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December 2014

Leadership Forum Selects Assistant Dean McLaughlin and Alumni As Members Glory McLaughlin, ’05, Assistant Dean for Public Interest, along with several Law School alumni (See Class Notes) were among the 30 attorneys selected as members of the 2015 Leadership Forum Class 11, the Alabama State Bar recently announced. Participants will be trained in leadership, ethics, and career development and they are required to attend five sessions, including a three-day orientation program. Since 2005, the bar’s Leadership Forum has produced 287 graduates. For more, read “Alabama State Bar Announces 2015 Leadership Forum.”

Criminal Law Moot Court Team Competes in San Diego The Law School congratulates Criminal Law Moot Court team members Brock Brett, Alex Darby, Artem Joukov, and Colin Kruger on their outstanding performance at the National Criminal Procedure Moot Court Competition in San Diego. Brock and Colin advanced to the Quarterfinal Rounds. Alex and Artem advanced to the Final Rounds and wrote the Fourth Place Best Brief. Additionally, Artem was named Best Oralist in the entire competition, a first for an Alabama student in this competition. The Law School also thanks the team’s adviser and alumna, Lara Alvis, for preparing the teams for competition.

Student Farrah Law Alumni Society Elects Officers The student Farrah Law Alumni Society recently elected its officers for the 2014-2015 school year. Julian Bibb (3L) will serve as chair, and Maurice “Joe” Fitzgerald (1L) will serve as vice-chair. Morgan Booker (3L) will be secretary/treasurer. The Law School looks forward to working with them in the coming months to provide new student opportunities for professional development and networking with alumni through Student Farrah-sponsored events and programs.

Events

PUBLIC INTEREST INSTITUTE Dec. 11: The Free Legal Advice Clinic will be held at the Tuscaloosa Public Library from 2:30 – 6 p.m.December 2014: The Law School will again collect toys for low-income families. Look for the big Toys for Tots donation box outside the Law School Cafe.

REUNION Reunion festivities for the milestone classes of 1964, 1965, 1974, 1975, 1984, 1985, 1989, 1990, 1994, 1995, 2004, and 2005 are scheduled for the weekend of the A-Day Game. Additional details will be posted to the Law School website later this fall.

LEGAL EDUCATION Alumni are invited to participate in Alabama training opportunities throughout the state. Dec. 5: The Business of Being a Lawyer Dec. 11: Tort Law Update Dec. 12: Negotiations with Marty Latz Dec. 17: Employment Law Dec. 18: Alabama Update – Birmingham

Career Services Office

Registration is open for Spring 2015 On-Campus Interviews. The Career Services Office is happy to help you locate 1Ls and 2Ls for summer positions or 3Ls and alumni for post-graduation employment. If you are interested in hiring an Alabama law student for summer or permanent employment, please contact Assistant Dean for Career Services, Tom Ksobiech (tksobiech@law.ua.edu). The CSO can arrange an on campus interview, collect resumes, or post a position on its electronic job board. All CSO services are free of charge.

Holiday Study Break

Students Lauren Walker and Zack Walden sing with Prof. Dan Joyner as he plays the guitar during the Holiday Study Break. The Footnotes, an a cappella choir, performed holiday songs to give students a break while they prepared for final exams. The event was sponsored by LexisNexis, the Christian Legal Society, and the Footnotes.

Class Notes

  • J. Mark Adams Jr., ’14, has joined Bradley Arant Boult Cummings LLP’s Birmingham office as a member of the litigation practice group.
  • William Reeves Andrews, ’07, was selected for the Alabama State Bar’s 2015 Leadership Forum Class 11.
  • Leigh A. Bradley, ’81, has been nominated by President Barack Obama as general counsel for the Department of Veterans Affairs.
  • Mark Crosswhite, ’87, has been appointed by Gov. Robert Bentley to serve as chair of his 2015 Inaugural Committee.
  • Howard Hube Dodd Jr., ’02, was selected for the Alabama State Bar’s 2015 Leadership Forum Class 11.
  • Roy Clay Dumas, ’07, was selected for the Alabama State Bar’s 2015 Leadership Forum Class 11.
  • Prim Formby Escalona, ’08, was selected for the Alabama State Bar’s 2015 Leadership Forum Class 11.
  • Brandon Keith Essig, ’02, was selected for the Alabama State Bar’s 2015 Leadership Forum Class 11.
  • Andrew Brent Freeman, ’05, was selected for the Alabama State Bar’s 2015 Leadership Forum Class 11.
  • Timothy Justin Flinn Gallagher, ’07, was selected for the Alabama State Bar’s 2015 Leadership Forum Class 11.
  • J. Jameson Hughston, ’14, has joined Bradley Arant Boult Cummings LLP’s Huntsville office as a member of the financial services litigation and compliance practice group.
  • Amanda L. James, ’13, has joined Bradley Arant Boult Cummings LLP’s Huntsville office as a member of the litigation practice group.
  • John W. Johnson II, ’03, was selected for the Alabama State Bar’s 2015 Leadership Forum Class 11.
  • Cari Kelly, ’11, has been named Legislative Director for U.S. Rep.-elect Gary Palmer.
  • Henry Sprott Long III, ’08, was selected for the Alabama State Bar’s 2015 Leadership Forum Class 11.
  • Thomas Matthew Loper, ’05, was selected for the Alabama State Bar’s 2015 Leadership Forum Class 11.
  • A. Paige Miller, ’14, has joined Bradley Arant Boult Cummings LLP’s Nashville office as a member of the health care practice group.
  • Harold Dean Mooty III, ’08, was selected for the Alabama State Bar’s 2015 Leadership Forum Class 11.
  • Adam Patterson Plant, ’03, was selected for the Alabama State Bar’s 2015 Leadership Forum Class 11.
  • Virginia Broughton Reeves, ’14, has joined Bradley Arant Boult Cummings LLP’s Montgomery office as a member of the litigation practice group.
  • Katherine Green Robertson, ’10, was named Vice President of the Alabama Policy Institute.
  • Kelly Burleson Rushin, ’01, was selected for the Alabama State Bar’s 2015 Leadership Forum Class 11.
  • Emily Ruzic, ’14, has joined Bradley Arant Boult Cummings LLP’s Birmingham’s office as a member of the litigation practice group.
  • Austin K. Smith, ’14, has joined Phelps, Jenkins, Gibson & Fowler, LLP in the areas of Civil Litigation, Employment Litigation, Business and Corporate Law.
  • William David Smith Jr., ’95, has been named Chief of Staff for U.S. Rep.-elect Gary Palmer.
  • Kristofor David Sodergren, ’00, was selected for the Alabama State Bar’s 2015 Leadership Forum Class 11.
  • Jonathan D. Tebbs, ’14, has joined Taft Stettinius & Hollister in Cincinnati as an associate in the firm’s litigation group.
  • Anna Twardy, ’14, has joined Bradley Arant Boult Cummings LLP’s Birmingham office as a member of the trusts and estates practice group.
  • Mickey Jansen Voss, ’06, was selected for the Alabama State Bar’s 2015 Leadership Forum Class 11.
  • Mark S. Williams, ’01, was installed as the the Southern Medical Association’s President for 2014-2015.

Faculty Notes

PROFESSOR BILL BREWBAKER visited Kigali, Rwanda, and made a presentation on Legal Education to prospective college students on Nov. 4. The students are part of the Bridge2Rwanda Scholars Program, which prepares Rwandan students to succeed in elite U.S. and European universities. A recent graduate of the program, Justus Uwayesu, was featured in a recent front-page story in the New York Times.PROFESSOR JIM BRYCE spoke to the Tuscaloosa Estate Planning Council about the Alabama Limited Liability Company Act of 2014.

PROFESSOR MONTRE CARODINE recently conducted an hour-long interview of criminal defense attorney and CNN legal analyst Mark O’Mara at a program sponsored by the Duquesne University School of Law. Mr. O’Mara represented and obtained an acquittal for George Zimmerman, who was charged with second degree murder for the killing of unarmed teen Trayvon Martin. In an extensive one-on-one conversation, Carodine and O’Mara discussed the Zimmerman/Martin case, which is notable for its historical significance and for the international attention that it commanded; Carodine and O’Mara also discussed larger issues of race and criminal justice in America. After her discussion with Mr. O’Mara, Professor Carodine was invited to join Mr. O’Mara and his law firm’s social media expert, Shawn Vincent, to discuss the O’Mara Law Group’s Talking Race Project. Professor Carodine also recently published an invited book review, titled, “Presumed Incompetent Too: A Review of the New Must-Have Manual for Women of Color in the Academy.” In the invited book review, which was published in the Indiana Journal of Law and Social Equality, Professor Carodine provides a review of the acclaimed book, Presumed Incompetent, against the backdrop of her own experiences as a woman of color teaching in the academy for 10 years. Professor Carodine, who has written extensively about foreign judgment recognition, was also recently contacted to be an expert in a transnational civil case involving an attempt to enforce a substantial Canadian money judgment in a U.S. jurisdiction.

PROFESSOR TANYA ASIM COOPER served on a discussion panel at the recent UA event, Shatter the Silence, about relationship violence on campus. She presented her research on dating violence in collegiate Greek life and was quoted in an article on AL.com. Governor and Mrs. Bentley as well as President Judy Bonner participated in the event. Professor Cooper also conducted a domestic violence training session for new UAPD officers.

PROFESSOR RICHARD DELGADO’S forthcoming article, Law’s Violence: Derrick Bell’s Next Article, made three top-ten SSRN download lists. A second article by Delgado, Hate Speech in Cyberspace, co-authored with Jean Stefancic, made a different top-ten SSRN download list. A third, Delgado’s Darkroom: Critical Reflections on Land Titles and Mexican-American Legal Education, made another top-ten SSRN download list. A fourth, Racial Templates, co-authored with Juan Perea, made two additional top-ten lists. And a fifth, The Trayvon Martin Trial–Two Comments and an Observation, made yet another top-ten list. Delgado submitted an article, Why Obama: An Interest-Convergence Explanation for the Nation’s First Black President, for Minnesota’s Law & Inequality: A Journal of Theory and Practice, which plans to publish it as part of a symposium issue devoted to his scholarship.

SUSAN DONOVAN, Director of the Mediation Clinic, was nominated and approved as Member at Large to the Alternate Dispute Resolution Section of the Alabama State Bar.

PROFESSOR HEATHER ELLIOTT published “Does the Supreme Court Ignore Standing Problems to Reach The Merits? Evidence (or Lack Thereof) from the Roberts Court,” 23 William Mary Bill of Rights Journal 189 (2014).

PROFESSOR MIRIT EYAL-COHEN presented a paper titled “Urban Mavericks” at the National Tax Association Annual Conference held in Santa Fe, New Mexico, on Nov. 13.

PROFESSOR JOHN GROSS participated in a United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) and led a video conference with Liberian Public Defenders and Judicial Trainers Nov. 13 and 14. This is part of an ongoing effort to provide the Liberian Public Defense Office with training and technical support. The Liberians reviewed a Public Defense Practice Manual and Training Manual that he is drafting for their office. The manuals will be published in December. Professor Gross spoke at the American Society of Criminology’s Annual Conference in San Francisco on Nov. 21. A portion of the conference was devoted to research on legal services for the indigent. He also gave a presentation titled “Income Eligibility Guidelines for Assigned Counsel: How States Determine Who Is Too Poor To Hire a Lawyer.”

PROFESSOR WILLIAM HENNING is a member of the U.S. State Department’s Advisory Committee on Private International Law and attended the committee’s 2014 annual meeting in Washington, D.C.

PROFESSOR JULIE HILL received the TIAA-CREF Crimson Tide Hometown Hero award at the Alabama vs. Mississippi State football game. The award recognizes service and dedication to the Tuscaloosa Community.

PROFESSOR PAUL HORWITZ published “The Hobby Lobby Moment,” 128 Harvard Law Review 154 (2014). Professor Horwitz spoke in connection with that article at the Supreme Court Issue Forum at Harvard Law School, alongside other faculty authors in that issue: Heather Gerken of Yale, Jamal Greene of Columbia, and John Manning of Harvard. He was also active in writing about Alabama’s recently passed Amendment One which addresses the use of foreign and religious law by Alabama state courts. His op-eds, criticizing the amendment, were published in The Tuscaloosa News, al.com, and The Birmingham News. He also conducted interviews with various other news media.

PROFESSOR RONALD KROTOSZYNSKI, JR. participated in an American Law Institute meeting considering the most recent draft of the Restatement of the Law Data Privacy Principles, held in San Francisco Nov. 6-8. He serves on the Members Consultative Group for this ALI restatement project. Professor Krotoszynski presented “Privacy in Canada: Bringing a Coherent and Purposive Approach to a Notoriously Protean Legal Concept” at a workshop hosted by the law faculty at the Santa Clara University School of Law, in Santa Clara, California, Nov. 10, and he presented “Bringing Meiklejohn to Privacy: On the Essential Complementarity of Privacy and Speech” as part of the Michigan State University College of Law’s Intellectual Property, Information, and Communications Law workshop series, in East Lansing, Michigan, on Nov. 12.

HUGH M. LEE, Director of the Elder Law and the Foreclosure Relief clinics, presented “What Do Lawyers Do? The Tension Between Measurable Concrete Tasks and Necessary But Unmeasurable Skills” at the Southern Clinical Conference in Williamsburg, Virginia, and “Preparing for the Last Six Months” to the National Hospice Month Conference of the Alabama Hospice Association. Mr. Lee also participated in a panel discussion titled “Reverse Mortgages: What They Are, How They Work, and How They Can Impact Your Bankruptcy Case” for the 33rd Annual Bankruptcy Law Update (CLE Alabama) in Birmingham. Finally, the seventh edition of the book that he coauthors with Jo Alison Taylor, Alabama Elder Law, was released in November by West Publishing Company. In December, his last month at UA Law, Mr. Lee will publish the article “Planning for Medicaid Versus VA Benefits: A Brief Introduction to a Long-Term Care Conundrum” in West’s Elder Law Advisor, which he co-authored with Jennifer N. Marshall, Class of ’13.

PROFESSOR MICHAEL PARDO presented “The Role of Evidence Theory in Evidence Reform” at a conference at Northwestern University School of Law on “The Foundations of the Law of Evidence and their Implications for Developing Countries.”

PROFESSOR PAMELA PIERSON conducted a study in October on how lawyers manage stress and helpful strategies for doing so. She updated the study since the law student survey is now closed. Professor Pierson anticipates running this study for lawyers for more than one month in order for it to coincide with the November and December advertisement from Alabama State Bar.

PROFESSOR FRED VARS published an essay analyzing Alabama’s new gun rights amendment. The citation is: “Shooting Blanks: Alabama’s New Gun Rights Amendment” JURIST – Academic Commentary, Nov. 21, 2014, https://www.jurist.org/commentary/2014/11/fredrick-vars-alabama-gun/.