Alan Minuskin joined the law faculty in 1990 following 11 years as a member of the clinical faculty of New England School of Law. Through 2020, he taught, supervised, and, in more recent years, directed the Law School's Civil Litigation Clinic, in which student attorneys advised and represented low-income clients in family law, housing, and public benefits cases. In response to the pandemic in 2020, he converted the clinic to focus exclusively on housing cases, because of the overwhelming need for lawyers to assist tenants facing homelessness through eviction. He has taught an array of litigation skills and ethics courses, some of which he invented, including Introduction to Civil Litigation Practice, Negotiation, Pretrial Litigation, and Introduction to Lawyering and Professional Responsibility. He directed and taught the Law School’s London Externship Program situated at King’s College London five times. He was twice named Boston College Law School's Outstanding Professor of the Year (1999 and 2017).
At BC Law, Professor Minuskin has developed and written elaborate case materials for innovative litigation practice courses. He created his most recent course, a first-year elective called Introduction to Civil Litigation Practice, to give students an early, intensive, interactive exposure to litigation skills development and ethics dilemmas common in litigation practice. Additionally, Minuskin has written, produced, and directed an advocacy ethics training video in collaboration with BC Law and the University of California Hasting College of Law, as well as other materials for use in litigation practice training.
A member of the Massachusetts and federal bars, Minuskin has engaged in litigation training for practicing lawyers and frequently gives housing-rights training presentations to community organizations. He has been active in a variety of professional organizations committed to the expansion and reformation of programs designed to provide wider access to legal services and justice for economically disadvantaged people.
Prior to beginning his career as a clinical legal educator in 1979, Minuskin was a legal services attorney at Central Middlesex Legal Services and, through a small community practice he founded, a co-grantee of federal legal services funding for the provision of free legal services to the poor. From 1977 to 1984, he served as a part time, volunteer staff attorney at the Cambridgeport Problem Center (now De Novo Center for Justice and Healing), where he collaborated with mental health professionals through an interdisciplinary approach to solving legal problems of indigent clients.
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