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September 2015

Alabama State Bar Installs Lee Copeland As 140th President

The Alabama State Bar recently installed Montgomery attorney Lee H. Copeland (’82) as its 140th president, while J. Cole Portis (’90) was installed as the bar’s president-elect. He will serve one year before assuming the presidency in 2016.

UA-ANU Summer School Program Celebrates Its 15th Year

Ten UA law students have just returned from studying at the Australian National University College of Law. The group spent a month at the ANU, where they took a Survey of Australian Law taught by the ANU faculty and Comparative Race Law, which was team-taught by Anne Macduff of the ANU faculty and UA law professor Bryan Fair. The program was directed again by professor Bill Andreen who started the program 15 years ago.

Liz Huntley Writes Memoir

Liz Huntley (’97) has released “More Than a Bird,” an autobiography that chronicles the inspirational story of an Alabama woman who overcame tremendous adversity during her childhood to become a successful attorney and motivational speaker.

Events

The University of Alabama School of Law is pleased to announce the Rhetorical Process and Legal Judgments Symposium, co-sponsored by the Alabama Law Review. The symposium is scheduled for 8:30 a.m.-5 p.m. Friday, September 18 in the Judge Seybourn H. Lynne Lecture Hall (A255).

Kenneth Feinberg, one of the nation’s leading experts in mediation and alternative dispute resolution, will lecture on “Unconventional Responses to Unique Catastrophes: Tailoring the Law to Meet the Challenges” at noon Sept. 29 at the law school.

Hiring?

On Campus Interviews Registration is now open for Fall 2015 On-Campus Interviews. The Career Services Office helps employers find 2Ls for summer positions and 3Ls and alumni for post-graduation employment. Please contact the Assistant Dean for Career Services, Lezlie A. Griffin (lgriffin@law.ua.edu), for more information on recruitment opportunities. The CSO arranges on-campus and video-conference interviews, collects resumes and posts positions on its electronic job board. All CSO services are free of charge.

CLE Alabama

Alumni are invited to participate in training opportunities throughout the state.

September 18 Rhetorical Process and Legal Judgments Tuscaloosa

September 25 The Bootcamp for Litigating an Automobile Accident Case Tuscaloosa

Class Notes

  • Jenna Bedsole (’97) has produced “Stand Up, Speak Out,” a feature-length film highlighting Nina Miglionico (’36).
  • Bruce Ely (’77) was featured in 2015 edition of “Keatinge and Conaway on Choice of Business Entity: Selecting Form and Structure for a Closely-Held Business.”
  • Michael Goodrich (’97) has joined MotionMobs board of directors.
  • Angela Holt (’02) has been named to Benchmark Litigation Top 250 Women in Litigation.
  • David Kimberley (’85) has been appointed to the Alabama Judicial Inquiry Commission for a four-year term.
  • Jill Phillips (’99) has been appointed a Mobile County District Judge.
  • Judge Jimmy Pool (’74) was elected president of the Alabama District Judges Association.
  • H. Jerome Thompson (’84) was elected to the Lions Clubs International board of directors.

Send Class Notes to Alumni News.

Gifts

  • Alan Irwin Franco contributed $5,000 to the Abraham Franco Fund. The Franco Fund supports student scholarships.
  • The University of Alabama Chapter of the Order of the Coif donated $8,000 to the Order of the Coif Endowed Scholarship, bringing the scholarship fund to endowment level.
  • Thomas J. Scott Jr. contributed $6,000 to the library fund created in his late mother’s honor, the Judge Irene Feagin Scott (’36) Tax Library Collection Fund.

Faculty Notes

PROFESSOR RICHARD DELGADO spent a month at a writers colony on the Olympic Peninsula, where he and

PROFESSOR JEAN STEFANCIC won competitive residencies. There, they wrote a foreword for a book on resegregation in the public schools, an article on policing and imprisonment, which was accepted by Georgetown Law Journal, and started work on two others. They also began work on new editions of “Critical Race Theory: An Introduction” (NYU Press) and “Jurisprudence: Classical and Contemporary, From Natural Law to Postmodernism” (West Law Group), which will feature Stanley Fish as a new co-author. An online journal listed Delgado as one of the 30 most influential constitutional law professors in the United States. He and three others contributed an amicus brief in a July 2015 Ninth Circuit decision (Arce v. Huppenthal) affirming the right of Mexican American schoolchildren in Tucson, AZ, to study their own history and culture. Delgado published an article in Pittsburgh Law Review on law’s violence and another in Inequality and the Law (U. Minnesota) explaining Barack Obama’s presidency in critical race theory terms. The latter article was part of an issue celebrating Delgado’s scholarship and featuring articles by Frank Michelman and Juan Perea, among others. He completed plans for a new course, Lawyers and Social Change Practicum (fall 2015). A paper he co-authored with Jean Stefancic made a top-ten download list on SSRN.

PROFESSOR SHAHAR DILLBARY served as a keynote speaker at the Second International Law and Economics Conference (ILEC) in Turkey. During the summer, he visited Israel and presented at Netanya College of Law. While in Israel, he also met with the (former) Chief Justice Aharon Barak and faculty members of Tel Aviv University School of Law. Professor Dillbary is on a sabbatical this fall and is working on a number of research projects which include tort law, intellectual property and competition law. He is currently scheduled to present his scholarship on causation in a number of fora, including the Emory School of Law Faculty Workshop, the Canadian and European Law and Economics Associations Annual Conferences, the University of Chicago School of Law Legal Scholarship Workshop and the Southern Economic Association.

PROFESSOR DAN JOYNER gave a paper presentation at the University of Leiden, the Netherlands, at a conference in June on United Nations Sanctions in the 21st Century. His paper was on international legal limits to the application of coercive economic sanctions by states and by the U.N. Security Council.

ASSISTANT DEAN FOR STUDENTS MARY KSOBIECH and

PROFESSOR GRACE LEE gave a presentation on Integrating Academic Support into Doctrinal Courses at the 2015 Association of Academic Support Educators in Chicago, Illinois.

ASSISTANT DEAN FOR PUBLIC INTEREST LAW GLORY MCLAUGHLIN was selected for the Equal Justice Works National Advisory Committee this summer and attended her first meeting in August at the EJW headquarters in Washington, D.C.

PROFESSOR MICHAEL PARDO’s book “Minds, Brains, and Law” (Oxford University Press, with Dennis Patterson) was recently published in paperback. In September, the book will be featured at an “Author meets Critics” panel at the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association. Over the summer, Pardo presented his work on law and neuroscience at conferences at Harvard Law School and the European University Institute. He also presented a paper on evidence theory at the World Congress of the International Association for the Philosophy of Law at Georgetown Law School.His article, “Group Agency and Legal Proof; or, Why the Jury is an ‘It’,” has been published in the William & Mary Law Review.

PROFESSOR PAM PIERSON was awarded the Alabama State Bar President’s Award at the Alabama State Bar annual meeting in July, 2015. Her article, “Economics, EQ and Finance: The Next Frontier in Legal Education,” was accepted for publication in The Journal of Legal Education (forthcoming May, 2016). Her article, “Solo and Small Firm Practices Set to Thrive in the New Legal Marketplace,” was published in the ABA GP Solo Journal, in June, 2015. Professor Pierson’s book, The Business of Being a Lawyer (BBL), published by West Academic in 2014 continues to be adopted at additional law schools. Professor Pierson spoke on “BBL” (The Business of Being a Lawyer) topics at the Alabama State Bar Leadership Forum in April, 2015; the Alabama State Bar Young Lawyer’s Section meeting in May, 2015; the Young Lawyer’s DRI meeting in June, 2015; . the Alabama State Bar annual meeting in July, 2015; and the SEALS Conference in July 2015. In August, Heilman Production Company completed filming a 14-hour digital program on BBL, which will be marketed by Alabama CLE to other law schools and CLE providers beginning January, 2016, with all proceeds going to law student scholarships. The BBL Video Library will be posted in September, 2015. This library consists of more than 100 interviews recorded over the past two years with renowned attorneys and judges. Interviewees address trends in the legal profession and strategies for thriving in the legal profession of the future. The BBL Video Library, BBL Course, BBL Book, BBL CLE, and BBL Production are the first of their kind in legal education.

PROFESSOR FREDRICK VARS launched a website, http://stopgunsuicide.com/. He shares his views regularly at the website.