Suzanne Valdez

Two generations of law students at the University of Kansas knew Suzanne Valdez as the professor who taught them Professional Responsibility and Prosecutorial Ethics. Kansas lawyers know her as a special prosecutor, a judge pro tem, and the district attorney who led Douglas County from 2021 to 2025. The Kickapoo Tribe in Kansas, one of four federally recognized tribes in the state, knows her as its Attorney General. Nearly three decades of public service, legal education, and courtroom practice have produced all of those descriptions, and a single conviction sits beneath them: the legal system works best when it accounts for the people inside it. Her academic career began in 1999, when she joined the University of Kansas School of Law, and lasted through 2021, more than twenty years as a Clinical Professor of Law. Her teaching load included State Court Practice along with the ethics courses, and she ran workshops in deposition skills and expert witness examination. Administratively she directed the Criminal Prosecution Field Placement Program, the Externship Clinic, and the LL.M. program in Elder Law, while students at the Douglas County Legal Aid Society practiced under her supervision. Recognition followed: the Connell Teaching Professorship in 2019, two Immel Awards for Teaching Excellence, and the presidency of the KU University Senate in 2019 and 2020.