THE UNIVERSITY OF RICHMOND SCHOOL OF LAW ALUMNI MAGAZINE IN T H IS ISSUE : Artificial intelligence • Post-conviction law • Empowered legal writing
BROTHER RUTTER, L’94:
Take good care — and have a big heart
AUTUMN 2024
Eye
Photograph by Jamie Betts
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SUPREME NOD OF APPROVAL In Roger Skalbeck’s office, the justices of the Supreme Court always affirm. He began amassing this SCOTUS bobblehead collection when he was in law school. “Every bobblehead incorporates features that reflect cases each judge wrote,” Skalbeck says. “[These] visual clues [help explain] complex concepts.”
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DEAN’S LETTER
HUMAN CONNECTION Dear friends, With the new academic year upon us, we are excited to provide Richmond Law students with the critical tools they need to launch their legal careers. Among the many lessons they will learn about contract drafting and legal analysis, criminal practice and civil procedure, it is my hope that one lesson will rise above all others: the importance of human connection. We strive to educate future lawyers who will balance their success with empathy and a commitment to community well-being. In this issue, we share three stories of how human connection remains centered in the midst of a rapidly changing world. Students and faculty involved in Richmond Law’s Institute for Actual Innocence Clinic are deeply invested in their clients’ lives and demonstrate how personal connection can drive meaningful change in the legal system. We hear from alum Brother Rutter, L’94, who shifted his prominent legal career to a more balanced life where he prioritizes family, personal wellness, the creation of a supportive work environment, and commitment to community impact through his family’s art foundation. Artificial intelligence is being increasingly integrated into the legal profession, and we explore how law schools and practitioners are striving to balance this technology with ethical practice to ensure that AI serves as an aid rather than a replacement for human expertise. Together, these stories paint a picture of a profession at a crossroads — where technology meets tradition and innovation meets compassion. As you read through these pages, I hope you will be inspired by the ways that law, technology, and community can come together to create a more just and connected world. Best,
Wendy C. Perdue Dean and Professor of Law
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Contents
AUTUMN 2024
Richmond Law DEAN Wendy C. Perdue DIRECTOR OF COMMUNICATIONS AND MARKETING Renee Russell ASSISTANT DEAN FOR DEVELOPMENT Allie Carter
University Communications SENIOR WRITER/ EDITOR M.R. Badillo SENIOR EDITOR Matthew Dewald ASSOCIATE VICE PRESIDENT FOR CREATIVE AND DESIGN SERVICES Samantha Tannich DIRECTOR OF DESIGN SERVICES Katie McBride GRAPHIC DESIGNERS Ashley Gladner Gordon Schmidt
CONTACT lawalumni@richmond.edu 804-289-8028 law.richmond.edu CHANGE OF ADDRESS 800-480-4774, ext. 7 lawmagazine @richmond.edu
© 2024 University of Richmond School of Law. This publication may not be reproduced in whole or in part without express permission from University Communications. Richmond Law, of which this is Volume 37, Number 1, is produced by the Division of University Communications in partnership with Richmond Law. It is published biannually for alumni and friends of the University of Richmond School of Law, University of Richmond, VA 23173.
COVER Photograph by Mark Atkinson
12 FEATURES
12 Conviction is not the end
The Institute for Actual Innocence Clinic recently secured a second presidential commutation for its post-conviction work.
18 Law’s newest
DEPARTMENTS 4 For the Record Dean Wendy Perdue inducted into the Virginia Lawyers Hall of Fame Cassie Powell, L’16, launches Access to Justice Clinic at Richmond Law Fairness-enforcing alum protects financial markets
laboratory
28 Faculty Notes
As AI shifts the professional landscape for practicing attorneys, legal education adapts to the latest technological disruption.
Doron Samuel-Siegel, L’01, shares an eight-step process to empower legal writing
24 Take good care
Brother Rutter, L’94, says prioritizing his role as a husband and father made him a more empathetic injury lawyer.
30 Class Notes Greg Luce, L’77 Tricia Dunlap, L’11
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Photograph by Kim Schmidt
Hall-of-famer Dean Perdue »
SPIDER HONOREES Five Richmond Law Spiders were also inducted into the Virginia Lawyers Class of 2024 Hall of Fame: • Thomas Bondurant Jr., L’79 • Ben Chafin, L’85 (posthumous) • Marla Graff Decker, L’83 • Melissa Katz, L’90 • Lucia Anna (Pia) Trigiani, L’83
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Richmond School of Law Dean Wendy Collins Perdue grew up as the daughter, granddaughter, and sister of navy officers. But her heart led her down a different path. “I didn’t have any lawyers in my family,” Perdue said. “In college, I majored in philosophy and economics. On a whim, I took a law course and loved it.” In May, Perdue was inducted into the Virginia Lawyers Hall of Fame, the most recent accolade in a storied career. The Hall of Fame honors Virginia lawyers who have been in practice for at least 30 years and are selected based on career accomplishments, efforts to improve the quality of justice in the state, and contributions to the development of law in Virginia. “The Commonwealth of Virginia has some of the finest lawyers in the country, so to be included in this Hall of Fame group is quite humbling,” she said. Perdue was born in Hawaii and moved frequently because of her father’s occupation. “Moving and changing schools instills a degree of flexibility and self-reliance that has no doubt served me well in adult life,” she said. She received her bachelor’s degree from Wellesley College — where she rowed on the crew team — and her law degree from the Duke University School of Law. She was the first female editor-in-chief of Duke Law Journal. After that, she clerked for now-retired Supreme Court Justice
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Anthony M. Kennedy, then on the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, and practiced law at the firm of Hogan & Hartson (now Hogan Lovells). She then joined the faculty of the Georgetown University Law Center, where she served as an associate dean and professor of law. In 2011, she became the first female dean of any law school in Virginia when she joined the University of Richmond. She is past president of the Association of American Law Schools and a former vice president of Order of the Coif, the legal education honor society. She has also been on the editorial board of Journal of Legal Education and the Board of Governors of the Virginia Bar Association. Perdue’s scholarship includes civil procedure, conflict of laws, land use, and public health. Her publications include two casebooks, various book chapters, and articles in legal journals including Virginia Law Review, Northwestern Law Review, and Journal of Law. She said her roles have allowed her to partner with colleagues at UR and across the legal profession to strengthen legal education and the foundations of justice. Perdue said, “I hope my legacy as dean is that the University of Richmond School of Law is a strong, more inclusive community with wonderful faculty, students, and alumni who continue to model the best of the legal profession.”
Richmond Law FOR TH E R ECOR D
AROUND THE SCHOOL
M O OT C O U R T R O O M
Class is now in session
MEET THE CLASS OF 2027
Each fall, Richmond Law is pleased to welcome its newest cohort of students to the Web. The Class of 2027 is composed of highly talented aspiring legal professionals from a competitive applicant pool. Get to know the newest Law Spiders:
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NEW 1Ls
5 exchange • 4 international • 2 transfers
The Moot Courtroom has gotten a significant technological upgrade, allowing it to be used for classroom purposes. During the renovation, Benjamin Gillie, assistant director of construction management and design, shared a bit of Moot’s history: “As part of this summer’s renovations, we removed the wood seal from the main wall to be protected during demolition, then refinished and reinstalled it. Once removed, we found that on the back, it included details that it was hand carved —
for 244 hours — by the University of Richmond carpentry supervisor, Jim Wallain, in 1991 when Moot Court was originally built. It also contains the names of those involved in the project and the entire carpentry shop at the time. There is also a penny and quarter from 1991 pinned on the back to the left of the names.” The university seal on the front of the piece was refinished during the renovations to boost its contrast, and was reinstalled in its original location on the main wall of the courtroom.
56% women 40% men 4% non-binary
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%
17%
first-gen college
53% Out-ofstate
80%
first-gen law
47% In-state (Va.)
25 states + Washington, D.C. • 9 countries
82 46+
undergraduate institutions represented
RESEARCH GRANT
PASS IT ON
Professor Marissa Jackson Sow received a $27,000 grant from the Institute of International Education to support her research on Black and Indigenous legal issues. Jackson Sow will use the funding to create an edited volume and make all her project materials freely available to the public.
students of color
majors represented
3 STUDENTS WITH MILITARY SERVICE
75% received scholarship aid
5:1
student-tofaculty ratio
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IN THE NEWS
C O N V E R S AT I O N
When media outlets cover news and events, they come to Richmond Law for expertise and perspective. Here’s a sample of recent stories that feature our experts.
Olympic anti-corruption
“More Schools Stock Tampons and Pads, But Access Is Still a Problem” highlighted a study by CHRISTOPHER COTROPIA showing that this lack of access affects students’ attendance and ability to learn in class.
Professor MARISSA JACKSON SOW was quoted in the article “Eric Adams Praised a Reporter’s Body. It Wasn’t His First Such Remark.” She said the mayor’s comments violated New York City’s sexual harassment guidance. “When you are putting attention on someone’s physique and appearance, it can make that person uncomfortable in their workplace. It doesn’t matter if it was in jest — it’s not about intent. It’s about impact.” Constitutional law expert RILEY KEENAN was quoted in “In Donald Trump’s Immunity Case, the Supreme Court Decides Not to Decide,” saying, “The district court will have to apply a pretty complicated analysis that may result in some of the charges sticking.” According to Keenan, the Supreme Court “has not decided for itself and wants the lower courts to make that decision.” ANNE TOOMEY MCKENNA, an expert on privacy and surveillance, was interviewed in the What Next: TBD podcast episode “The Panopticon Olympics,” saying, “The Olympics presents unique security concerns... but France is enabling — with changes to its laws — a collection of vast amounts of data. And there’s not really a lot of transparency around how the private entities collecting this data — or the government, for that matter — can use this data.” She goes on to say that “AI systems rely on data. The more data a company has, the more money it can make.”
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The 2024 Paris Games were another step forward for the Olympics as a tool for combating corruption, professor Andy Spalding wrote recently in The Conversation. Here’s an excerpt: The Frenchman Pierre de Coubertin resurrected the Olympic Games 125 years ago in hopes that they could provide an example of diverse nations competing, with good will, by an agreed-upon set of rules. Among those rules the world most eagerly wants respected is the anti-corruption principle: that power ought not be abused for private gain, that athletes and businesses alike will compete by common rules with transparency and accountability. After 25 years of repeated violations — and the dramatic plummeting of the Olympics brand ... the International Olympic Committee amended its “omnibus host city” contract to include ... a clause obligating the host city to adopt leading anti-corruption measures. With the Paris Games [at] an end, the eyes of the sporting world will soon turn to the United States and what the State Department has
called the nation’s “most important decade” in sports. In the space of 10 years, the U.S. will host the 2026 FIFA Men’s World Cup (with Canada and Mexico), the 2028 Los Angeles Summer Olympics, the 2031 Rugby World Cup, and the 2034 Salt Lake City Winter Olympics. The U.S. lacks the two features of France’s anti-corruption framework that made [its] anti-corruption revolution possible. The U.S. encourages but does not mandate that companies adopt anti-corruption compliance programs. And it lacks an agency that provides the kind of anti-corruption compliance support that the Agence Française Anticorruption gave Paris. As a result, the organizing committees of these U.S. events will exist in a kind of anti-corruption blind spot. So I believe the U.S. will have to innovate, lest it drop the anti-corruption baton that France will soon hand off. Do Americans still wish to be a global anti-corruption leader — in sports if not beyond? As the country faces a megasports spotlight for the next 10 years, it may find itself looking in the mirror.
COMMUNITY
Street Law is back In the spring 2024 semester, Carrico Center brought the Street Law program back to the University of Richmond after a five-year hiatus. Street Law is a national program where law students connect with school-age children to teach them about the law, debate, and trial skills.
Richmond Law students led lessons on civics and the legal system, culminating in the inaugural Street Law mock trial in the Moot Courtroom. The Honorable Ashley Tunner, L’96, volunteered as presiding judge.
Richmond Law FOR TH E R ECOR D
Make way for justice Q & A Cassie Powell, L’16, is the inaugural director of the law school’s new Access to Justice Clinic, which advances the rights of Virginians with limited income through civil litigation services. Her passion for social justice law is matched by her desire to build the confidence of young lawyers. WHAT DREW YOU TO SOCIAL JUSTICE LAW? It was my mom. She was the first person in her family to go to college and was a single mom and social worker. I grew up hearing stories about what she saw as a social worker. That gave me an early understanding that I was lucky to have the privileges I did and that I should use them to make the world a more just and equitable place. I just can’t imagine doing anything else. I love fighting alongside my clients and working on these issues — it’s the best.
Photograph by Gordon Schmidt
HOW DOES YOUR BACKGROUND PREPARE YOU TO LEAD THIS NEW CLINIC? I come with a lot of practice experience that runs the gamut of what [the clinic] might encounter. I’ve done housing, public benefits, family law, education law, and more. As a former legal aid attorney and manager, I also have connections with many practitioners in Virginia who can provide expertise and support [to the clinic.] Another important thing is that I enjoy working with people who are just starting out and feeling nervous. I love supporting [young lawyers], helping them build their confidence and watching them grow. WHAT ARE YOUR GOALS FOR THE CLINIC? I want students to complete the Access to Justice Clinic feeling confident that they can stand in a courtroom, handle the pressures of working with clients, and articulate their clients’ goals effectively. I hope they come away seeing social justice as something to embed in all their practice work, no matter what area of law they pursue.
I also want successful outcomes for our clients — preventing evictions, securing public benefits, supporting families — but at the same time, I also want students to enjoy [their time with the clinic]. HOW DOES BEING AT RICHMOND LAW IMPACT THE WORK YOU CAN DO? It’s really exciting to do this work with university resources and be part of this collaborative and motivated community. Richmond Law is a very well-respected institution, and being affiliated with it opens doors and gives me more leverage to push for my clients and talk about accessto-justice issues in different spaces. It’s important to me that the clinic is part of the broader Richmond community, too. I hope people will reach out to me if they have thoughts or questions about the clinic.
«C O N N E C T
WITH POWELL “I really like hearing from folks,” says Powell. “I want [this clinic] to be part of the web of community and integrated with the folks serving the community.” Email Powell to start a conversation about the clinic: cassie. powell@richmond. edu
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Photograph courtesy of Tina Gubb, collage by Katie McBride
Fairness enforcer Professionally and personally, Tina Salehi Gubb, L’98, is pursuing her passions. Gubb was recently appointed senior vice president for legal enforcement at the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA), where she has been working since 1998. FINRA is a not-for-profit self-regulatory organization with a mission to protect investors and ensure market integrity. “The enforcement department is [one] that I am truly passionate about,” she said. “We want to ensure that every investor receives the basic protections they deserve. FINRA is at the front line of that protection.” Her days are spent collaborating and strategizing with attorneys and investigators who are looking at potential misconduct such as customer fraud or market manipulation. These cases may involve bad brokers, customers who were harmed, and trading activity that impacts the integrity of the markets. “We want to bring cases that remove bad actors from FINRA membership and make harmed customers whole,” Gubb said. “We build cases through fact-finding and top-notch legal analysis. These cases may result in settlements or in litigations, which we pursue to make sure that the markets operate fairly.”
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Gubb followed in the footsteps of her brother, Nader Salehi, L’95, by attending Richmond Law. There, she found an engaging and supportive learning environment. “Those three years helped me grow as a person and as a lawyer,” she said. “My experience at Richmond affirmed for me both the higher purpose of law as the foundation of a just society and its practical application in protecting the everyday public from the misdeeds of bad actors. Those aspects of the law have animated my career and given meaning and purpose to my work ever since.” Richmond Law impacted both her professional and personal paths as she married fellow Spider Joaquin Gubb, L’98. “We met in law school and have been together ever since,” she said. While she has little time for hobbies of her own, Gubb focuses much of her free time on her daughters’ passion for competitive dance. “At this point in my life and career, I’m prioritizing my core roles as a wife and mother and leader and colleague,” Gubb said. “I find each of those roles so rewarding, and I honestly can’t think of a better way to spend my time. I consider myself very fortunate to have the opportunity to pursue the passions of my life and work.” —Debbie Juniewicz
Richmond Law FOR TH E R ECOR D
N E T WO R K I N G
AROUND THE SCHOOL
FULL EXONERATION
Students on diversity Alexia Inge, L’25, and Kaelynn Wallace, L’26, represented Richmond Law at the Virginia State Bar Diversity Conference in Virginia Beach this year. Since its inception in 2010, the conference has become a vital platform for fostering diversity within the legal profession, while also ensuring that Virginia’s legal system is equipped to serve its increasingly diverse population.
“One of the highlights for me was the incredible networking opportunities,” Inge said, pictured above center. “I had the chance to connect with prominent judges and practitioners, as well as speak with law students from different schools. The amount of support we received was overwhelming, especially knowing that the judges and practitioners are genuinely invested in our success.”
GONE FISHING
Bottom photograph by B.A.S.S./Seigo Saito
Scales of justice Ed Loughran III, L’05, was lauded on the law news website Above the Law. But his legal resume wasn’t the reason. In August, the veteran lawyer — and fisherman — secured his first Elite Series title by winning the Tackle Warehouse Bassmaster Elite at Lake Champlain. Or, to paraphrase the Above the Law article: Attorney reeled in bassmaster title. Loughran’s visits to Lake Champlain date back to 1991, and while his August victory was far from his first competition, it came with his first trophy. “It’s unbelievable,” Loughran said after the competition. “I’ve never won a big tournament. I’ve had Top
Through the Institute for Actual Innocence Clinic at the University of Richmond, Richmond Law staff and students were part of the legal team that secured a life-altering victory for Marvin Grimm, who was unanimously awarded a writ of actual innocence by the Virginia Court of Appeals in June. New evidence and DNA testing led the court to fully exonerate him of the crime for which he was convicted in 1976. With her students and lawyers at the Innocence Project and Arnold & Porter, professor Mary Kelly Tate, who leads the clinic, spent 13 years reinvestigating the case, successfully seeking new DNA testing and, on the basis of his innocence, advocating for Grimm’s 2020 parole. According to Tate, the case contained several problematic issues including coercive interrogation tactics, a poorly executed investigation, a rush to judgment, and unreliable physical evidence. Grimm spent 45 years in prison for this crime. After being granted parole in 2020, additional DNA testing was done that ultimately led to the [exoneration]. “Though he can never get back those years, thanks to the tireless work of Professor Tate and that of her clinic students, Mr. Grimm can live out his days as an innocent man,” said Dean Wendy Perdue.
BEST LAW SCHOOL
5s in big tournaments … but I’m always a little short.” That coveted trophy quickly became a prized possession. “The money will come and go,” he said, “but that trophy will not go anywhere.”
The Princeton Review included the University of Richmond School of Law on its latest list of “Best Law Schools.” This list is based on institutional and student survey data, with factors including career outcomes, admissions selectivity, and academic rigor.
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COMMENCEMENT
NEW CHAPTER BEGINS
U.S. District Judge Kelley Brisbon Hodge, L’96, delivered this year’s Commencement address.
Q U OTAT I O N
“ I am inspired by the bare fact of human existence. Why are we here?” Professor CHRISTOPHER CORTS on receiving the Distinguished Educator Award at Colloquy in August. These are his full remarks. J U N I O R FAC U LT Y F O R U M
Ashley Nelson was presented with her diploma by her mother, Karin Nelson, GB’97.
Rigor, energy, promise
Graduates were all smiles as they celebrated the milestone accomplishment of completing their law school journey.
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The University of Richmond School of Law hosted its annual Junior Faculty Forum in the spring, bringing to campus more than 50 of the nation’s most innovative rising legal scholars. Organized by Professor Allison Tait, associate dean for faculty development, the forum encourages the exchange of ideas and research among junior legal scholars — those who have fewer than seven years of teaching and research experience in legal education. “With so few intentional spaces for legal scholars early in their careers to discuss their scholarship and receive constructive feedback, we’re
delighted that we’re able to continually offer this opportunity to junior faculty,” Tait said. Presenters discussed topics such as “Licensing University Trademarks for Use in College Athlete NIL Deals,” “Criminal Justice in the Data State,” and “Disability Law as Contract Law.” “I’m always impressed by the rigor, energy, and promise of the young scholars who attend the forum,” Dean Wendy Perdue said. “I’m glad that we’re able to consistently offer this venue as a resource to our rising legal education colleagues.”
Richmond Law FOR TH E R ECOR D
And health justice for all
I N B R I E F For the 2024 Emroch Lecture, Amy Kapczynski — professor of law and faculty co-director of the Law and Political Economy Project and the Global Health Justice Partnership at Yale Law School — spoke about law and political economy. Here is a lightly edited excerpt.
economy. One of the things I learned through that advocacy work was that there were a lot of arguments being offered about why the state of the law had to be what it was, [arguments] that actually were not well-founded or persuasive. Often one justification for the high cost of drugs is the “expense of innovation.” However, this didn’t explain why the price of insulin, an old drug, had increased so dramatically. The same was true for other medicines. There [have] been no new drugs for diseases like tuberculosis or malaria in decades. Something didn’t line up. These were the issues that got me interested in questions of political economy and to really feel the urgency of understanding and challenging the standard narrative about the economy, how it works, and the radical disconnect with peoples’ experiences with the economy. Scan this QR code for Kapczynski’s full remarks.
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EMROCH LECTURE SERIES This lecture series brings topical speakers to Richmond Law thanks to the Emanuel Emroch Endowment. The endowment was created in honor of Emanuel Emroch, L’31. Today, it is supported by Emanuel Emroch’s son and daughter-in-law, Walter and Karen Emroch.
Photograph by Maggie Graff
Law and political economy is an intellectual framework and network, made up of people coming to the conversation with different kinds of questions about our economy. My entry point was health justice.
[There are people in the United States] who died a few years ago because they had Type 1 diabetes and couldn’t afford insulin. These were young people, often poorly insured, and predominantly people of color. Their stories were gathered by [the activist group] T1 International. Their work highlights a disturbing reality. The price of insulin, a life-saving drug for those with Type 1 diabetes — a drug that you absolutely need lest you risk grave disability or death — has skyrocketed by 400% over the past decade despite no changes in the drug itself. In [the United States], the wealthiest country in history, people face co-pays of hundreds, sometimes even $1,000 a month. I got into these issues working not on access to medicines in the United States, but working on global access-to-medicines issues. When I entered as a law student, I was already connected with AIDS activists who were working on access to HIV medicines. Those medicines, as activists then taught me, cost $10,000–$15,000 per person per year to buy from patent-holding companies, even though they cost less than $100 to make. In grappling with these issues, you immediately confront questions about the structure of our
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RICHMOND LAW’S INSTITUTE FOR ACTUAL INNOCENCE CLINIC works to exonerate the wrongfully convicted and advocate for the overly punished — a challenge that demands as much heart as it does intellect. By M.R. Badillo Photography by Jamie Betts
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CONVICTION is not the end. 2024 Autumn 13
Not many lawyers can say they helped secure a presidential commutation before they passed the bar. But Bailey Ellicott, L’24, an alum of the Institute for Actual Innocence — or IAI, one of Richmond Law’s criminal law clinics — is one of those rare lawyers. Ellicott played a key role in IAI’s latest headlineworthy accomplishment of successfully petitioning President Joseph Biden to reduce the sentence of an over-punished clinic client. Portions of her 2L and 3L years focused on helping said client, Leshay Rhoton, return home more than 12 years earlier than her original release date. While Ellicott is now fresh out of law school, the Institute for Actual Innocence has a 20-year history. Established in 2005 by professor Mary Kelly Tate, IAI takes on post-conviction cases for those who have been overly punished or wrongfully convicted by the criminal legal system. IAI’s academic work builds a story that intimately portrays the client’s character — their personality, history, and oftentimes traumas — to make the case for resentencing, release, or exoneration. It’s also an ideal exercise for budding lawyers on their way to the bar. “In terms of a learning experience and in terms of actuating a person’s formation of a professional identity, the clinics are a unique landscape,” Tate says. “You can take the knowledge that you have gained in a traditional classroom and bring it to bear in assisting clients who are in situations of dire importance. In a criminal setting, it is [the client’s] life or liberty that is at risk.” The stakes are high. For IAI’s clients — many of whom are serving lengthy prison sentences from both state and federal cases — the work of Tate and her students could mean the difference between freedom and a continued life behind bars. It’s a weighty responsibility — one that the IAI team embraces with dedication and compassion. 14 LawMagazine.Richmond.edu
THE WAR ON DRUGS
The focus of IAI’s clemency work today arises from changes to federal criminal law in the 1980s, says Erin Collins, a professor at Richmond Law who teaches courses on evidence law and criminal procedure. “There was a serious ramping up of the severity of drug crimes [regarding their punishment], specifically those involving crack cocaine in the 1980s,” Collins says. “This is part of the war on drugs, tough-on-crime era.” One aspect of this era was the disparity in sentencing between crack and powder cocaine offenses. Despite being chemically identical substances, crack cocaine was — and still is — punished far more harshly. “The way that the federal system punished people convicted of crack cocaine offenses was so severe that you had to have 100 times the amount of powder cocaine to get the same severity of penalty as you did for crack cocaine,” Collins says. While there have been some reforms over the years, including the Fair Sentencing Act of 2010, which reduced the disparity from 100:1 to 18:1, the impact of these harsh sentences continues to be felt today. The IAI advocates not only for legal exoneration, but also for mercy and fairness in sentencing. Were a client sentenced in the 1980s for crack cocaine to be resentenced today, the outcome would likely be quite different. Tate has expanded IAI’s scope beyond solely factual innocence to add on cases of over-punishment where, in her estimation, mercy is warranted based on the totality of a person’s life circumstances. “We take cases where I have made the determination that an over-punishment has occurred,” Tate says. “We also take cases where I have come to believe the person just absolutely deserves mercy — that even if you could make the argument that the punishment was proportional, when you look at the totality of the situation, an observer or decider who was operating from a sense of fundamental fairness would say to themselves, ‘This person deserves mercy.’”
A HOLISTIC APPROACH — AND AN EFFECTIVE ONE
As the Institute for Actual Innocence makes each case for mercy, it addresses the full human context of its clients’ lives and experiences. Anne Wroniewicz, IAI’s administrative coordinator, describes the approach as holistic. “It’s not just that person. Our approach is holistic as to who this person is, holistic as to who their children are, who their parents are, their sister, their brother. It’s everything.” “A huge component is the social history and the human portraiture of the individual,” Tate says. “For instance, if your client is 50 years old and born in Dallas, Texas, and came from a family with 10 children and was the oldest and the father died when your client was 11 years old, you are going to paint that portrait of what it was like to be that little 11-year-old boy in Dallas, Texas with all those younger siblings and the father dying.”
Richmond Law CONVICTION I S NOT TH E E ND
President Barack Obama signing commutation papers.
This nuanced view of justice has led to some remarkable outcomes. In 2017, one of IAI’s clients had his life sentence for a nonviolent drug offense commuted by President Barack Obama. It was a stunning victory that Tate ranks as one of IAI’s proudest achievements. “We are a tiny operation, and we punch above our weight,” she says. “For 20 years, IAI has involved me, my students, and our administrative coordinator, who is absolutely essential to the team. But we used to be a two-credit clinic that occurred once a year in the spring. By footprint, for 19 of those 20 years, we were absolutely the smallest in-house Innocence Project in the country. Yet we have had two DNA exonerations in the state of Virginia — definitively proving the innocence of those two men through post-conviction DNA testing — and we have had two presidential commutations leading to the freedom of two federally incarcerated individuals. That is extraordinary.”
THE CLEMENCY PROCESS
One of the key avenues the Institute for Actual Innocence pursues is clemency. In 2024, IAI achieved a significant victory when client Leshay Rhoton had her sentence commuted by President Biden. Rhoton’s 25-year prison time — for conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute
crack cocaine — became a 12.5-year sentence, more closely resembling the sentence she would likely have received under current law. Rhoton was released in 2024, a success that highlights the potential of clemency as a tool for addressing the lingering effects of harsh drug sentencing policies. However, as Collins points out, the clemency process is far from straightforward: “A sentence commutation has the same impact as a resentencing, but [pleading] to the president [rather than a judge]. But the thing is, clemency doesn’t give anyone a right to have their sentence reduced. It’s basically throwing yourself at the mercy of the person in power.” As Ellicott puts it, “It’s the final Hail Mary.” Students like Ellicott, under the guidance of experienced professors like Tate, spend many hours researching, writing, and advocating for their clients. They piece together compelling narratives that not only address the legal aspects of a case, but also highlight the human story of the petitioner. It is a marathon of information gathering. Students conduct numerous interviews with the client over several months, speaking not just to the incarcerated individual, but also to family members and friends who can provide additional context. They collect hundreds of pages of documents related to the original conviction, a process Tate describes as “laborious.” 2024 Autumn 15
From left to right: Bailey Ellicott, L’24, Mary Kelly Tate, and Anne Wroniewicz.
As the team builds their understanding of the case, they begin shaping the document that will ultimately be submitted to decisionmakers, be it a parole board, a governor, or the federal pardon office. This document must weave together the human story of the client with a rigorous legal analysis of deficiencies in the original case. “The word choice and narrative flow are eminently important,” Tate says, “because in no way, shape, or form are we diminishing the social harm of drug trafficking or any other offense. We are not diminishing the culpability of the individual who has entered into a conspiracy or such. What we are doing is we are saying: ‘In its totality, when you look at this case, please, decision-maker, use your sense of fundamental fairness and conclude that based on the entire human context of this human being’s life and the legal deficiencies in the case, that society is better served by this individual not remaining incarcerated.” Once the petition is submitted, there’s nothing left to do but wait — often for months or even years. It’s a process that requires patience and resilience from the students, Tate, and clients.
ON A HUMAN LEVEL
“It’s not just that person. [The clinic’s approach] is holistic as to who this person is, holistic as to who their children are, who their parents are, their sister, their brother. It’s everything.”
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While the legal victories are the essential focus, the relationships formed between students and clients are also deep and sometimes even lasting. “I considered it a win anytime I got to connect with a client,” Ellicott says, “or anytime I could help a client feel better about their circumstances or just feel like someone cares.” Tate is continually impressed with her students’ abilities to connect meaningfully with IAI’s clients. “To be able to forge and develop, over time, a trusting, respectful relationship with a human being who is in extremis, which incarcerated people are — they are in continuous extremis — to be able to do that as a young person and to do it well is what I am most proud of with my students,” Tate says.
Richmond Law CONVICTION I S NOT TH E E ND
This human connection is not just a feel-good aspect of the work — it’s essential to building the strongest possible case for a client. By developing trust and understanding the full context of a client’s life, students can craft more compelling narratives when advocating before parole boards, governors, or even the president. “We are putting together narratives that involve a variety of components, and each component is a very different texture in nature,” Tate says. “You have to combine the finesse and poetry of human storytelling with the granular, intensive legalistic analysis, and you have to thread those together. No easy feat.”
A BIGGER PICTURE
In addition to client work, IAI also addresses systemic issues in the American criminal legal system that create the need for the clinic to exist in the first place. “For a democracy’s criminal legal system to have a perception of legitimacy, there has to be a widely held view that the system operates in a fundamentally fair way,” Tate says. “And so when we persist in operating our criminal legal system in ways that disadvantage the poor and minorities, we are playing with fire.” In 2011, the IAI and the Virginia Bar Association together persuaded the Virginia General Assembly to amend the statutory language around what was considered by scholars and practitioners alike to be a nearly impossible standard of proof to meet to secure writs of actual innocence. This reform was crucial in multiple Virginia exonerations that followed. Tate points out the irony of a system that severs social ties through incarceration, then demands evidence of strong social networks as a condition of release. Many federally incarcerated individuals are sent to facilities far from their families, making visits difficult or impossible. This isolation can have devastating effects not just on incarcerated individuals, but on their families and communities. “When you sever social ties, you sever and strain family ties. You traumatize the community. You do intergenerational harm,” Tate says. “It is not simply the isolated process of taking a human being who has committed a crime and putting them ‘away.’” Collins views Richmond Law’s clinical programs as a crucial part of the immediate solution to these systemic problems. “Clinics are a lifeline to folks who have the possibility to catch the attention of the people with the power to do the work. And these clinics probably do more work than a practicing lawyer would because these are students who are thoughtful, empathetic, invested, and they go above and beyond in their research, in their facts development, and in their writing, all under the supervision of very experienced, very thoughtful, very talented lawyers like Tate.” However, Collins also emphasizes that this work, while vital, is ultimately addressing symptoms of a
larger problem. “I think it’s a Band-Aid. It wouldn’t be this triage situation if we didn’t have these structures of oppression that funneled whole communities into places of incarceration where they then didn’t have the ability to petition for themselves, or where they had basically no hope of getting out in 25 years.” Tate says she has the utmost respect for IAI’s clients. “All of our clients have had major external shocks,” she says. “Those external shocks can be unabated poverty, sexual trauma, physical or emotional abuse, violent schools, chronic illness, substance abuse in the family, or refugee status. There’s not a client I have or have had in the last 32 years of post-conviction work that has not had a life story with an enormous dose of multivariate trauma.”
“When you sever social ties, you sever and strain family ties. You traumatize the community. You do intergenerational harm.” WHAT’S NEXT
As Richmond Law’s clinics continue to evolve and respond to changes in criminal law’s landscape, the core mission remains the same: Provide students with hands-on experience while serving those most in need of legal representation. The work is challenging, often heartbreaking, but also deeply rewarding. “I like to quote David Foster Wallace from his speech ‘This is Water,’” says Wroniewicz. “He says, ‘The really important kind of freedom involves attention and awareness and discipline and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them over and over in myriad petty, unsexy ways every day. That is real freedom.’ And that’s what we do.” For Tate, her students, and dedicated staff like Wroniewicz, each case is a reminder of the power of the law to change lives and the responsibility that comes with wielding that power. As they pore over case files, draft petitions, petition for reform, and advocate for their clients, they’re not just practicing the law — they’re shaping its future. In a system often criticized for its impersonality and inequities, the Institute for Actual Innocence represents a place where justice is pursued not just through statutes and precedents, but through a deep commitment to human dignity and fundamental fairness. When Wroniewicz heard the news that Rhoton’s sentence had been commuted, she took the win but avowed, “Great. Now we keep going.” ■
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LAW’S NEWEST LABORATORY
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By Matthew Dewald | Illustration by Katie McBride
I
n a Charlottesville, Virginia, office, attorney Justin Ritter fires up his computer and launches Claude, a generative artificial intelligence tool that is assisting his legal work. He’s an enthusiastic early adopter of the new technology, using it “virtually every day.” Depending on his tasks for the day, he might use it to create a first draft of a purchase agreement for which he has no template. Or he might have it make tedious, routine document changes, such as changing “manager” to “managers,” adjusting verb agreement and other grammatical nuances along the way. Or he might ask it for feedback about something he’s written. “It might give me 15 suggestions,” he says. “Maybe three of them are good, and maybe one of those was critical.” It performs any of these tasks within seconds. Ritter hasn’t been using generative AI that long — ChatGPT, the first of the current wave of new tools, launched in November 2022. Claude is his current favorite because of its ease with language, and he has tried
As AI shifts the professional landscape for practicing attorneys, legal education adapts to the latest technological disruption.
many of the tools currently out there. In the short time he’s been using them, he has already reached some big conclusions about the changes AI will bring to the legal profession. “I’m already seeing the changes,” he says. “I am unequivocally convinced that there is no putting the genie back in the bottle or ignoring this as a major disruptive tool for our practice. This will be more disruptive than email or fax.” Meanwhile, back at the law school, Roger Skalbeck, associate dean for library and information services in Muse Law Library, is guiding students through a hands-on exercise with AI tools. They’re using AI-generated images to build comic books explaining legal principles. “Everybody’s seen examples of [AI] now, whether in the press or using it directly,” Skalbeck says. He observes two main reactions from students: some hesitate to use AI, wanting to learn fundamental skills without relying on it as a crutch, while others are highly curious to explore its capabilities. Scenes like these are playing out in law offices and law schools across Virginia and the country, illustrating the rapid and transformative impact that artificial intelligence is beginning to have on the legal profession. From solo practitioners to major law firms, from first-year law students to veteran attorneys, AI is reshaping how legal work gets done and how the next generation of lawyers is being prepared at Richmond Law. The efficiency gains promised by AI are hard to ignore. Ritter estimates he’s seeing about a 20% productivity boost in his work. His colleague at Ritter Law, associate attorney Chris Sullivan, ’17 and L’22, ballparks the gain closer to 25%. Regardless of the precise figure, those gains 2024 Autumn 19
are set to grow as AI proves capable of performing certain routine tasks in a fraction of the time that humans can. Skalbeck draws a parallel to how cell phones changed our relationship with information. Just as we no longer memorize phone numbers, AI may shift which tasks occupy a lawyer’s time, freeing up mental bandwidth for higher-level analysis and creative problem-solving. “The question isn’t ‘Will AI replace lawyers?’” Sullivan says. “It’s ‘Lawyers using AI will replace lawyers not using AI.’”
AS INEVITABLE AS TOMORROW’S RISING SUN
Ritter and Sullivan are an integral part of Richmond Law’s efforts to prepare law students for the developing AI landscape. In spring 2024, the pair co-taught the school’s first AI-focused course: Artificial Intelligence in Legal Practice. Other faculty are increasingly incorporating AI within broader courses focused on topics such as legal research skills or intellectual property. It figures to become just as essential to the practice of law as other professional skills like writing and advocacy. Whenever the topic of AI comes up in courses, the focus is on both possibilities and pitfalls. The pitfalls grab attention. In one much-discussed case, an attorney representing a client with a tort claim against an airline submitted an AI-written brief riddled with citations to nonexistent case law. He then doubled down when initially challenged about it. The headline in the New York Times captured the tone of much of the overage: “Here’s what happens when your lawyer uses ChatGPT.” Ritter and Sullivan have that article as one of their course readings. There are also serious concerns about threats to attorney-client privilege. To get output from a generative AI tool, a user must enter a prompt. For example, an attorney revising a leasing contract for a landlord about to lease to their first dog-owning client might input the language of the original contract along with “Add common clauses to the contract that account for a tenant with pets.” If the attorney doesn’t like what comes back, they can —CHRIS SULLIVAN, ’17 AND L’22 quickly scrap it and ask the tool
“The question isn’t, ‘Will AI replace lawyers?’ It’s, ‘Lawyers using AI will replace lawyers not using AI.’”
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to try again with a more tailored prompt. One key is to avoid entering real names and other confidential data — those should be subbed for generic names and then changed back by the attorney to avoid violating client confidentiality. “If you put privileged information in there, they say it doesn’t get out,” says Sam Cabo, a digital resources librarian at Muse Law Library. She co-teaches a course called Legal Practice Technology with Molly Lentz-Meyer, the library’s director of bibliographic services. Their course includes a section on using AI in legal research. “But every time you put something in, it’s learning — so it’s using privileged information to learn, and that is an ethical dilemma.” Despite such concerns, Cabo and Lentz-Meyer emphasize to students that lawyers have an ethical obligation to understand and use time-saving technologies when appropriate. “If you’re saving three hours by using AI, that’s good for your client,” LentzMeyer notes. Sullivan makes the same argument, pointing to a section of the Virginia Rules of Professional Conduct that says specifically that lawyers are obligated to stay up to date on technologies that impact their services to clients. Simply put, the time when attorneys can ethically adopt a head-inthe-sand approach to AI is rapidly passing as its capabilities improve. Skalbeck notes that incoming firstyear law students nationally will make up the first law school class that has always had access to commercial-grade, law-specific AI tools — not only the ones being developed by Westlaw and LexisNexis but others fighting for space in the emerging market. “You can’t unring that bell,” he says. These developments make AI adoption by the legal profession a question of not if but when, not whether but how. Legal-specific generative AI tools have the capacity to perform rapid and sophisticated document review, processing, classification,
Richmond Law LAW’S NE WE ST LA B OR ATORY
data synthesis, and analysis, for example. In minutes, they can produce good-quality research summaries that currently take hours or days to compile. In short, they can perform many of the rote tasks that disproportionately take up lawyers’ time, freeing them for high-level thinking, advising, strategizing, and other tasks that demand the higher-level thinking lawyers are specially trained to do. Faculty who teach the subject at Richmond Law say that the appropriate ground is between the poles of naïve enthusiasm and avoidance — a hefty dose of knowledge about the tools tempered by awareness of their limitations.
“The algorithm’s not smarter than you. You are a human who is looking for something specific.” —MOLLY LENTZ-MEYER
LEGAL EDUCATION ADAPTS
For their part, Lentz-Meyer and Cabo take a long view of AI. They note that it isn’t brand new — AI has quietly become ubiquitous in legal research and practice for more than a decade. Platforms like Westlaw and LexisNexis have long used algorithms to power their search functions. Now, they’re simply integrating more advanced AI capabilities, including brief generation and analysis tools. What they caution students against is over-reliance on these tools. “The algorithm’s not smarter than you,” LentzMeyer tells her students. “You are a human who is looking for something specific.” One eye-opening exercise involves having students compare the results of identical searches across different legal research platforms. Students think of these platforms as definitive, but what they find is significant variance among them. This anecdotal experience is backed up by a journal article that is one of their course’s readings. It reports on a study in which researchers closely examined the results returned by six of the most commonly used legal research databases, including Westlaw and LexisNexis. The study found “hardly any overlap in the cases that appear in the top ten results returned by each database.” One conclusion the researchers drew: “Every algorithm has a unique voice.” In some ways, it’s a lesson in old-fashioned information literacy, with AI just the latest twist. Cabo and Lentz-Meyer also encourage students to develop a healthy skepticism of AI-generated writing. In one assignment, students use ChatGPT to draft a legal memo, then annotate and reflect on the process. Many are surprised to find that refining the AI-generated text takes longer than writing from scratch would have. “Now those students know what looks like a time-saving instrument is in fact not always that,” Lentz-Meyer says. In their legal practice course, Ritter and Sullivan also have students experiment with AI tools and reflect on their experiences. “We need to move beyond just an introduction of what ChatGPT is,” Sullivan says. “Let’s start having more of a conversation about what machine learning AI is, what are the various tools out there, and what are the specific ways that lawyers can be using it.” The students’ final project in the course suggests its potential. Students create their own AI tool using a tech-
nique called retrieval-augmented generation. In a nutshell, they create a custom generative AI tool that draws its information from user-vetted sources rather than just information ingested from the digital sources at large. The answers it generates to user prompts are far more likely to be accurate and relevant. The approach solves one of the biggest problems with more generalized models, a tendency to make up information — “hallucinate,” in tech jargon — with confidence. Students in their inaugural course created bots to help with topics ranging from help with Medicaid applications to systems that create first drafts of personal injury complaints for Virginia courts. “We had someone who created a Virginia Residential Landlord and Tenant Act bot that helps tenants understand complex leases and lease terms,” Sullivan says. “These are just students that didn’t have any background in AI three months ago, and now they’re building these 2024 Autumn 21
Skalbeck, above, created a comic book about copyright as a test case for the U.S. Copyright Office. The book is a hybrid of humanand AI-produced content, putting it in a legal gray area for copyright protection. “They’ve had it almost two years now,” he said.
“What I hope students get out of it is the freedom to explore and experience it. Also a personal sort of moral compass or comfort level. ‘What do these tools do? How do I think about them? And where do I think these things are going?’” —ROGER SKALBECK
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technologies that are basically ready for market to immediately help the people of Virginia.” As the pair revise their syllabus for when they offer the course again this spring, the main challenge is simply keeping up with new developments.
NOVEL LEGAL QUESTIONS
Skalbeck has been incorporating AI tools into his teaching for several years, giving students hands-on experience with the technology. In 2022, even before ChatGPT became a household name, Skalbeck’s students were among the first in the country to test an AI-powered legal research tool. “What I hope students get out of it is the freedom to explore and experience it,” Skalbeck says. “Also a personal sort of moral compass or comfort level. ‘What do these tools do? How do I think about them? And where do I think these things are going?’”
Richmond Law LAW’S NE WE ST LA B OR ATORY
In his classes, students are encouraged to experiment with AI tools for tasks like legal research and creative projects that focus on communicating legal principles in plain language. For example, in a course on comics and law, students use AI image generators to create illustrations to create comic books about legal issues, such as how tenants can force landlords to make repairs or the history of the jury system. This hands-on approach helps students understand the potential, limitations, and legal issues related to the technology. In addition to affecting how lawyers will practice law, AI is also raising new legal questions. One key area Skalbeck focuses on is intellectual property. As AI-generated content becomes more prevalent, thorny questions arise about authorship and ownership. He points out that according to current copyright law, works created solely by AI cannot be copyrighted — human authorship is required. This principle was recently tested when an artist submitted a comic book partly created with AI to the U.S. Copyright Office. The office initially approved the copyright but later revoked it when they learned AI was involved. Eventually, the artist was granted copyright protection for the text and arrangement of panels, but not for the AI-generated images. Such cases highlight the complex legal and ethical issues surrounding AI use. Skalbeck notes that many current lawsuits target the companies creating AI tools, with plaintiffs like authors seeking to have their works removed from AI training data. Skalbeck himself has dipped his toes into these waters, testing the ground between human-generated and AI-generated artistic creations. He created an illustrated guide to the definitions of copyright law that uses largely AI-generated images. In dozens of images, he’s cleverly incorporated legal citations and graphics to represent leading court cases. Unlike the artist’s earlier submission to the copyright office, he fully discloses his use of AI in the forward. “I did a lot of enhancements,” he says. “I generated hundreds and hundreds of images, selected them, arranged them, annotated them, edited them, and put them together. I’ve sent this to the copyright office with the assistance of our Intellectual Property and Transactional Law Clinic and am waiting to hear back. They’ve had it for almost two years now.”
THE BILLABLE HOUR’S DEATH FORETOLD? AND OTHER QUESTIONS
In this environment of uncertainty, Sullivan maintains a stance of “cautious optimism” toward AI in law. Like others, he emphasizes the importance of understanding the technology’s limitations, always verifying AI-generated information, and using it as a supplement to, not a replacement for, human legal expertise. As Ronald Reagan put it in a different context, trust but verify. But he is also excited by the offloading of rote tasks and by the significant productivity gains, which he expects to continue to rise quickly. Like Ritter, he believes one potential impact is the modification or decline of the billable hour as the focus shifts
from time spent to the value of a deliverable. Yes, AI technology might initially slow an attorney down — as students in Cabo and Lentz-Meyer’s course learned — but Sullivan sees in that struggle the initial climb up learning curve as lawyers test the technology. Attorneys, he says, should be testing generative AI tools now so they can understand what they are and how they work and develop best practices for their use. “That’s really the only way to learn,” he says. “Fine-tune your prompt engineering skills. Figure out what works and what doesn’t work. Yeah, maybe it slowed you down in the short term on that one particular assignment, but you just come out of it knowing more about AI strengths and weaknesses so that next time you know how you can leverage it, and it will make you faster.” As efficiency builds, pressure to switch billing models will grow, he predicts. “Attorneys are always happy to hear about threats to the billable hour, certainly, but this isn’t just me talking,” he says. “The Florida and California bars are already on record exploring how AI impacts reasonable fees. It will no longer be, ‘How long will it take me to draft this contract?’ It’ll be ‘What’s the value of having a well-written contract?’” Ritter predicts change may be coming within the next three to five years. If so, it will mark a major change to the billable hour’s current dominance. The practice might feel immutable, but its ubiquity is, in fact, a fairly recent development. According to the 2014 Idaho Law Review article “Bill, Baby, Bill,” it became the dominant billing method in the United States only after the Supreme Court’s 1975 ruling in Goldfarb v. Virginia State Bar. “I thought the billable hour was something that [had] just always been there,” Ritter says. “It’s not as entrenched as we all think it is.” If AI can reverse that pillar of current legal practice, what else might change? For now, Sullivan, Ritter, and others who practice and teach at Richmond Law are focused on developing ethical practitioners who use AI tools efficiently and effectively while protecting client confidentiality and assuring appropriate review of output from generative AI tools. While AI may seem like uncharted territory, many of the challenges it presents are reminiscent of those posed by previous technological advances. The focus, appropriately, is on harnessing the power of AI while maintaining the judgment, ethics, and human touch that are at the heart of the legal profession. ■ 2024 Autumn 23
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Take good care
Brother Rutter, L’94, says prioritizing his roles as husband, father, and arts patron made him a more empathetic injury lawyer.
By Kim Catley Photography by Mark Atkinson
C. ARTHUR “BROTHER” RUTTER III, L’94, SPENT THE FIRST YEARS of his legal career chasing a dream of being a prominent, nationally recognized litigator. After graduating from Richmond Law, he joined his father’s personal injury law firm. Rutter capitalized on the firm’s location in Hampton Roads and narrowed his focus to railroad and maritime law, which led him to fight cases and open offices up and down the East Coast. Three years in, he secured the firm’s largest multimillion-dollar settlement. Several multimillion-dollar verdicts quickly followed. By all accounts, Rutter says, his career was going well. That’s when he walked away. “I had this moment of clarity in the early 2000s,” he says. “I had been away from home 160 days two years in a row. I also had a 3-year-old and a 6-year-old. I couldn’t see those two things moving along the same trajectory.” Around the same time, Rutter’s father retired. Rutter and his then-partner, Robert Mills, renamed the practice Rutter Mills and decided to shift their focus to Virginia. 2024 Autumn 25
The Rutter Family Art Foundation building pictured above was built in 1917 and previously housed the sales office for the Texas Oil Company, AKA Texaco.
“It turned out to be the best personal and the best economic decision I’ve ever made,” he says. “I was back at home in a market I knew well. I had a lot of connections in the area that helped us rebuild the holes from letting go of the other business. And I was able to live into the father and husband roles that have made me a better, more empathetic injury lawyer.”
‘THE BUSINESS WILL TAKE CARE OF ITSELF’
Rutter opens our Zoom interview with a virtual tour of the Backyard — a new indoor/outdoor workspace perched atop Rutter Mills’ Norfolk office. With couches, firepits, a kitchen, and collaboration rooms, the office retreat is designed to encourage creative thinking amid the comforts of home. It’s also the direct result of the same conversations many businesses have been having since COVID-19. As a client-forward business that relies on in-person trials, depositions, and meetings, Rutter Mills had to bring employees back to the office. But Rutter could also see that employees were working well from home and other environments. “For a lot of folks, the built office environment didn’t meet them where they were in terms of how they like to work and what’s most efficient for them,” he says. “So I said we need to reimagine the built work environment to address these concerns. Businesses in San Francisco and New York are thinking about this, too, and building living room areas and outdoor areas so that people feel they can work in the space that they like.” The Backyard is just one way Rutter wants to rethink the business of law. After his own experience choosing family over a hard-driving career, Rutter developed a new appreciation for putting people first. He saw his clients coming in after being injured or losing a job or a family member. More than anything, they needed nurturing and support. At Rutter Mills, he says, they have a higher number of team members to support the attorneys because he believes personal injury cases require a personal touch.
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Building trust can’t be done with automated texts and artificial intelligence. “Sometimes, we need to call our clients just to ask how they’re doing,” he says. “A conversation about the case or an investigation is hard to do with the same level of empathy that you would have for a friend or family member.” Rutter also eschews the idea that lawyers need to remain dispassionate, disinterested observers. Injury litigation, he says, requires heart. You have to build a relationship with your clients and get to know them on a personal level in order to tell their story in front of a judge and jury. “My father said, ‘If you have a big heart, it’s going to feel tugged into these cases. You have to let it happen,’” he says. “If you can’t feel for your client, you can’t feel for the case. When your head and your heart are in it together, you’re going to better represent your client.” It’s a perspective he tries to impart on to the next generation of lawyers at Rutter Mills — including two in particular. His two sons, Carter and Austin, decided to follow in his footsteps and are now in their third year at Richmond Law. Rutter also strives to create the same ecosystem of love, care, and support for his employees. The firm is competitive, and the cases are demanding. But Rutter is adamant that their work not come at the expense of life outside the office. The added staff allows for a better distribution of work, while clear processes keep cases moving forward with the aim of getting everyone home for dinner. It’s rare, he says, to have people working into the evening or on weekends. Again, Rutter’s actions are guided by the words of his father: Take care of the people you work with, and the business will take care of itself. “People think that to be highly profitable, to be a strong litigator, to be a boss, you’ve got to be tough. You’ve got to be mean,” Rutter says. “You just don’t. We are life-first, people-first — and that doesn’t mean that the organization we’ve built at Rudder Mills is soft or easy. There’s a lot to do, and we demand world-class work. “A kind, nurturing environment is not mutually exclusive to a hard-charging, profitable litigation practice.”
‘WHAT ARE THE ROADBLOCKS WE CAN KICK DOWN?’
There’s no question that Rutter is passionate about his family, his legal practice, and his ideas for creating a people-centered work environment. Only one other topic might come close: his love of the arts. In the late 1980s, Rutter and his soon-to-be wife Meredith were fresh out of college and living in New York City. By day, Rutter worked on Wall Street. Meredith, meanwhile, took her economics degree and interest in arts to Sotheby’s auction house, where she was a business manager trainee. “That just ignited me, being around all these beautiful things all day long,” Meredith says. “All of the paintings: American contemporary, the impressionists, 19th-century old masters. That was a dream job.”
Richmond Law TA K E G OOD C A R E
By night, they could be found wandering galleries, strolling through art fairs, and attending openings in SoHo, which was then a nascent arts district. They went to the Met and other art museums when they could afford it. Sometimes, they would stop in to Sotheby’s to see what was coming up for auction. As their relationship grew, so did their shared connection to art. When Rutter graduated from Richmond Law in 1994, he and Meredith celebrated by purchasing their first serious piece of art from Sotheby’s: a color field painting by the abstract expressionist Theodoros Stamos. “If the house was burning down, that’s the one we would grab,” Rutter says. “It got us to step up and buy art that we love. And it’s mile-marker zero on a fabulous journey.” That journey led the Rutters to build their collection with a focus on contemporary art. Both feel a pure emotional connection to the color and form of abstract art. “Brother loves the intellectual side,” Meredith says. “I’m more about the aesthetics. I love to walk the fairs and see something on the wall that stops me in my tracks.” Today, their collection includes paintings, sculpture, glass, and video works from artists like Sam Gilliam, Kenneth Noland, Teresita Fernández, Gene Davis, Maya Lin, Thomas Downing, Paul Reed, Jonas Wood, Jeffrey Gibson, Lynette Yiadom-Boakye, and Hank Willis Thomas. They have donated and loaned several works to museums around the world with an eye toward more diverse representation. “We try to find the holes in museum collections and fill them,” Rutter says. “That way, these arts organizations and museums can tell a richer, fuller story of art history that includes all artists. We’ve developed a lot of joy putting together this collection, and we’re finding that there’s a lot of joy in sharing it with others.” At the same time, the Rutters started to take on philanthropic roles in a variety of arts organizations. Both were members of the Collectors Committee at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., and have served on the board of trustees for the Chrysler Museum of Art in Norfolk, Virginia. Meredith also joined the boards of the Virginia Museum of Contemporary Art and the Norfolk Society of Arts. Then, in 2015, they decided to start their own — the Rutter Family Art Foundation — to share their collection and bring even more contemporary art to the community. The Rutters purchased the iconic but dilapidated Texaco building, a 100-year-old industrial space in downtown Norfolk. They completely stripped and rebuilt the 15,000-square-foot building, creating a gallery and music venue, offices for the foundation, community engagement spaces, and a few apartments. The Texaco building was also a cornerstone of the burgeoning NEON, or New Energy of Norfolk, Arts District. The Rutter Family Art Foundation joined other studio-based ventures to provide space for artists to create and show their work alongside longtime cultural institutions like the Chrysler Museum and the Harrison Opera House.
“Back in [the mid-2010s], a lot of cities were looking at downtown revitalizations in part by leaning into the arts and arts districts,” Rutter says. “Norfolk was doing the same, trying to find a place and a space. Our building needed to be revitalized to be the beating heart of the NEON District.” Since the foundation’s creation, the Rutters have shifted their focus from funding artists and organizing exhibitions on their own to finding ways to remove the roadblocks holding back other local arts organizations. One thing the foundation offers that no other arts organization can claim is the Texaco building — or rather, the two fully furnished apartments inside. The Rutters offer the apartments to any arts organization in Hampton Roads, free of charge, for any length of time. This helps reduce costs for the Chrysler Museum to bring in a lecturer, the Harrison Opera House to feature a guest conductor, Old Dominion University to host an artist-in-residence, or the city to hire a muralist.
“We believe that a thriving culture is the heartbeat of any city, of any community.” “When we go to organizations and ask what they need, what we’re really asking is, ‘What are the roadblocks in your way that we can kick down?’” Rutter says. “Generally, it’s around organization and budget. One reason they can’t bring an artist in for three weeks is the question of where to put them and how to afford it. We’re able to offer travel stipends, maybe an honorarium, and a free living space. For arts organizations on a tight budget, that’s a game changer.” Over time, Rutter says they hope to build more apartments for arts organizations throughout Hampton Roads — and to encourage more collaboration among the region’s art districts. They see this as not only an investment in the arts, but in the health of their community and even the future of Rutter Mills. “We believe that a thriving culture is the heartbeat of any city, of any community,” he says. “People want to live in a city that has a thriving cultural environment. At Rutter Mills and other businesses, it’s hard to attract people who want to live here and raise families here unless we have that rich cultural experience. “By leaning into our love language of art, we’re supporting our community in an important and necessary way. If we do things to take care of other people, then everything else will take care of itself.” ■ 2024 Autumn 27
Power on the page Professor Doron Samuel-Siegel, L’01, is reimagining the process of legal writing. In her new book, Fundamentals & Decision Points: An Empowered Approach to Legal Writing, Samuel-Siegel shares an eight-step process that she believes is applicable to all writing projects attorneys are likely to face throughout their careers. “I wanted students to have a book that would help them feel empowered as decision-makers in their writing,” said Samuel-Siegel. “In order to feel empowered, I think students need to learn a set of fundamental principles, strategies, and conventions, as well as cultural competence. Then, by applying those fundamentals through an organized, repetitious process, students can develop that sense of empowerment. “Rather than [merely memorizing] how to write a legal memo or a letter to a client, I wanted students to emerge from their first year knowing that they themselves have everything they need to be successful as legal writers.” Samuel-Siegel teaches students to apply her multi-step process. “Through that practice and their reliance on
the fundamentals, students can emerge knowing that whatever the next legal writing project demands of them, they’ll be equipped to provide.” Samuel-Siegel’s book also encourages students to think critically about convention. “Our profession is really driven by convention, and often our clients’ interests require that we, as lawyers, adhere to it,” she said. “But we also know that convention can be an impediment to progress and to the widening path of justice and equality in the U.S. legal system. I want students to think critically about when convention will serve their clients’ needs and when, on the other hand, it might actually inhibit those needs or interests.” After nearly a decade of writing and refining the book through feedback from and collaboration with her students, Samuel-Siegel’s book was published by West Academic earlier this year. “I hope [students] will use these tools and really consider how, through their writing, they might be able to contribute to a more equitable and just world.” —Renee Russell
“I wanted students to have a book that would help them feel empowered as decision-makers in their writing.”
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ERIN COLLINS provided public comment before the U.S. Sentencing Commission on proposed amendments to the federal sentencing guidelines relating to young people. Also, her article “Problem-Solving Courts and the Outcome Oversight Gap” was published in UMKC Law Review, and “Beyond Problem-Solving Courts“ is forthcoming in Cardozo Journal of Conflict Resolution. REBECCA CROOTOF’s article “Remote Repossession” is forthcoming in DePaul Law Review. She also authored “Symposium on Military AI and the Law of Armed Conflict: Front- and Back-End Accountability for Military AI” for OpinioJuris and was interviewed on the podcast Voices from DARPA about how consideration of ethical, legal, and societal implications (ELSI) can inform programs of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). CHRIS COTROPIA has several recently published articles. “Nonobviousness and Unmotivated, Yet Minor, Inventions” was published by Northwestern Journal of Law & Technology; “Bias and Ethical Challenges in Compiling Live Music Performance Metadata” in Digital Humanities Quarterly; and “Boosting Patent Quality and Equity with Access to AI and Automation” in Regulation. ASHLEY DOBBS’ chapter “Intellectual Property Rights” appears in The Law of Fraternities and Sororities, published by Carolina Academic Press. JOEL EISEN discussed three related Supreme Court cases — Loper Bright v. Raimondo, SEC v. Jarkesy, and Corner Post v. Board — in an episode of The Syn-
opsis. Since the court’s decisions in these cases, his expertise has been widely cited in leading publications, including Politico, Scientific American, Heatmap, and Energywire. JESSICA ERICKSON’s latest article “Paying for Performance? Attorneys’ Fees in Securities Fraud Class Actions” was discussed extensively in the Reuters article “How Law Firm Robbins Geller Won $434 mln PostDismissal Settlement With Under Armour.” MEREDITH HARBACH’s chapter “Children’s Rights Law in Early Childhood” is forthcoming in Children’s Rights and Children’s Development: An Integrated Approach, which will be published by NYU Press. HAYES HOLDERNESS’ article “Self-Policing Through Retaliatory Taxation” is forthcoming in The Tax Lawyer. He also authored “SC’s Courts Have It Wrong on Amazon Marketplace Sales Tax” for Law360. CORINNA LAIN’s new book Secrets of the Killing State: The Untold Story of Lethal Injection is forthcoming in spring 2025.
LUKE NORRIS has two forthcoming articles. “The Beleaguered Sovereign” will be published in Texas Law Review and “Procedural Political Economy” in William & Mary Law Review. KRISTEN OSENGA published a policy brief on the Patent Eligibility Restoration Act (PERA), titled “Restoring Predictability to Patent Eligibility” and a policy memo at the Hudson Institute titled “The Loss of Injunctions Under eBay: Evidence of the Negative Impact on the Innovation Economy.” She participated in a panel on Capitol Hill discussing patent eligibility reform and the PERA bill and in a webinar titled “Is Patent Eligibility Doctrine in Need of Reform?”
JACK PREIS’ article “Officer Intent and Excessive Force” is forthcoming in Ohio State Law Journal.
ANDY SPALDING has several recently published and forthcoming articles. “Forecasting Human Rights Legacies: On Practices and Principles” was in German Law Journal; “The US Statecraft of Corporate Human Rights Obligations” is forthcoming in Maryland Journal of International Law; and “Labor and LGBTQ+: How the World Cup Did, and Did Not, Change Qatar” is forthcoming in Sport in Society. He also taught a research seminar on corruption, human rights, and the 2024 Paris Summer Olympics as a visiting scholar at Sciences Po Law School in Paris. DANIELLE STOKES’ article “From Redlining to Greenlining” is forthcoming in UCLA Law Review, and her chapter “Climate-Conscious Land Use Planning” was published in A Research Agenda for US Land Use and Planning Law. Under MARY TATE’s leadership, the Institute for Actual Innocence clinic won two major victories in the spring. One client received presidential commutation of a 25year federal prison sentence, and another was unanimously awarded a writ of actual innocence by the Virginia Court of Appeals after 45 years of incarceration. See news brief on page 9 and feature on page 12.
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We want to hear from you. Send your Class Note to classnotes@richmond.edu. To reach the alumni office, email lawalumni@richmond. edu or call 804-289-8028. Contact us by mail at Law Alumni, University of Richmond School of Law, University of Richmond, VA 23173.
1970s Virginia law firm Gentry Locke welcomed ROBERT E. EVANS, L’75, to its Lynchburg office as counsel in the plaintiffs practice group. PAM FLOYD PULLEY, L’76, sends news that she and GLENN PULLEY, R’73 AND L’76, celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary Dec. 29, when sons CARSON, ’01, and DREW, ’03, surprised them with a lunch gathering of friends and family from far and wide. Glenn and Pam are the happy grandparents of Bess, Tommy, Walter, and Simone, ranging in age from almost 1 to 9; all live in the New York City area. During their anniversary year, Glenn and Pam traveled to San Diego, Costa Rica, Panama, Scotland, and England’s Lake District. Pam writes, “In 2024, we are planning to work on our golf games, fish at our lake cabin, and sail the coast of Italy with a Nat Geo
Photos from Alumni Weekend Alumni returned to campus for Alumni Weekend in May. Attendees enjoyed a variety of activities. Highlights included the Honor Guard luncheon, a mindful morning with yoga, law school building tours to show off the recent renovations, and class cocktail parties.
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Expedition. I will participate as a flower designer for the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts’ Arts and Flowers event in October. Glenn may actually take the plunge and retire from 48 years of legal practice.” TED CHANDLER, L’77, and Laura Lee Chandler, W’74, celebrated their 50 years of marriage this year by creating 50 memories. This includes events that remind them of important events of the past, creating memories with family and special friends, and making new memories with travel. Trips through April included bareboat sailing on a catamaran in the Caribbean; Iceland in February, where they witnessed a volcano eruption and snowmobiled on a glacier in subzero weather; Cape Town, South Africa; a safari in Namibia; and a family vacation in the Dominican Republic.
1980s Forbes included KEVIN B. LYNCH, L’81, on its list of the 15 Best Personal Injury Lawyers in New York City for 2024.
1990s BLAIR JACOBS, L’90, is one of three lawyers in the new Washington, D.C. office of Spencer Fane. Blair joins the firm’s intellectual property practice and represents high-technology innovators. He is a nationally recognized first-chair trial lawyer with extensive experience trying and winning bet-the-company patent litigation and trade secret cases throughout the country. He is a fellow of the Litigation Counsel of America and has served as lead appellate counsel on several precedential opinions shaping patent law. PBS SoCal recognized VICTOR NARRO, L’91, as a 2023 Local Hero for his work to improve working conditions for car wash workers in Los Angeles. The Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund honored him with its Excellence in Community Service award at the organization’s awards gala for his work on behalf of immigrant workers during the past 30 years. PRA Group named KEITH WARREN, L’93, chief risk and compliance officer. He has more than 30 years of leadership experience in compliance, legal, and operational risk.
ALUMNI PROFILE
MICHELLE BROGAN WELCH, L’99, is a senior assistant attorney general and director of the animal law unit in the Virginia attorney general’s office. The attorneys and investigators in the unit focus on animal abuse and neglect, trafficking, and training in animal law issues for law enforcement and other state attorneys. “Animals are capable of suffering,” Michelle said in a 2022 interview. “They do feel pain, and they don’t deserve to be abused. It became clear to me that they needed a real advocate, a prosecutor who was going to do that case really effectively.”
2000s CancerLink presented MICHAEL PLOTKIN, L’03, with its Krista Latshaw Pro Bono award in November. The award recognizes one of CancerLink’s volunteer attorneys or financial advisers who has demonstrated an unwavering commitment to CancerLink’s clients. Michael is a vice president and associate broker for Dumbarton Properties in Glen Allen, Virginia.
WIDE OPEN SPACES
Before there was Yellowstone’s John Dutton, there was GREG LUCE, L’77. The lawyer-turned-rancher owns a portion of Pitchfork Ranch, a historic 19th-century cattle ranch spanning around 100,000 acres across Wyoming’s Greybull River valley. Luce fell in love with the Rocky Mountain West on a trip with his family in the 1980s. A Virginia-based civil and criminal litigation lawyer in the health care industry, Luce dreamed of someday moving out west and getting involved with the ranching industry. A once-in-a-lifetime opportunity came along in 1998 when Luce heard that Pitchfork Ranch was for sale. Partnering with a colleague on the investment, Luce used his legal background to negotiate a purchase. As first orders of business, he and his wife, Stephanie, got to work preserving the land and restoring the original homestead site. “We put conservation easements over thousands of acres to protect the landscape from commercial development,” he said. “We also restored the historic bunkhouse, the long barn, and an abode house built by the original owner in the late 1800s.” In 2016, Luce and his partner divided their ownership interests, with Luce maintaining a smaller portion of the land that includes a trout stream and several herds of cattle and horses. In 2018, he and Stephanie moved from northern Virginia to live at the ranch full time. “We think of ourselves as stewards of a larger landscape — a community of life,” he said. “You’re not tourists here — you’ve got to really be part of it.” In July, the couple hosted a celebration to mark the 25th anniversary of their purchase. More than 120 friends, family, and community members gathered in the restored long barn for a barbecue dinner and barn dance. “We had everyone from the people who helped us with the restoration to our local UPS driver,” Luce said. “Having a ranch is truly a community affair. We take a great deal of pride in our work, and it felt great to celebrate it.” —Kyra Molinaro
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ALUMNI PROFILE
2010s AMANDA CONNER WEAVER, L’14, was included in Virginia Lawyers Weekly’s 2023 “Up & Coming Lawyers” list, which recognizes attorneys who have excelled in their first 10 years of practice. Amanda joined the labor, employment, and immigration section in the Williams Mullen law firm’s Richmond office in 2014. She helps clients maintain compliance with anti-discrimination laws, including the rapidly evolving area of gender identity and transgender/ transitioning employees.
BOLD STEPS
TRICIA DUNLAP, L’11, is living the boldest version of herself, surrounded by a great support system and optimistic about what lies ahead. A former high school teacher, she entered law school at age 40, inspired by professors and mentors who recognized her potential during her undergraduate studies in political science. “They saw a young woman in their class who was able and willing to go toe-to-toe and argue political philosophy,” she said. “I’ll be forever indebted to them for that because it planted the idea.” With nudging from a close friend and support from her parents, Dunlap took the LSAT. She graduated cum laude from Richmond Law. She founded Dunlap Law in September 2015. An expert in corporate law, Dunlap now focuses her time on “future-proofing” her firm by finding ways for her staff to connect with and serve their clients more effectively. For example, the firm launched subscription plans. “There is a real fear that small-business owners have about calling an attorney because they don’t know what it’s going to cost,” she said. “We want our clients to talk to us every time they have a hard decision to make. It’s included in their subscription.” Named a 2023 Women’s Business Center of Richmond POWERful Women Honoree and a Richmond BizSense 2024 RVA Power Woman, Dunlap advocates for authenticity — and a little grit — when pursuing one’s aspirations. “Every time you do something bold in your life, it gets easier,” she said. “And you get better at recognizing fear for what it is and saying, ‘I’m doing it anyway. Every time you do that, it opens the door to the next bold thing.” Dunlap has her eyes peeled for her next bold thing. “My journey has been to get me where I am now, and I know I’m not done,” she said. “There’s another chapter out there. I’m not going to stop. When I stop growing, you’ll know that I’m toes up.” —Cheryl Spain
Ogletree Deakins promoted SCOTT SIEGNER, L’15, to shareholder in the Richmond office. Scott’s practice includes employment litigation and counseling with a focus on whistleblower retaliation, employment discrimination, wrongful discharge, harassment, and wage-and-hour violations in both state and federal court.
2020s JON R.L. ROELLKE, L’20, joined Gentry Locke as a civil defense litigation associate in the firm’s Richmond office. He previously was a law clerk to the Honorable Robert J. Humphries in the Virginia Court of Appeals and the Honorable Edward Robbins Jr. in the Chesterfield (Virginia) Circuit Court. FLANNERY O’ROURKE, L’22, is a staff attorney at the Virginia Poverty Law Center, where she lobbies the General Assembly to make the state’s unemployment system fairer to unemployed workers.
ERIC POSTOW, L’16, is a managing partner at Holon Law Partners. His expertise extends across regulated industries, First
In Memoriam JOHN A. “PAT” GRAYBEAL, R’52 AND L’58, of Seattle, Washington, March 16, 2024 MEREDITH A. HOUSE, L’52, of Richmond, Virginia, Feb. 8, 2024 EDGAR L. “ED” TURLINGTON JR., R’54 AND L’59, of Richmond, Virginia, March 4, 2024 WILLIAM G. BOICE, L’63, of Richmond, Virginia, Dec. 5, 2023 CHARLES F. LINCOLN, L’71, of Marion, Virginia, Feb. 24, 2024 MARK T. DAVIS, R’74 AND L’77, of Lynchburg, Virginia, March 23, 2024 CLINTON B. “CB” FAISON JR., R’73 AND L’77, of Spring Grove, Virginia, Jan. 8, 2024
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Amendment religious freedoms, and the dynamic hemp beverage industry. He is a passionate advocate for religious freedoms within intentional communities, navigating the delicate intersection of spirituality and the commercialization of psychedelics and natural plant medicines.
PETER B. SMITH, L’74, of Henrico, Virginia, March 15, 2024 BRUCE P. GANEY, L’78, of Mechanicsville, Virginia, Jan. 1, 2024 HENRY N. “HARRY” WARE JR., L’83, of Dunnsville, Virginia, Jan. 2, 2024 LAWRENCE R. “LARRY” SALZMAN, L’84, of Williamsburg, Virginia, March 16, 2024 EILEEN NAUSE WAGNER, L’91, of White Stone, Virginia, Dec. 3, 2023 FAITH E. KELLEHER, L’92, of Charlotte, North Carolina, Jan. 18, 2024 JOSEPH A. BURNETT, L’95, of Henrico, Virginia, Aug. 15, 2021 PETER K. OPPER, L’05, of Henrico, Virginia, Nov. 24, 2023
“I’m grateful for the generosity of our alumni that allowed me to have this opportunity.” — Liza Garrity, L’25
TWO SUMMER PUBLIC SERVICE FELLOWSHIPS put Liza Garrity, L’25, in a position to support families
navigating the landscape of child welfare law. At the Virginia Office of the Children’s Ombudsman, Garrity learned about the ongoing development of legislation to address issues affecting kinship caregivers. She also helped indigent parents prepare for trial in family court through her internship with the Center for Family Representation in New York. Gifts from Richmond Law alumni and friends make it possible for students to gain real-world experience in unpaid summer positions in the government and nonprofit sectors. To support students like Garrity, visit uronline.net/givetoURLaw.
NON-PROFIT ORG. U.S. POSTAGE PAID RICHMOND, VA PERMIT NO. 6
203 Richmond Way University of Richmond, VA 23173
THE MOOT COURTROOM got an upgrade over the summer, allowing the space to double as a classroom. This semester, Mary Kelly Tate is teaching SCOTUS Criminal Court Seminar in the courtroom.