Professor Gentry began her legal career teaching legal research, writing, and appellate advocacy for two years at California Western School of Law. She then practiced appellate law for four years at a firm in the Bay Area, where she successfully argued Spann v. Irwin Memorial Blood Centers, 34 Cal. App. 4th 644, 40 Cal. Rptr. 2d 360 (1995) in the First District Court of Appeal and performed a variety of other legal work for the firm.

Professor Gentry has taught legal writing courses at Whittier Law School since 1998 and was the first to teach Law and Literature at the law school. In addition to teaching, she served as the Writing Advisor for the law school from 2003 to 2009 and during that time taught regular English Refresher workshops each semester. She has also consistently assisted with moot court coaching and other campus activities. In 2007, she became the Director of the Center for Children’s Rights, which includes supervising the academic program for the Fellows in the program, creating the problem and judging in Whittier Law School’s annual National Juvenile Law Moot Court Competition, planning an annual symposium related to juvenile law, and serving as advisor for the Whittier Journal of Child and Family Advocacy.

In 1997, Professor Gentry was accepted for the panel of Appellate Defenders, Inc., and since then she has been appointed as appellate counsel by the California Court of Appeal in more than two hundred juvenile dependency appeals. In that capacity, in addition to the scores of unpublished cases in which she represented abused and neglected children on appeal, she represented children in the published cases of In re Joy M. (2002), In re T.R. (2005), and In re C.J.W. (2007). She continues to focus on her three main fields of interest: legal writing, children’s advocacy, and law and literature.

Articles

• Creating a Rock-Solid Foundation for IRAC, The Second Draft (publication of the Legal Writing Institute, Aug. 2005)
• The Dirty Dozen—and How to Defeat Them, Orange County Lawyer (Bar Association Magazine, Sept. 2003)
• When at First You Don’t Succeed, Try, Try Again, San Francisco Attorney (Bar Association Magazine, Nov. 1995, addressing guidelines to be considered in determining jury misconduct)
• The Luck of the Lottery, (Oct. 1991) and Lodi v. Lodi and Other Loaded Questions (Sept. 1991), Dicta (magazine of the San Diego Bar Association)

Editorials and Commentaries

• A Lawyer’s Little Black’s Book, Los Angeles Daily Journal (Aug. 2009)
• Occasional Letters to the Editor published in The Los Angeles Times

Invited Lectures and Presentations

• Presented at the Rocky Mountain Legal Writing Conference at the Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law at Arizona State University on March 14,
  2009 (focusing on effective approaches to teaching professional level writing)
• Served on a panel with Justice Kathleen O’Leary and a Senior Staff Attorney of the Court of Appeal at the College of Appellate Advocacy on the
  subject “Presenting Your Case: Briefing and Oral Argument.”

• Courts of Admission: Supreme Court of California, Southern District of California, United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit
• Orange County Bar Association (1997-2009), San Francisco and Alameda County Bar Associations (1992-1996), San Diego County Bar
  Association (1989-1991)
• Served as Chairman, Program Chairman (presenting programs with numerous appellate justices), and Secretary of the Appellate Law Section of
  Orange County Bar Association