Associate Professor Jenna Prochaska has joined the Utah Law faculty and looks forward to furthering her passion for interdisciplinary collaboration, which can be a vital tool for enhancing cross-professional dialogue and increasing access to justice. Her interest in building partnerships between diverse fields of study is a natural extension of her own cross-disciplinary background, building on a bachelor’s degree in urban and regional planning with a law degree and recently completing her master’s degree in social work.
“My master’s degree has cemented my interest in interdisciplinary teaching and inspired one of my current research focuses on the benefits of collaboration between social workers and lawyers,” she explains. “There are many interesting ways that students, faculty, and professionals from different fields can learn from each other and work together, often leading to better outcomes than when their work is siloed.”
Prochaska has spent most of her career in public interest work in the Chicago area. Her practice background spans fair housing advocacy at the Shriver Center, work advancing reproductive and women’s rights at the ACLU of Illinois, and representing low-income clients on housing and consumer law matters at Legal Aid Chicago. She then transitioned to a clinical teaching role at the Health Justice Project, a medical-legal partnership clinic at Loyola University Chicago School of Law.
“At the Health Justice Project, I got to supervise teams of law, medical, and social work students who worked together to advocate for their clients,” Prochaska explains. “It was a rewarding opportunity to supervise these diverse cohorts of students learning to practice in their respective professions while bringing them together to teach interdisciplinary courses at the intersection of health, housing and poverty law.”
Most recently, Prochaska served as an assistant professor at the University of Illinois Chicago School of Law, teaching Property Law and Professional Responsibility. At Utah, she will be teaching Legal Professions, similar to her previous professional responsibility class, this fall. Beginning in the spring, she will also be teaching Local Government Law.
“I’m excited to get to know University of Utah students through my teaching. Legal Professions is a fun class to teach, because it is very practice-oriented. It gives students an opportunity to think through the tricky ethical issues they might encounter in practice and develop confidence in thoughtfully applying the rules to different real-world scenarios,” she says.
Prochaska’s teaching and research are both informed by her experience in public interest law. Her academic research focuses on advancing fair housing and finding solutions to discriminatory housing policies, along with increasing access to justice through interdisciplinary collaborations.
As a fair housing and civil rights advocate, Prochaska witnessed the harm caused by exclusionary local laws called crime-free housing and nuisance property ordinances (CFNOs), which push landlords to exclude tenants based on their contact with the criminal legal system.
“CFNOs can pose a wide range of harms. They impact survivors of domestic violence and people with disabilities, who may need to call the police for help more frequently. Furthermore, CFNOs are often disproportionately enforced in low-income Black and Latinx communities,” she explains. “I wrote a paper arguing that states should use their broad legislative and executive authority to mitigate the civil rights threats posed by CNOs.”
Prochaska’s article was cited by the U.S. Department of Justice in a guidance to state and local governments and by Chicago media highlighting the harmful impact CFNOs can have on tenants.
Noting that she looks forward to continuing her research within the supportive Utah Law community, Prochaska says the goal with her research is to make a measurable difference.
“My hope is always to see my research used in practice. For example, I have presented this research to housing advocates throughout the country and have worked with coalitions who are advancing state-level advocacy efforts that track the recommendations in my article. I plan to continue prioritizing projects that are informed by the experience of advocates and have the potential to make an impact on the ground,” she says.
Utah’s cutting edge approach to access to justice—including the legal regulatory sandbox, which loosens some of the historically strict limitations on legal services provided by non-lawyers—is another factor driving Prochaska’s excitement at joining the Utah Law community.
“In my Legal Professions class, we discuss the relationship between the rules of professional conduct, how legal services are distributed, and who this leaves behind,” she explains. “Utah is a great place to explore these issues through both teaching and research, because there is a lot of access to justice innovation happening here.”
Though she had only visited Utah on a handful of occasions before joining the faculty, Prochaska says her newly adopted home state has already won her over.
“I had a great visit last semester and got to meet so many wonderful students and faculty as part of the interview process for this role. I can tell that Utah Law is a great community of students and faculty working on a wide range of interesting and important projects,” she says. “I also love being part of a large public university. There are so many opportunities to learn from and collaborate with faculty and students in other colleges and departments. I’m just looking forward to plugging in.”
Prochaska and her husband have two young children and a dog and look forward to exploring Utah together.
“We love our community in Chicago and leaving has been bittersweet, but we are so excited as a family to venture out and experience everything that our new community has to offer. We’re looking forward to checking out all of the local parks, coffee shops, and restaurants, and finding new outdoor activities in Salt Lake City, too, like camping and hiking. It will be an adventure,” she says.