Kara Zech Thelen
Assistant Professor, Thomas M Cooley Law School, USA
Kara Zech Thelen teaches research and writing at Thomas M Cooley Law School in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Before teaching, she clerked for a US federal magistrate judge and practised employment and college and university law at a Detroit, Michigan-based international law firm.
Kara advocates plain language as the core of excellent legal writing. She was recently invited to present on innovative law-school teaching methods with three co-faculty members at the prestigious Institute of Law Teaching and Learning’s annual conference. She is a member of the Legal Writing Institute, Scribes – The American Society of Legal Writers, and Clarity International, an association promoting plain legal language.
Kara has served as a judge for Scribes’ law-review award competition and for the Center for Plain Language’s ClearMark and WonderMark competitions, recognising the best and worst in plain language in the private and public sectors.