FACULTY NEWS
Champions of the Classroom Celebrating AUWCL’s Retiring Faculty: A Legacy of Justice, Scholarship and Service
BY BRICE HELMS
This year, AUWCL bids farewell to three faculty members whose careers have left a lasting mark on the school’s students, scholarship and mission. Adeen Postar, Brenda Smith, and Steve Wermiel have each spent years shaping how AUWCL students think, research, and advocate, bringing real-world experience to the classroom that is rarely matched. Together, they represent the best of what this institution stands for.
and spent a decade as deputy director at the Pence Law Library. Her career has also taken her through the Law Library of Congress, Georgetown University Law Center’s Edward Bennett Williams Law Library, and the Washington office of Blank Rome LLP, giving her one of the broadest ranges of experience of experience than anyone in her field.
That breadth has informed Postar’s leadership of the Pence Law Library, building a resource that serves students, faculty, and the broader legal community with rigor and purpose. She teaches advanced legal research and writing, bringing her expertise directly to students as they develop one of the most essential skill sets in legal practice. Under her leadership, the library has also become a forward-looking institution, preparing students to navigate emerging technologies and the evolving landscape of legal research. Her professional leadership extends beyond AUWCL as well: Postar has been an active presence in the American Association of Law Libraries, the Society of Academic Law Library Directors, and the Law Librarians’ Society of the District of Columbia, serving in roles that have shaped the profession nationally.
Adeen Postar
Adeen Postar, Director of the Pence Law Library and Professor of Practice
For law students, the library is oſten where everything clicks. It is where the theory of the classroom meets the practice of research, and where cases are won or lost before anyone sets foot in a courtroom. At AUWCL, that experience has been shaped in no small part by Adeen Postar, director of the Pence Law Library and professor of practice.
Before joining the law school in 2019, Postar served as law library director at the University of Baltimore School of Law
44 THE ADVOCATE FALL 2026
Brenda Smith, Professor of Law Emerita Brenda Smith has devoted her career to advancing justice for those too oſten leſt behind by the legal system. A professor of law at AUWCL and director of the Community Economic Development Law Clinic, Smith also served as senior associate dean for Faculty and Academic Affairs from 2018 to 2020. She has directed The Project on Addressing Prison Rape since 1998, work that shaped federal policy and led to her appointment to the National Prison Rape Elimination Commission by House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi in 2003. Her scholarship and advocacy have consistently centered the voices and legal needs of those who are most vulnerable.
Before joining AUWCL, Smith served as senior counsel for Economic Security at the National Women’s Law Center, where she directed the Women in Prison Project and the Child and
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