Professor Barron is a professor of skills at The Maurice A. Deane School of Law at Hofstra University. She received her Bachelor of Arts degree in Russian from the State University of New York at Albany in 1974 and a Master of Arts degree in Russian from Columbia University in 1977. She received her Juris Doctor from Hofstra Law School in 1984. Prior to attending law school, Professor Barron was a linguist with the United States Department of Defense. She worked on high security level foreign language material.
Professor Barron’s professional legal experience is diverse. Upon graduation from Hofstra in 1984, she became a prosecutor with the New York County Office of the District Attorney. She left the prosecutor’s office in 1987 and was a litigator with firms in the New York City metropolitan area. She specialized in complex commercial and matrimonial litigation. It was at that time that she began her teaching career as a faculty member for the National Institute of Trial Advocacy’s Basic Skills Northeast Regional Program.
Professor Barron returned to Hofstra in 1995 as a professor. She has focused her teaching interests on improving the law school’s skills curriculum. She has created and has taught innovative skills-oriented simulations courses that are grounded in criminal law, commercial law, and transactional law. She is currently the director of Hofstra’s trial techniques program and has been the law school’s director of student advocacy programs. In addition, she serves as director of the National Institute of Trial Advocacy’s (NITA) Basic Skills Northeast Regional Program and has been the NITA program director and faculty member for many skills courses for the public and private sector nationwide. Since March 2020, Professor Barron has developed and taught multiple series of online skills courses for NITA for public and private sector lawyers.
Professor Barron has an extensive international teaching resume. She has developed and taught advocacy skills programs for: the American Bar Association’s Rule of Law Initiative in Tunisia, Turkey, Egypt, the Republic of Georgia, Kazakhstan, Macedonia, Moldova, Tunisia, Russia; the Balkans Regional Rule of Law Network in Macedonia; and the government of Bosnia-Herzogovina. Professor Barron has created advocacy skills courses for her work with ABA ROLI. Most recently, she has developed and taught courses that train lawyers and law professors in interactive teaching methodologies. She also taught in Japan’s first trial advocacy skills programs for members of Japan’s criminal defense bar, as well as in Kosovo, where she taught in trial advocacy programs sponsored by the United States Department of Justice. She also has created and taught a series of skills workshops designed to help legal and non-legal professionals develop their own interactive courses.