record, August 2017.

University of Florida Levin College of Law
309 Village Drive
PO Box 117620
Gainesville, FL 32611
(352) 273-0804
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The Florida Constitutional Law Endowment in memory of Justice Ben F. Overton was created by Judge Karen Miller in 2013. This fund supports lectures and presentations by Justices of the Florida Supreme Court at the Fredric G. Levin College of Law.

HISTORY

Justice Overton, who earned his B.S. in 1951 and his Juris Doctor in 1952 from the University of Florida, was the first merit appointment to the Florida Supreme Court. Throughout his career he was active in legal education and served as an Adjunct Professor at the Levin College of Law through December 2012, the month of his death. Although he resided at Oak Hammock at the University of Florida, a continuing care retirement community developed in cooperation with UF, he also considered the Florida Supreme Court “home.” Among the high points of his later years was hosting Justices of the Florida Supreme Court in Gainesville and taking his class to Tallahassee to hear oral arguments at the Florida Supreme Court.
Judge Miller, who earned her B.S. cum laude from New York University in 1974 and her Juris Doctor from New York Law School in 1977, served as Chief Administrative Law Judge of the New York City Department of Consumer Affairs, New York City’s business regulatory agency, before she retired to Oak Hammock at the University of Florida. Having accompanied Justice Overton on his excursions to Tallahassee and joined him in welcoming guests to Oak Hammock at the University of Florida, she created the endowment in memory of Justice Overton to ensure that the Levin College of Law continues to have the funding necessary to continue and enhance the interaction between its students and the Florida Supreme Court.

 

Judge Miller remembered the event that motivated the endowment.

 

Prior to a dinner at the home of Dean Robert Jerry and Lisa Jerry shortly after Justice Overton’s death, Justice Barbara Pariente and I were discussing a suitable memorial. Justice Pariente, who had been Justice Overton’s colleague on the Florida Supreme Court and who understood the importance to him of the interaction between his students and the Court, suggested the outline of what has become the Overton lectures. Dean Jerry, who has since retired, as has Dean Emeritus Jon Mills, who assumed responsibility for implementing the Overton lectures, were very supportive from the beginning. Since Dean Mills’ retirement, Professor Timothy McClendon, who assisted both Justice Overton and Dean Mills teaching Florida Constitutional Law and who co-authored the recent Florida Constitutional Law casebook, has continued the Overton lectures with the support of Interim Dean Merritt McAlister and CGR director, Professor Danaya Wright.

Justice Overton was a devoted jurist, educator, and ethical leader of the Florida legal profession. The Overton Lecture Series brings Florida Supreme Court Justices to the University of Florida, Levin College of Law, and serves to introduce students to the inner workings of the Court. CGR and the students of the College of Law extend our deepest gratitude to Judge Karen Miller for making the Overton Lectures possible in perpetuity.

You can watch an interview for the Florida Historical Society by Mary Adkins, professor emeritus of the UF Levin College of Law, with Justice Overton here.

Justice Overton was also interviewed for the Samuel Proctor Oral History Project and a transcript of his interview is available at the Smathers Library, and here.
Justice Overton sat on the Constitution Revision Commission of 1977-78 that proposed a right to privacy in the Florida Constitution. Although it failed as part of the Constitution Revision Commission recommendations, it passed in 1980 when proposed by the legislature. The bill was co-sponsored by our very own Jon Mills. The privacy provision prevailed by greater than 60%. Justice Overton then wrote a concurrence in a critical reproductive rights case in 1989 affirming that the privacy provision of the Florida Constitution included the right to obtain an abortion. That decision was overruled in Planned Parenthood of SW and Central Florida v. Florida. You can read about the role of Justice Overton, Jon Mills – director emeritus of CGR, and the history of the 1989 case here.