Biography

Professor Liam Skilling was the inaugural Director of the Academic Success Program at Richardson and has served in that role since 2010. From 2010-2022, Professor Skilling also directed the Law School’s Evening Part Time Program. Professor Skilling regularly teaches Advanced Legal Analysis, Education Law, and upper division courses in the Legal Writing program. He has also taught Contracts, Torts, Equitable Remedies, Lawyering Fundamentals, and an interdisciplinary course in Child Welfare. His primary areas of interest and scholarship include law school pedagogy and curriculum reform, education law and policy, and civic education. He is the recipient of the Dean’s Medal for Outstanding Service to the Law School (2008) and the Soifer Award for Social Justice (2014).

Professor Skilling spearheads several of the Law School’s civic education efforts in the community. In 2015, he founded the Richardson Law & Justice Program, a summer immersion program for high school students interested in law, justice, and law related careers. He has served as the principal investigator on the First Amendment Project and the faculty advisor for Students for Public Outreach and Civic Education. Director Skilling also co-chairs the Hawaiʻi State Bar Association’s Civic Education Committee, serves on the Board of Directors of the Hawaiʻi Media Council, and he is the two-time former Chair of the Association of American Law Schools’ Section on Part-Time Division Programs.

After graduating from Richardson in 2007, Professor Skilling was selected as a Family Court Improvement Project Fellow. Professor Skilling subsequently clerked for Magistrate Barry M. Kurren of the United States District Court, District of Hawaiʻi prior to joining the Richardson faculty fulltime. In 2018, he completed his Ph.D. in Educational Administration at University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, College of Education. Before entering law school, he spent several years teaching in k-12 education in New York, California, and Hawaiʻi. He is proud to have served as a Teach For America corps member in East Palo Alto, California from 1996-1998.

Professor Skilling is originally from Hell’s Kitchen, New York. Outside of the Law School, he is devoted to music, dance, and poetry. He is a former KTUH DJ and was the 2012 Hawaiʻi Poetry Slam Grand Slam Champion. Most importantly, he is the very proud father of three amazing, talented children.

Publications

• Skilling, L., Educational Outcomes and Obstacles for Children and Youth in Foster Care in Hawaiʻi (2018). ScholarSpace
• Kimura, F., Shek, D., Shoultz, J., Skilling, L., Soifer, A., Tanabe, C., & Tochiki, L. (2011). Clinics-in-common: Creating uncommon professionals. Psychological Services, 8(4), 356–362. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0025974 | ScholarSpace

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