W&L Law - Spring/Summer 2010

The Washington and Lee School of Law Magazine

A d va n t a g e :

Students Gene Hamilton ’10L opted into the new third-year curriculum and gained a year of practical, experiential learning.

Also Inside: A C onversation

with

D e an R oy S t e i n h e i m e r

A l u m n i P u b l ic D e f e n d e r s E ric C haffin ’96L R e u n i o n R e cap

takes on

G la xo S mith K line

Spring/ Summer

2010

W&L Welcomes New L aw C ouncil M embers

Stacy D. Blank ’88L is a partner with Holland & Knight L.L.P. in Tampa, Fla., and focuses on appellate and general commercial litigation.

Benjamin C. Brown ’94, ’03L is a

J. Alexander Boone ’95L is president of Boone Homes Inc., a Roanoke-based real estate developer and homebuilder with operations in Roanoke and Richmond.

John A. Cocklereece Jr. ’76, ’79L practices

Katie Tritschler Boone ’06L is counsel for DS Waters of America Inc. in Atlanta, where she provides legal support for the corporate affairs of the company.

David K. Friedfeld ’83L is president of ClearVision Optical, a family-owned business based in Hauppauge, N.Y. ClearVision designs and markets optical quality frames and sunglasses for 10 distinctive brands.

counsel at Wilmer, Cutler, Pickering, Hale & Dorr L.L.P. in Washington, where he represents clients in a broad range of securities enforcement matters, as well as in internal and other governmental investigations.

with Bell, Davis & Pitt P.A. and focuses on general business representation, estate planning and administration, and tax, principally tax controversy and property tax appeals.

Rakesh Gopalan ‘06L is an associate

Diana L. Grimes ‘07L is an associate

W. Henry Jernigan Jr. ’72, ’75L is a

at McGuireWoods L.LP. in Charlotte, N.C, where he advises clients in the areas of securities, complex commercial contracts and mergers and acquisitions.

with Faegre & Benson L.L.P. in Des Moines, Iowa, practicing primarily in the areas of corporate transactions, public utility law and public finance.

partner in the litigation department at Dinsmore & Shohl L.L.P. and is the managing partner for its West Virginia offices. He focuses on the defense of complex litigation involving corporate disputes and product liability claims.

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Teamwork

Five law alumni in the Public Defenders Office give Southwestern Virginians a learned hand to hold.

By

Maggie and

Sutherland

Louise

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Uffelman

12 Looking Out for the Little Guy

Eric Chaffin ’96L does good by doing right.

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by Amy

Balfour

’89, ’93L

14 T h e T r a n s f or m at i on of the Third Year

A look inside the practicum courses.

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d e p a r t m e n t s 2 Law Council President’s Message

The Third-Year Curriculum

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3 D i s c ove r y

Mark Grunewald named interim dean, graduation round-up, a conversation with Roy Steinheimer and faculty accomplishments ..........................................................

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Reunion Weekend wrap-up and alumni profiless ..........................................................

Cover of Gene Hamilton ’10L

by Kevin Remington

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The Third-Year Curriculum brandt Surgner Jr. ’87, ’94L passes the leadership of the Law Council to Stacy Gould Van Goor ’95L. Volume 10

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© Wa s h i n g t o n a n d L e e U n i v e r s i t y

Louise Uffelman I Editor Kelli Austin ’03, Emily Anne Taylor ’12

Class Notes Editors Patrick Hinely ’73, Kevin Remington

University Photographers Jim Goodwin, Laurie Lipscomb, Denise Watts, Mary Woodson

Graphic Designers Bart Morris, Morris Design

Art Director University Advancement Jeffer y G. Hanna , Executive Director

of Communications and Public Affairs

Advancement

for the School of Law

Communications and Public Affairs

Elizabeth Branner , Director of Law School Peter Jetton , Director of Communications Julie Campbell, Associate Director of

Published by Washington and Lee University, Lexington, Va. 24450. All communications and POD Forms 3579 should be sent to Washington and Lee Alumni Inc., Lexington, Va. 24450. Periodicals postage paid at Norfolk, Va. Law Alumni Association Officers Stacy Gould Van Goor ’95L, President (San Diego) James J. Ferguson Jr. ’88L, Vice President (Dallas) W. Hildebrandt Surgner Jr. ’87, ’94L, Immediate Past President (Richmond) Darlene Moore, Executive Secretary (Lexington) Law Council Eric A. Anderson ’82L (New York City) Blas Arroyo ’81L (Charlotte, N.C.) Stacy D. Blank ’88L, Tampa, Fla. J. Alexander Boone ’95L, Roanoke Katherine Tritschler Boone ’06L, Atlanta Benjamin C. Brown ’94, ’03L, Bethesda, Md. T. Hal Clark Jr. ’73, ’76L (Charlotte, N.C.) John A. Cocklereece Jr. ’76, ’79L, Winston-Salem, N.C. Thomas E. Evans ’91L (Rogers, Ark.) David K. Friedfeld ’83L, Dix Hills, N.Y. Betsy Callicott Goodell ’80L (Bronxville, N.Y.) Rakesh Gopalan ’06L, Charlotte, N.C. Diana L. Grimes ’07L, Des Moines, Iowa Peebles Harrison ’92L (Nags Head, N.C.) Christie Hassan ’98L (Washington) Nathan V. Hendricks III ’66, ’69L (Atlanta) A. John Huss ’65L (St. Paul, Minn.)

Wyndall Ivey ’99L (Birmingham, Ala.) W. Henry Jernigan Jr. ’72, ’75L, Charleston, W.Va. The Hon. Mary Miller Johnston ’84L (Wilmington, Del.) The Hon. Everett A. Martin Jr. ’74, ’77L (Norfolk, Va.) Andrew J. Olmem ’96, ’01L (Arlington, Va.) Lesley Brown Schless ’80L (Old Greenwich, Conn.)

William Toles ’92, ’95L (Dallas)

Exercising judgment... intellectual rigor...legal writing...mentoring... interdisciplinary issue analysis...

Sounds a lot like law practice, doesn’t it? During our recent Law Council meetings in Lexington, we also used these words to describe the experience of the 80 third-year students voluntarily participating in the Law School’s new third-year program.

Over the course of the weekend, Law Council members spoke formally and informally with students, faculty, alumni and administrators about this program. Yes, we heard about kinks that need ironing out. Yes, we heard of some debate concerning the direction of the program and, yes, we heard some alumni question the wisdom of change. More importantly and more fundamentally, however, we heard and perceived overwhelming enthusiasm and support for the program.

The identification of opportunities and open, honest debate concerning large-scale change are healthy and expected, especially at an institution such as W&L. Core changes are not new to our University. W&L has only improved with change. The arrival of coeducation in the Law School and, years later, on the undergraduate campus provide cogent examples of alumni, students, faculty and staff identifying, collectively supporting and following through on a course of action that propelled the institution forward.

The new third-year program is innovative and bold. Eighty graduating third-year students participated in the program this year, and at least that number of rising third-year students have enrolled in the program for next year. Law School faculty, together with practitioners representing about a half-dozen law firms, are developing more than 20 courses (called practicums) for 2010–2011. The courses, which are supplemented with clinical and externship experiences, represent an astounding array of legal disciplines. One practicum may involve international law. Another may involve students advising “clients” (faculty or practitioners) on an issue involving education law that later develops into litigation. A third practicum may require students to advise a start-up business using corporate, business and tax law concepts, and, later in the semester, take the company public under the securities laws and advise the principals of the business on some estate planning issues. Intensive legal analysis, writing and client counseling are key pillars of the program.

This innovative, intellectually rigorous program will provide a distinct advantage for our graduates. They will enter law practice having experienced a full year of practical, experiential learning marked by solving real-life problems through the application of legal principles across various disciplines and the exercise of legal judgment.

This is a very exciting time for the Law School. Alumni support of the Law School and its third-year program will promote and accelerate success. I encourage all Law School alumni to support the program—volunteer to teach or participate in a practicum or consider a gift in support of the program (the Huss Third-Year Challenge)—and participate in yet another successful change at Washington and Lee. —Brandt Surgner Jr. ’87, ’94L, Immediate Past President

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Mark Grunewald Named Interim Dean Mark Grunewald , the James P. Morefield Professor of Law at Washington and Lee University, has been named interim dean of the W&L School of Law, effective July 1.

Provost June Aprille said, “He has the full confidence of both the law faculty and the University administration as the right person to lead the school during this transitional period.”

Grunewald, a member of the law faculty since 1976, has taught and written widely on labor and employment law and administrative law. He has served on many key committees in the School of Law and has chaired several,

including the recent Educational Planning and Curriculum Committee and the Self-study for American Bar Association Accreditation.

In addition, Grunewald’s administrative experience includes service as associate dean from 1992-1996 and as interim dean during the 1999-2000 academic year. He also has been an elected member of the President’s Advisory Committee and is currently a faculty representative to the Board of Trustees.

Grunewald received his B.A. from Emory University and his J.D. with highest honors from George Washington University, where he was editor in chief of the George Washington Law Review.

Prior to joining the faculty, he was an attorney in the U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Legal Counsel, and an associate in the Washington law firm of Arent, Fox, Kitner, Plotkin & Kahn.

Tim Jost , one of the nation’s leading health-law experts, has

received a $300,000 grant from the Commonwealth Fund to research implementation issues involved with the recently passed health-care-reform legislation.

The grant will be shared with Mark Hall of Wake Forest Law School and Katherine Swartz of the Harvard School of Public Health, with Jost serving as the project director. The grant comes from the Commonwealth Fund’s program on Affordable Health Insurance.

The project, to be conducted in several stages, will focus on the implementation of health-insurance exchanges, organized markets for the purchase of comparable health-insurance plans.

The project will provide real-time analysis of implementation, both to educate the public as to how implementation is proceeding and to inform policy makers as to how likely implementation is to succeed.

Jost, who attended the signing ceremony for the historic health-reform legislation on March 23 in the East Room of the White House, is the author of numerous books and articles on health policy, including the nation’s leading casebook on the subject of health law. Whether the subject was so-called “death panels,” the timing of legislative triggers, the function of health exchanges, potential constitutional challenges to a health care mandate, or provisions regarding federal funding of abortion, Jost has been a frequent commentator in the print and broadcast media.

A catalog of his articles and media appearances is available online at law.wlu.edu/jost.

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Graduation 2010

awards John W. Davis Prize for Law highest cumulative grade point average Erica Blayre Haggard

T

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The School of Law celebrated its 155th commencement on May 8.

The University awarded 123 juris doctor degrees, along with two master of laws degrees to M. Asif Ehsan and Sebghatullah Ebrahimi, students from Afghanistan who attended W&L through a U.S. State Department initiative promoting justice reform in Afghanistan.

Graduation festivities began Friday afternoon on the Lewis Hall lawn with the annual awards ceremony and presentation of walking sticks. The John W. Davis Prize for Law, awarded to the graduate with the highest cumulative grade Sidney Evans, associate dean for point average, went to Erica Blayre student services (left) and Haggard of Carrollton, Texas. Three Bob Danforth, associate dean for students graduated summa cum academic affairs (right), lead the laude, 18 graduated magna cum procession at the Law School’s 155th commencement. laude and 19 graduated cum laude.

Twelve students were named to the Order of the Coif, an honorary scholastic society that encourages excellence in legal education.

The Class of 2010 distinguished itself with its pro bono service to the law and the community. In all, the class completed 6,240 hours of service during this academic year. Seventeen students completed 100 hours or more of service.

Carolyn B. Lamm, an international arbitration, litigation and trade lawyer from Washington who has been ABA president since 2009, delivered this year’s commencement address under a bright blue sky on the University’s historic Front Campus.

In her remarks, Lamm told the graduates American Bar that they must always be principled and true Association to themselves and that “it is not just the role of President Carolyn B. Lamm gave the law that we are called upon to strengthen but commencement the rule of just law. address.

“Never has the role of lawyer been more important than it is today. All persons are entitled to the benefit of the rule of law and adjudication of their rights,” Lamm said. “Our American legal profession has a proud history of standing up to right wrongs, no matter how unpopular the cause, and to ensure that the defense of the unpopular is as vigorous as defense of mainstream.”

She singled out the new Arizona law on immigration. “We see all too much evidence of denying those…whom certain segments of society may hate the benefit of law in the name of national security, immigraKamyle Griffin ’10L tion enforcement and control, or receives her walking otherwise,” she said. “We must constick from Class President Joe demn such laws and seek to have Mercer ’10L the courts declare them unconstiat the awards ceremony the tutional and take a constitutional day before approach to immigration control. graduation.

Denial of legal rights and due process to any may evolve to denial of legal rights to many. We cannot tolerate this.”

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Academic Progress Award most satisfactory scholastic progress in the final year Nicholas J. Neidzwski

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Virginia Trial Lawyers Association Award effective trial advocacy Jonathan Pratt Lockwood

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Roy L. Steinheimer Jr. Commercial Law Award excellence in commercial law Erica Blayre Haggard

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Calhoun Bond University Service Award significant contributions to the University community Caitlin Roberts Cottingham and Eric Julian Hoffman

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Frederic L. Kirgis Jr. International Law Award excellence in international law John Christopher LaMont and Sarah Elizabeth Mielke

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National Association of Women Lawyers Award outstanding woman law student Marti Jo McCaleb .................................................

Charles V. Laughlin Award outstanding contributions to the moot court program Andrew J. Fadale

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Randall P. Bezanson Award outstanding contributions to diversity in the life of the Law School community Christopher Robert Riano

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Virginia Bar Family Law Section Award excellence in the area of family law Joseph Charles Mercer

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American Bankruptcy Institute Medal excellence in the study of bankruptcy law Brett Michael Shockley

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Barry Sullivan Constitutional Law Award excellence in constitutional law Patrick Thomas Chamberlain

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James W. H. Stewart Tax Law Award excellence in tax law Zachary Ian Mills and Rajeeve Thakur

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Thomas Carl Damewood Evidence Award excellence in the area of evidence George Brian Davis

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A. H. McLeod-Ross Malone Advocacy Award distinction in oral advocacy Victoria Vance Corder and Nathan Joseph Marchese

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Student Bar Association President Award services as the president of the Student Bar Association Jennifer-Ann Cantwell A l u m n i

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The Tucker Era of the Law School faded a bit further this year with the retirement of Professor James M. Phemister after 36 years of service at Washington and Lee. Phemister was the only remaining member of the permanent faculty to have taught in Tucker Hall.

Phemister received his B.S. from Purdue University in 1966 and his J.D. from Northwestern University in 1969, where he was named to the Order of the Coif and served as symposium editor for the Northwestern University Law Review. After law school, he worked for Squire, Sanders & Dempsey in Cleveland, Ohio, before joining the Law School as an assistant professor of law in 1974.

During his career, Phemister taught Civil Procedure, Federal Jurisprudence, Evidence, Trial Advocacy and Lawyer’s Role, which was one of the School’s first legal skills courses. He also authored the committee report that led in the late ’80s to the inclusion of the school’s S p r i n g / S u m m e r

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legal clinics in the graded law school curriculum.

As a member of the Rockbridge Area Conservation Council, Phemister helped pair the School’s legal expertise with environmental issues affecting the local community. In 1989, he worked with W&L law students and former W&L law professor David Wirth to challenge the construction of a coalfired cogeneration plant on the banks of the James River, in Buena Vista.

Phemister’s service to the University extended well beyond the Law school.

An avid runner, he coached both the W&L women’s cross country team and the distance runners on the track and field team. From 1988 to 1997, he guided the cross country team to five ODAC championships, coached two All-Americans, and was named ODAC Coach of the Year six times.

In 1999, Phemister joined Mary Natkin ’85L as co-director of the Black Lung Legal Clinic. Natkin credits him with helping normalize and profession-

alize black lung administrative hearings by applying the best practices of civil procedure.

While working in the clinic, Phemister developed its black lung boot camp, based on a team-building exercise he used with his cross country teams. During the boot camp, students heading into a year of work in the clinic are immersed in the law, pulmonary science and culture common to black lung cases. The boot camp method, praised in the world of clinical education, has been adopted widely across other practice areas.

In retirement, Phemister looks forward to spending more time with his four grandchildren and his wife, Carol. He also plans to focus his considerable energies on his 80-acre farm in Rockbridge County. In addition to planting more than 30,000 pine and hardwood saplings on the pastureland, he recently reconstructed a log barn dating to the 1820s. He made much of the project’s custom hardware himself.

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A Conversation with Roy Steinheimer On Coming to W&L

I was at Michigan between 15 and 20 years when some friends of mine who I respected approached me about this opportunity at Washington and Lee. At first it seemed to me I really didn’t want to make any change, but the more I thought about it, the more I thought I ought to accept the challenge, which it was, to see what I could do with the School, so I just took the leap.

The Sky Dean

I was a reasonably accomplished pilot and had my own aircraft, and I did a lot of flying on business for the University of Michigan. When I came to W&L, it was even more important to me to have the airplane because it was relatively isolated.

In addition to having a full teaching load, I flew the plane to recruit students. And one of the things I always stressed was the size of the school. When I was at Michigan, I could see the disadvantages of size with professional schools, when so much depends on shaping and molding the person as a professional. I was convinced that Michigan had gotten too big and had suffered as a result of that.

So one of things that I emphasized to Bob Huntley and to members of the Board is that we had to preserve at all costs the advantages we had of size. I thought we could turn out finer professional people if we got to know them and were in constant contact with them so that the professionalism that we as professors had could rub off on them.

Challenges

Roy Steinheimer served as dean from 1968 to 1983, retiring from the deanship at the then mandatory retirement age of 65. He continued teaching as a professor of law until retiring with emeritus status in 1987.

In 1989, he returned to W&L as an adjunct professor of law, a position he held until 1999.

Steinheimer, who turned 93 last Dec. 2, lives at the Kendal Retirement Community in Lexington. One of his neighbors and frequent lunch companions is Bob Huntley ’51, ’57L, former president of W&L and also a former dean of the Law School.

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One of the first challenges was space. We needed more space for classroom and library facilities. Then there was the challenge of broadening people’s awareness of Washington and Lee as a possibility for studying law.

When I talked to Bob Huntley about coming here, one of the things that I told him I would want to do was to have the Law School be a coeducational operation.

He said that was fine with him, but it would have to be approved by the Board of Trustees. It took some time for that change to occur, and frankly I was helped when the Association of American Law Schools and the American Bar Association established a requirement that law schools had to be co-ed, which was a trump card for me.

The first year or so having women was a little tense at times. We had six women in the first class, six women on the whole campus. And during the first year, I could almost guarantee that once a week a delegation of six women would appear at my door to demand something.

My Greatest Achievement

It’s a little hard to single out any particular thing. One of the toughest jobs was bringing the women aboard. So many things about the W&L operation were geared entirely toward men, and it was a real job getting the women accommodated without there being a lot of noses out of joint.

I had to fight the battle of having the athletic facilities opened up to the women, and also housing facilities. It was a lot of work, but this was something that had to happen.

His Advice to the Law School Today

I feel very satisfied by what we accomplished at W&L. I hope the School will remain small and selective and resist the temptation to get too large, and still have an impact on the profession.

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Faculty Accomplishments Bruner’s “Power and Purpose in the ‘Anglo-American’ Corporation”—published in the Virginia Journal of International Law—won the Association of American Law Schools 2010 Scholarly Papers Competition.

Bruner, a corporate and securities law scholar, presented his work at the AALS annual meeting in New Orleans. Bruner also participated in two corporate governance panel discussions including justices of the Delaware Supreme Court, and he organized a lecture series at W&L on the financial crisis, sponsored by the American Constitution Society and the Business Law Society.

he will be a visiting scholar and senior fellow at the University of Melbourne, Australia. In addition to serving as an expert in an asylum law matter, Drumbl was appointed to the Council on Foreign Relations Advisory Committee for the U.S. policy towards the International Criminal Court Review Conference. His commentary appeared in a variety of media outlets, including Voice of America and the Washington Monthly. He published several articles and book chapters on genocide, including pieces in the Journal of International Criminal Justice and Proceedings of the Second Annual International Humanitarian Dialogs.

Bob Danforth gave several presenta-

The Tax Clinic, under the direction of Michelle Drumbl , received a $50,000 federal grant for the third consecutive year. Drumbl entered an advance contract with LexisNexis to write the Federal Income Tax volume for their Skills & Values supplemental text series, for release in 2011.

Christopher

tions based on his new Tax Management Portfolio (co-authored with Howard M. Zaritsky) on Subpart E of Subchapter J of the Internal Revenue Code (the “grantor trust” rules). This spring he published (with co-author Brant Hellwig) a textbook on estate and gift taxation, as part of the tax LL.M. series published by LexisNexis. He served in several expert witness roles concerning the proper interpretation of trust agreements, the fiduciary duties of trustees, and the malpractice liability of estate planning lawyers. He participated in a panel on law school curriculum reform at the Future Ed Conference.

Mark Drumbl

presented his work on international criminal law in invited lectures at Yale, Pennsylvania, Cornell, Vanderbilt, Ottawa, Queen’s, Loyola-Chicago, McGill, Georgetown Mark Drumbl and the University of Amsterdam. In January he was a visiting professor at the University of Ottawa and as of July S p r i n g / S u m m e r

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Josh Fairfield

Fairfield’s article “Virtual Parentalism” was cited in the Federal Trade Commission’s recent report to Congress in support of the use of filtering technologies rather than regulation to protect both children and adults in virtual worlds. The report also quoted at length Fairfield’s recent article in the McGill Law Journal, “Anti-Social Contracts: The Contractual Governance

Josh

of Virtual Worlds.” He published “The End of the (Virtual) World” in the West Virginia Law Review’s symposium edition on digital entrepreneurship. He presented at several conferences held within the virtual world Second Life, including as the invited speaker at the 100th episode of Metanomics, an online forum that explores the serious uses of virtual worlds.

Susan Franck organized a joint sympo-

sium at W&L with the United Nations.

The conference explored international investment and alternative dispute resolution and drew more than 80 scholars, practitioners and government officials from all over the world to Lexington.

She presented her scholarship at several conferences and professional associations, including the American Society of International Law’s Annual Meeting, the American Association of Law School’s Annual Meeting, and the University of Sydney Investment Law and Arbitration conference. She wrote two articles exploring investment treaty arbitration and a book chapter, “Considering Recalibration of International Investment Agreements: Empirical Insights,” to be published by Oxford University Press. She was again named to the International Bar Association’s list of “International Who’s Who of Commercial Arbitration.”

Lyman Johnson was an expert for the plaintiff-shareholders in Jones v. Harris Associates, heard last session by the U.S. Supreme Court. On March 30, the Court ruled 9-0 in favor of the shareholders in their appeal. Johnson published “Re-Enchanting the Corporation” in the inaugural issue of the William and Mary Business Law Review and gave talks at Drexel, Catholic and the Association of American Law Schools Annual Meeting.

Tim Jost spent the fall and winter work-

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tion. He posted about various aspects of the legislation on the Health Affairs and Georgetown Law School’s O’Neill Center’s Legal Solutions in Health Reform websites. He published two articles about the bill in the New England Journal of Medicine, as well as op-eds in several newspapers. He was quoted frequently in the national media, including NPR, Fox News, C-Span, Newsweek, the New York Times, the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times. Jost is a consumer representative to the National Association of Insurance Commissioners and is working on health-reform-implementation issues. He also made presentations on the legislation for the Commonwealth Fund in Washington, the American Health Lawyers’ Association Medicare and Medicaid Conference in Baltimore, and at the NAIC meeting in Denver.

U.S. Sentencing Commission on mandatory minimum sentencing provisions under federal law.

David Millon

David Millon was the Ron W. Ianni

Jim Moliterno published several arti-

J.D. King , director of the Criminal Justice Clinic, is the inaugural recipient of the Monaghan Fellowship, established by Jessine Monaghan ’79L to provide support for faculty members seeking to improve W&L’s third-year curriculum. King joins the permanent faculty this year.

Erik Luna organized a workshop exploring prosecutorial power in a transnational context. He published articles on the Fourth Amendment and the war on terror, and an op-ed in the National Law Journal on the representation of indigent defendants. Luna testified before the 8

Scholar senior research grant at the Max Planck Institute in Heidelberg, Germany.

He published several articles on U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, including “Clinton, Ginsburg and Centrist Federalism” in the Indiana Law Journal. He made numerous presentations on comparative constitutional law in Germany, Austria and Spain and also presented on the Obama administration’s progressive federalism at the GermanAmerican Lawyers Association Meeting in Frankfurt am Main, Germany.

Murchison spent several weeks in Australia as a visiting scholar at the University of Melbourne Law School and its Center for Media and Communications Law. While there, he presented a paper and served as a panelist on discussions exploring blogging, free speech and privacy law issues. He will publish “Reflections on Breach of Confidence from the U.S. Perspective” in the Center’s Media & Arts Law Review.

He participated in the First Amendment Scholars Conference at the Thomas Jefferson Center.

Brian

Scholar at the University of Windsor Law School in Canada, where he presented a faculty seminar on the Citizens United case and taught a class on corporate theory and social responsibility. He also presented a paper at the University of Auckland, New Zealand, on corporate purpose and law reform. At W&L, he participated in a lecture series on the financial crisis exploring the various regulatory efforts to contain the damage and reform the financial system.

J.D. King

Russell Miller received a Fulbright

cles and gave several related presentations in the U.S. and abroad on exporting American legal education and ethics, including in Kosova, the former Soviet Georgia, and at the fifth Global Legal Skills Conference in Monterrey, Mexico.

His book Professional Responsibility is now in its third edition, and his book Introduction to Law, Law Study, and the Lawyer’s Role is forthcoming. In March, he served as a visiting professor at Masaryk University Pravni Facultet in Brno, Czech Republic, where he taught a one-week course for new professors on the use of experiential education methods.

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Doug Rendleman published Complex

Litigation: Injunctions, Structural Remedies, and Contempt, and a book chapter on equitable discretion following eBay v. MercExchange. His article “Collecting a Libel Tourist’s Defamation Judgment” was in the SSRN Top 10 Download List for Federal Courts and Jurisdiction.

Rendleman also served on the panel “Remedies in Times of Economic Crisis and Financial Scandal” at the Association of American Law Schools annual meeting, and serves on the 2010 Executive Committee of the AALS Remedies section.

Adam Scales participated in the

DePaul College of Law 16th Annual Clifford Symposium titled “The Limits of Predictability and the Value of Uncertainty.” Scales also participated in a lecture series at W&L on the finan-

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cial crisis, sponsored by the American Constitution Society and the Business Law Society, during which he discussed the role of credit default swaps in the crisis and assessed the regulatory challenges they pose. published several articles: “Nationwide Personal Jurisdiction for our Federal Courts” (Denver Law Review), “The Restrictive Ethos in Civil Procedure” (George Washington Law Review) and “Iqbal and the Slide Toward Restrictive Procedure” (Lewis & Clark Ben Spencer Law Review). Spencer was appointed to the Council of the Virginia State Bar Civil Litigation Section. Also, in his capacity as a special

Ben Spencer

assistant U.S. attorney, he argued and won an appeal in the Fourth Circuit on behalf of the government in United States v. Stewart.

Sally Wiant contrib-

uted a submission to the Encyclopedia of Library and Information Sciences on Uniform Computer Information Transactions (UCITA). She participated in a panel on copyright and libraries at a symposium sponsored by the North Carolina Journal of Law & Technology, in Chapel Hill, N.C. Robin Fretwell Wilson gave the

Sidney and Walter Siben Distinguished Professorship Lecture at Hofstra

Listen In

University School of Law, and she presented in the Saint Louis University Center for Health Law Studies’ Distinguished Speakers Series. She also spoke on a panel at Harvard Law School devoted to the topic of her co-edited book Same-Sex Marriage and Religious Liberty, and gave presentations at Princeton University, George Washington University, the University of Illinois College of Law, the University of Maryland School of Law, Boston University School of Law, Northwestern University School of Law, William and Mary Marshall-Wythe School of Law and the 35th Annual Conference of Public Responsibility in Medicine and Research. Wilson lectured on comparative family law at the University of Padua in Italy. Her article, “Sex Play in Virtual Worlds,” in the Washington and Lee Law Review, was cited in the Federal Trade Commission’s recent report to Congress and in the American Spectator.

There are many interesting lectures and symposia on campus, and you can listen to them via podcast, either through iTunes or the Law School webpage. Visit law.wlu.edu/news/archivemultimedia.asp for the full selection. Here are a few listings.

d McDonald v. Chicago » Prof. Erik Luna discussed McDonald v.

Chicago, the important Second Amendment case just decided by the U.S. Supreme Court and what a decision striking down the Chicago gun laws will mean for future legal battles.

d Why International Courts and Tribunals Look and Act Like They Do » David Caron, president of the American Society of International Law, explores the dynamic strategic relationships that lead courts and tribunals to look and act as they do.

d Combating Sexual Violence in Tanzania » Law students in the International Human Rights Practicum traveled to Tanzania to investigate enforcement of the countrys 1998 Sexual Offenses Act. The landmark legislation amended the country’s penal code to include tougher penalties for sexual assault and also outlawed human trafficking and the harmful cultural practice known as female genital mutilation.

d Journal of Energy, Climate and the Environment Symposium, Keynote Address » Jonathan Cannon, the Blaine T. Phillips Distinguished Professor of Environmental Law, Class of 1941 Research Professor of Law, and director of Environmental and Land Use Law Program, presents, “Acting in Uncertainty’s Shadow: The Challenge of Climate Change Policy.” d Managing Perfect Storms: A Judicial Perspective on the Challenges Presented by High Visibility Cases »The Hon. Leonie M. Brinkema, U.S. District Court Judge for the Eastern District of Virginia, delivers the 2010 Tucker Lecture. Judge Brinkema has presided over some of the most closely watched cases of the decade, including the trial of Zacarias Moussaoui, the first person convicted for crimes related to the 9/11 terror attacks.

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d Lawfare: The Formation and Deformation of Gacaca Jurisdictions in Rwanda, 1994-2009 » Harvard University Professor Jens Meierhenrich, speaks about his latest book, which explores judicial responses to the 1994 genocide in Rwanda. d Hollingsworth v. Perry, The California Marriage Equality Lawsuit » Professor William N. Eskridge Jr., the John A. Garver Professor of Jurisprudence at Yale Law School, discusses the Hollingsworth case, which challenges California’s recent Proposition 8 banning same-sex marriage in the state.

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Front row: Christina Slate, Laura Frazier Back Row: Matt Clark, Andy Hynes, Michael McPheeters

Five law alumni in the Public Defenders Office give Southwestern Virginians a learned hand to hold.

The Henry County Public Defenders Office in Martinsville, Va., is now home to five W&L law alumni: Michael McPheeters ’07L, Matthew Clark ’01L, Laura Frazier ’08L, Christina Slate ’07L and its newest addition, Andrew Hynes ’09L. Their reasons for joining the office are varied. Slate began in private practice and was miserable, Hynes sought a work-life balance and McPheeters wanted to work for the underdog.

For Frazier, it was serendipity.

“I started because the office was hiring, and I needed a job,” she said.

“The wonderful thing is that now I can’t imagine myself doing anything else. I am actually surprised I didn’t think about criminal law as a career in the first place.”

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Southwest Virginia, where unemployment hovers at around 22 percent, needs their skills. As Hynes explained, “Here in Martinsville/ Henry County, the majority of my clients either worked in manufacturing or are the children of manufacturing laborers. Since most of that industry closed in the late ’90s, many have found themselves forced to the breaking point by a total lack of employment opportunity, coupled with a lack of education. My typical client did not finish high school, and the most surprising thing is how ignorant most are of their basic rights.”

The obstacles are many and start with broken homes and high-crime neighborhoods and the need for drug rehabilitation and mental health serW & L

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vices. “While not all of my clients commit crimes because they are poor, it is a significant factor for many of them,” noted Frazier. “Once they are in the system, the cycle is easily continued. A client who comes in for a basic speeding ticket is left with a fine and court costs to pay. If they do not pay these fines, the license is suspended. At this point, if they are lucky enough to have a job in this economy, they no longer have a license to drive themselves there in order to make money to pay off their fines. And if they do drive and get caught, they are faced with mandatory jail time that will likely result in the loss of their job. It’s easy, I feel, for the general public to perceive our clients as general ne’er-do-wells who have no

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respect for authority. In reality, many are just people who just can’t seem to get out of the cycle.”

The other major obstacle these public defenders face is the sheer amount of resources arrayed against their clients.

“While each case has an attorney representing the interests of the client and an attorney for the commonwealth, the commonwealth’s attorneys have a large advantage in the support of their staff,” explained Hynes. “From victim/ witness programs to the police force, my clients face a small army of individuals working toward their conviction.

In order to overcome this, I frequently resort to one of the most important lessons taught to W&L students—respect.

By being candid and respectful with opposing counsel, I’m able to far more effectively represent my client’s interests than if I aggressively cross-examined every witness brought to the stand.”

Another problem is sometimes the client’s attitude.

“There is the challenge of not being taken seriously because of the title ‘public defender,’ with all of the stereotypes that come with it,” said Fraizer. “Sadly, the worst offenders are usually the clients. I find that the best way to blaze through this is to do the very best I can for each and every client. Hopefully, I can change the perspective of a few people and what it means to be a public defender.”

Slate added, “They often have preconceived notions of public defenders—that we are only doing this because we couldn’t get a real job, that we don’t care about their case, that we are in cahoots with the state. Obviously, that couldn’t be further from the truth. When I get that vibe from a client, I just try to reassure him that I am on his side and that I am very capable.”

As public service lawyers, they find their greatest resources come from their legal education. Said Slate, “I consider myself very fortunate to have had the opportunity to study under the late Professor Roger Groot. He literally wrote the book on criminal defense in Virginia. The way I think about and prepare for cases today is the way he taught me to think about and prepare for cases. In my third year, I was lucky enough to be a member of VC3, under the guidance of David Bruck. David taught us to challenge the status quo, to fight the good fight. I also owe a great deal to Professor Scott Sundby. His Constitutional Criminal Procedure class is a must for anyone considering a career in criminal law.”

Fraizer, who worked with the Black Lung Clinic and Phi Alpha Delta, said, “The work ethic I established while doing community service projects in Lexington has helped me transition seamlessly into the professional world. I feel confident in my abilities to research and examine a problem and use those skills regularly to help my clients.”

Hynes also found his clinical experiences at W&L taught him the skills he uses most in his career. “It was the semesters I spent in the Tax Clinic that prepared me for the reality of living life at or below the poverty line.

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for granted on the part of my clients. Now, I double-check to make sure that nothing I’m asking for is impossible.”

They admit that seeing the same clients over and over again can be demoralizing. But they are the only advocate many of these people have, and as public defenders, their relationships with judges, police officers and commonwealth’s attorneys help level the playing field.

The fulfillment comes, said McPheeters, “when I get the opportunity to positively affect someone’s life, such as helping a habitual offender get their driver’s license back, keeping a young person from getting their first felony or crafting a plea agreement that will allow a client to serve in the military.”

Hynes said, “For me, the best part is when going the extra mile for a client pays huge dividends. When talking to the witness you didn’t think mattered or calling their family at home reveals a fact that literally changes the direction of the case and allows my client to get just treatment, rather than just be punitively punished. I also enjoy helping the families of my clients find alternatives to incarceration, as it seems more than half of my caseload concerns individuals with drug and alcohol abuse problems.”

An upside, of course, is having fellow alumni around.

“While it makes the atmosphere more congenial, I think our shared mission binds us more than our alumni status,” said Slate. “Sure, we have a good time reminiscing about our shared experiences in Lexington, but we spend more time talking about cases.”

But the best part is, said Fraizer, “coming to work every day to protect the Constitution. I can’t imagine a better way to spend my 9 to 5.”

W&L’s Shepherd Public Interest Fund provides the financial incentive to law alumni, such as Andrew Hynes ’09L and Michael McPheeters ’07L, to accept low-paying jobs in public service law. “I feel so fortunate to have graduated from a law school which demonstrates an appreciation for those of us who work in the trenches,” said McPheeters.

The Shepherd Loan Repayment Assistant Program, funded by the Shepherd Public Interest Fund, provides financial assistance to graduates in public interest law at salaries below what their counterparts in the private sector are earning.

Currently, the LRAP endowment stands at $1 million, providing roughly $50,000 annually to assist W&L law graduates. This year, the Law School was able to fund 13 alumni who work in public interest positions. If you would like to support this program, please contact brannere@wlu.edu.

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In January, Eric Chaffin ’96L (right) and his law partner, Roopal Luhana, opened Chaffin Luhana Law Firm, a plaintiffs-only boutique focusing on mass tort litigation.

by Amy C. Balfour ’89, ’93

“Their hands resemble claws. They really can’t move them at all. They’re very spastic,” said Eric Chaffin ’96L, a hard-charging plaintiff’s attorney representing the second-largest group of consumers in the country, in a lawsuit against GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) and Procter & Gamble (P&G). “There’s also a lot of atrophy. They’re effectively quadriplegic. It’s horrible.”

His clients suffer from devastating physical problems they blame on the denture creams Super Poligrip, made by GSK, and Fixodent, made by P&G. They claim that the zinc-based creams—used to secure false teeth— flushed critical amounts of copper from their bodies, resulting in permanent and crippling nerve damage.

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Chaffin is the court-appointed coliaison counsel in the Philadelphia denture cream Mass Tort Program and is the court-appointed member of the Plaintiff’s Steering Committee. He is also the federal-state court liaison counsel in the federal MDL denture cream litigation. In January, Chaffin’s firm defeated P&G’s motion to dismiss punitive damages in the Philadelphia litigation. He is now preparing his cases for trial in Philadelphia.

Chaffin’s fast-track career started at Reed Smith in Pittsburgh, followed by a federal clerkship. Next came a stint in the U.S. attorney’s office in Brooklyn. From there he jumped to W & L

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plaintiff’s powerhouses Seeger Weiss and Bernstein Liebhard. Chaffin served as lead counsel or co-counsel on several high-profile cases, including the In re IPO Securities Litigation, which settled for $586 million, and a consumer action involving a $17.5 million settlement for customers defrauded by Dell Financial.

In January, he opened Chaffin Luhana, a plaintiffs-only boutique firm focusing on mass tort, securities and whistleblower cases, with Bernstein Liebhard colleague Roopal Luhana. Kara McElroy ’09 joined them as a paralegal.

From Reed Smith to his current venture, the common thread has been Chaffin’s concern for the little guy.

The son of a West Virginia steelworker, Chaffin was the first in his family to go

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to college, let alone law school. “My father was somebody who actually grew up fairly poor,” said Chaffin. “He really talked to me a lot about the little guy and really looking out for people who are less fortunate.”

One of those little guys who left a lasting impression was death-row inmate Larry Christy. Chaffin, with a small team from Reed Smith, successfully argued to have Christy’s death sentence overturned. The case turned on what Chaffin saw as egregious prosecutorial misconduct. When he left Reed Smith for the U.S. attorney’s office, a colleague gave him a plaque containing the Hebrew proverb “Justice, justice, shall you pursue.” To Chaffin, it means that when you seek justice, you also have to do justice.

Chaffin used the saying as the basis for his new firm’s motto: Doing good by doing right. “We constantly remind ourselves that our clients come first. We want to do right by our clients, by doing right in the cases we do,” Chaffin explained. “It’s kind of a twist on the ‘Justice, justice shall you seek’ that prosecutors have.”

The motto is also a reflection of what he learned about kindness and civility from his father. Chaffin remembers his father’s account of an arbitration hearing between the steelworkers union and Union Steel in the 1980s. “After my dad testified for the union, everybody was saying good-bye to each other, and he offered his hand to the attorney from the Union Steel. The attorney would not shake his hand,” said Chaffin. “My father would always use that as an example of how not to be if I became a lawyer.”

His father’s advice meshed well with what Chaffin learned at W&L Law. “I think that’s one of the things that appealed to me about W&L. It embraced the values that my father had taught me.”

Emily was very active, and now she can hardly do anything because of her condition.

“I use the analogy of an Erin Brockovich contaminatedwater case. There’s something in the water, but you don’t know it. You’re using it, but you don’t know that it’s actually causing you the injuries you’ve been going through for years,” Chaffin said. “And that’s the same thing with these denture-cream users. They go to the doctor’s, and they say, ‘I’m having tingling and numbness. I noticed I started tripping and falling over my own feet.’ ” Some longtime users found themselves needing a cane or, in the worst cases, a wheelchair. These neurological injuries occurred, Chaffin said, because the user’s zinc levels rose too high. A 2008 University of Texas study published in the medical journal Neurology confirmed a possible link between longterm, excessive use of zincbased denture creams and nerve damage. “Evidence suggests that too much zinc depletes the body’s copper supply, and copper is critical for the well-being of your nervous system,” he said.

He finds it particularly shocking that GSK and P&G failed to include adequate warnings even after they were allegedly aware of the health concerns that exposure to excessive zinc can cause and had even settled other lawsuits involving their denture creams. “Since then, there have been many, many more people who have been poisoned,” Chaffin said. “In my mind, this is one of the most difficult and wrong acts that I’ve ever seen by a corporate defendant in America.”

In February, GSK announced it would cease manufacture, marketing and distribution of all Super Poligrip products containing zinc. Chaffin applauds this move and hopes P&G will do the same. “My clients are still horribly injured and this does not compensate them for their injuries. Still, it is satisfying to see GSK taking this product off the market. We’d like to see Procter & Gamble wake up and act responsibly by following GSK’s lead to change this industry and withdraw Fixodent.”

For Chaffin, this case epitomizes what he always hoped to do as a lawyer. He remembers the naysayers who asked him why he would leave the U.S. attorney’s office for a plaintiff’s practice. “I really wanted to follow what I enjoy doing,” said Chaffin.

He thanks W&L torts professor Brian Murchison for encouraging him to find and follow that passion, which is helping ordinary people. “He’s somebody who very much in my early career said, ‘Figure out what you want to do and pursue it.’ I have, and I’ve been lucky to have been fairly successful at it.”

“We constantly remind ourselves that our clients come first. We want to do right by our clients, by doing right in the cases we do. It’s kind of a twist on the ‘Justice, justice shall you seek’ that prosecutors have.”

In May 2009, Chaffin took to the airwaves, appearing on ABC’s “Good Morning America” and Court Radio’s “Warren Ballentine Show” to discuss what many in the general medical community didn’t know—that excessive and prolonged use of zinc-based denture cream can cause severe, irreversible damage.

His clients’ problems originated when GSK and Procter & Gamble added zinc to their products in the 1990s to improve adhesive qualities. The packaging contained very little information about how to use the dental cream, and many consumers used too much. Many of Chaffin’s clients, who typically are poor and living in rural areas, lost their teeth at a young age. He describes Emily Johnstone, a former journalist in her 50s who now uses a walker: “She used to be so vibrant and took a lot of photographs as editor of her local newspaper.

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From student to polished lawyer. “W&L prepared me well,” said Gene Hamilton ’10L, who has a job with the Department of Homeland Security, General Counsel’s Honor Program. “I’m not as nervous starting my job because I had the chance to practice my craft through the third-year curriculum.” In the center photo, Hamilton argued for summary judgment before Judge Morgan Scott in moot court.

Practicum courses are one of the primary, and distinguishing, components of W&L’s new third-year program. Students are immersed in a variety of legal-practice simulations, both litigation- and transactionbased. Of the third-year reforms occurring around the country, many funnel students into a single practice environment or into expanded externship programs, where students are on their own. But the Law School’s program offers simulations that span the array of legal subject matter. At the same time, it reinforces the School’s commitment to excellent teaching by creating environments where students are encouraged to try new things and work independently, but still receive significant feedback.

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My Network Beats Your Expert

Professor Josh Fairfield wants the students in his E-Commerce Practicum to fail. “In the technology industry, innovation means accepting failure,” said Fairfield, an expert on the law of social contracts and virtual worlds and a former research and development director for the language software giant Rosetta Stone. “You have to try new things to reach that next big discovery. This class teaches students to innovate and collaborate through a new set of tools, in a legal environment.”

In this case, that environment is e-commerce. Fairfield describes it as the nexus of commercial law and intellectual property, a relatively new kind of practice area that involves much more than simply purchasing something online.

“The iPad or Kindle both exemplify the current paradigm,” he said. “You have an electronic device that you purchase, as well as closely tied electronic content that is locked to that device. There are a host of licensing contracts and end-user agreements that enable this new model, and that is work lawyers have to do.”

The simulations involve researching and developing contracts for these kinds of products and services, both real and imagined. Much of the work occurs outside any set meeting time, and students use social networking tools to discuss legal and technical developments in real time. The class also maintains a wiki, a group-written and edited website, to build a repository of the reference material.

He noted, “When one student finds something of interest in his or her area of responsibility, the student makes that content available to the others through the wiki, and the class immediately becomes smarter together than any one individual. A network of informed people can outthink even the smartest person in a given field.”

Fairfield believes he’s teaching his students what good lawyers already know: that the more contacts they have with people in different areas of expertise, the more effective they will be as lawyers.

For Guy Sereff ’10L, the collaboration tools had the desired effect on the students’ work product. “We were able to produce documents together that were so much better than anything we could produce on our own,” he said. “Working collaboratively also helped get rid of the individual mindset that drives you for most of law school. But at the same time, you don’t want to be the student that doesn’t have something to offer.”

Teach A Student to Fish

The best piece of advice Professor Adam Scales ever received was that if you can write, you won’t go hungry. But in a world of texts and tweets, he worries that legal writing is becoming a lost art.

T h i r d - Ye a r P r o g r a m I n R e v i e w By the Numbers B Two-thirds of the third-year class opted into the program.

B Chose from among 20 simulation (practicum) courses,

numerous externship opportunities and five live-client clinics. Clinics require a yearlong commitment.

B Completed two 80-hour skills-immersion courses,

one focused on transactional skills and the other on litigation skills.

B The Class of 2010 completed more than 6,200 hours of

pro bono work as part of the law-related service requirement.

Fe e d b a c k a n d t h e Fu t u r e B Conducting focus groups (with both opt-ins and

opt-outs) and exit interviews with third-year students for student perspectives about what is working and what needs to be improved.

B Challenges include need to standardize workload

for practicum courses.

B 83 students, 74 percent of rising 3L class, have opted

in for next year.

B Program mandatory starting with the Class of 2012.

Learn more at law.wlu.edu/thirdyear.

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That’s why he loaded up his Advanced Torts and Insurance practicum with nearly 100 pages of writing assignments. At almost every step, students produced a document for the court, opposing counsel, the senior partner or a client.

“Effective letter writing is surprisingly tricky,” said Scales, who thinks he will begin addressing that with 1Ls in his small section courses next year. “I want to make sure our students don’t starve.”

The class, which dealt with insurance, products liability and relational harms, was structured in several phases. Students began with research projects, including the task of reading an entire insurance policy, which, Scales admitted, “some people don’t find all that interesting. Still, there’s no substitute for it.”

After exploring the policy and researching issues as varied as the causes of and treatments for beryllium poisoning, students

drafted a brief outlining what they would do when different events activated the policy.

Although the focus on writing was decidedly old school, the simulated disputes were ripped from the headlines. One involved a defamation lawsuit instigated by an unflattering post on the plaintiff’s Facebook page. Another dealt with a car accident allegedly caused by unintended acceleration. The car in question: a Toyota.

Scales was surprised by how relatively simple torts and insurance problems could reveal a facet or approach to the case he had not considered. “It’s unusual to be surprised by a student’s take on a case in a first-year torts class, but it was an almost daily occurrence,” he said. “Because they were not supplied with nearly as much information about a problem, students were free to go in directions that quickly exhausted some

Third-Year Architects

From l. to r.: Bob Danforth, Mary Natkin ’85L and Jim Moliterno.

Robert T. Danforth Associate Dean for Academic Affairs Danforth, who has taught tax law at W&L since 1997, has been on the front lines of the implementation of the third-year program since it was announced two years ago.

My principal role in implementing the new third-year curriculum has been to facilitate the development of practicum courses. During the 2010-2011 academic year, the Law School will offer approximately 20 practicum courses, covering a broad range of practice areas; we expect to offer an even greater

number of these courses in 2011-2012, the first year in which the new curriculum will be mandatory. The instructors include members of our permanent faculty, practicing lawyers, teams of lawyers from firms in Richmond and Roanoke and a justice of the Supreme Court of Virginia.

Teaching a practicum poses some significant challenges. First, there are generally no textbooks for this type of course. Thus, in most cases, the instructor must create his or her own materials. Second, unlike in the case of traditional law school courses, students are evaluated on the basis of lawyer-like work product,

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of my preconceptions of the technical expertise required for the dispute, which means everybody learned something.”

Scales also identifies this as one of the chief challenges, and the great promise, of the new curriculum. After two years of class work, students are accustomed to getting all the cases and legal issues pre-digested, with no sense of how a case evolved. “It is challenging to help students re-orient themselves to the process of active lawyering,” he said. “They have no idea that some lawyer, just by chance, thought to ask, ‘Were you wearing your glasses at the time of the accident?’, and that made the case.”

Lauren Fisher ’10L sometimes felt she was flying blind.

It took her a while to discover that her client, the driver of the out-of-control Toyota, had been drinking and was trying to send a text message when the crash occurred.

“There was so much information I wanted but couldn’t

have,” she said. “But Professor Scales made the point that sometimes your clients won’t give you the information that you need, and you have to rely on the information you do have and your own creativity to come up with a good argument.”

Fisher appreciated the practicum’s focus on writing, especially during the discovery phase of her case. She had to file and answer many interrogatories, and in the process learned the strategy and ethics implicated when determining how much information to share with opposing counsel.

Fisher also spent the year as a student attorney in the Community Legal Practice Clinic and took the Labor and Employment Practicum, the practice area she intends to purse after graduation. “I believe I’ve gained a strong competence in both oral and written lawyering,” she said. “I feel so much better prepared now.”

which is produced and evaluated throughout the semester, rather than on the basis of a single exam administered at the end of the semester. Criticism of students’ work thus occurs regularly, frequently and often in person, as compared with the generally anonymous process of assigning a grade to an exam.

For these and other reasons, teaching a practicum course is substantially more labor intensive than teaching a traditional law school course. The Law School is fortunate that its faculty, alumni and other dedicated professionals have been willing to undertake this challenge.

well beyond their academic responsibilities. Last year, our students completed 6,240 hours of law-related service, including serving as advocates for victims of domestic abuse, teaching Rule of Law classes in local schools, restoring voting rights for ex-felons who have paid their debt to society and researching how the Virginia court system treats the poor.

Mary Z. Natkin ’85L Assistant Dean for Clinical Education and Public Service A longtime clinical professor, Natkin oversees all the clinical and externship programs. She also manages the public-service component of the third-year experience, developing opportunities for students to serve the legal profession or in communities throughout the region.

The strength of clinical and externships programs is that they blur—or erase—the distinctions between substantive law, procedure, ethics and skills. Instead, students focus on the blending of these elements into the entire process of advising and representing a client. Further, they allow students to shoulder the responsibility for self-directed learning and engage them in the imperfect world of clients who exist beyond the corners of a hypothetical.

For 2009-2010, 97 students participated in our clinical, externship and transnational programs, of whom 71 were participants in the revised curriculum, and 27 were students enrolled in the traditional curriculum but who desired a client-based experiential course. We continue to build these real experiences for our students, as we will need 140 or so placements once the third year is fully implemented.

Service is ingrained in the character of the legal profession and is a core value of W&L Law. Our students have always had a great commitment to service in the School and community

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James E. Moliterno Vincent Bradford Professor of Law Moliterno, who joined the School of Law in 2009, is one of the nation’s leading educators in experiential learning and legal professionalism. Moliterno plays a key role in the third-year professionalism class, called The Legal Profession, and in the design of the two-week litigation and transaction skills immersions that begin each semester.

Students come to law school as adults. While some may believe that they have already formed their sense of how to behave and live life, the distinctive role of a lawyer is new to students on their first day in law school. During any three-year period, a person changes through their experiences. Law students change and grow as well, and their professional character is born in law school.

The professionalism course exposes students to issues critical to the future of the legal profession, such as the economic system of law firm practice, the effect of the economic downturn on the delivery of legal services, multidisciplinary and multijurisdictional practice and the globalization of the legal profession. This exposure prepares students to adopt the lawyer’s role and be leaders in their communities.

People learn and become by adopting role-sensitive behaviors, by observing role models. That is how students learn their professional role, becoming lawyers in the process. In the practicum courses, in the immersions and in the clinics, students try on and learn to live in the role of lawyer. The new curriculum gives students this opportunity in ways unavailable in traditional classroom study. Q 17

The Worst Day Of Your Life

Kristina Joyner ’10L has a big heart, and she hopes it doesn’t get her into trouble. She initially planned a career as a prosecutor, but after a summer clerkship with a Baltimore judge and a year in W&L’s Virginia Capital Case Clearinghouse (VC3), she now intends to work in death penalty defense.

“In Baltimore, many of the defendants were so young, and I saw some pretty bad lawyers,” she said. “The system seemed unfair, and that’s when I started to think that is where I could be the most help.”

Her work in the VC3 exposed her to some messy situations, and she likes being part of the solution as defendants and their families try to figure out what’s next. But she also knows there are at least two sides to every story, and that’s why she asked to be a prosecutor this spring in the Criminal Practice Practicum, taught by criminal defense attorneys Judy Clarke and Jon Shapiro.

During the class, 12 students worked in teams of two on a primary case involving either a who-done-it-murder, an immigrant smuggling case resulting in death, or a crack-cocaine conspiracy case. Using the federal rules of criminal procedure and local court rules developed for the class, prosecutors like Joyner had to decide what to indict on, as well as file the indictment, a document most of them had never seen. Then they litigated the case through discovery motions, pre-trial

motions, motions in limine, plea negotiations, a trial and, if necessary, a sentencing hearing.

The primary goal of the class was to teach students to exercise professional judgment. “We want them to learn to think about a case strategically from beginning to end,” Clarke said, “to think about the events in the life of a case as more than a checklist.”

Clarke also required students to summarize criminal cases decided in a variety of jurisdictions, including those on appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, to remind the students “that the law actually connects to their practice—the law changes and evolves, and they need to stay current.”

Although Clarke admitted it is difficult to capture the twists and turns of an actual criminal practice, that’s not the point. “Touch a hot stove and you will not do it again,” she said. “Practicum classes help students learn the impact of various litigation strategies and to consider what steps should be taken in the best interests of their client and their cause. It also lets them learn on the job with no consequences to a real client.”

Clarke derives much of her teaching philosophy from her own experience training new lawyers during long stints as director of the San Diego and Spokane federal public defender offices. As well as representing “many ordinary citizens accused of ordinary crimes,” she has also served as defense counsel in some of the most high-profile criminal cases in the last 15 years, including those of Susan Smith, Eric Rudolph and Ted Kaczynski.

Clarke believes there is no higher calling for a lawyer than to stand for an individual accused of crime. “The idea is that we stand between the power of the state and the individual, and in

Practice Makes Perfect

Students participated in a mock mediation session with retired judge John C. Morrison ’59, ’61L (far left).

The scenario: A tycoon was dead, and surviving kin and their lawyers haggled over the eight-figure estate.

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Professor Lyman Johnson (far left) drew on the expertise of alumni for his Business Planning practicum. From l. to r.: Wyatt Deal ’08L, Jim Seevers ’97L and David Freed ’04L. Not pictured: Brian Hager ’04L. Seevers is a partner, and the other three are associates at Hunton and Williams. The alumni, who had all taken Johnson’s BP practicum themselves, spent three days working with students on issues arising in the acquisition and sale of a corporation.

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doing so, defend the core values of what makes this country great,” she said. “None of us, including those accused of crime, wants to be defined by the worst moment, or worst day of our lives.”

Those people in the near future who find themselves in their worst moment will want someone like Kristina Joyner by their side. Even as the Criminal Practice practicum was ongoing, she found that she was able to feed her experience as prosecutor back to her capital defense work in the VC3.

“It’s so easy to turn your back after reading about the horrible things people have done,” she said. “But I always ask myself, ‘What about now? This can’t be the entire story.’ And it never is. There are victims all around the board.”

Show Me The Money

Nothing inflames the passions quite like disputes over money.

Whether dissolving a 20-year marriage or re-organizing a business that has operated for generations, it takes a special kind of lawyer to negotiate a solution.

Chip Magee ’79L is one of those special lawyers, and he pours all of his 30 years of experience as a bankruptcy lawyer into the Failing Business practicum, a class that explores the remedies that state law and the U.S. Bankruptcy Code provide to debtors and creditors for failing, or troubled, businesses.

Magee’s goal is realism, so the matter he chose for his students is an ongoing bankruptcy case involving a failing Virginia auto dealership that he represents. Between January and April,

students took the matter from the pre-petition stage all the way to a confirmation of a plan of reorganization.

“It’s quite common for even a complex bankruptcy case to be dealt with in four months,” said Magee, who has taught as an adjunct professor at W&L for several years, commuting from his Roanoke-based practice. “But these are serious, real-time issues. I treat the students like associates in a law firm. If associates don’t perform, they get fired.”

Luckily he didn’t have to take such drastic measures with the students, who he thinks were energized and thoughtful about the process. “Of course, not everybody got it right the first time. But with a little feedback, they got it right the second time, just like good associates will.”

The class split into two teams, each representing different stakeholders. Together, they analyzed the merits of dozens of claims to resolve both secured and unsecured debts. The ultimate goal is to establish the “waterfall of payments,” a mutually agreed-upon map articulating who gets paid, how much and in what order.

Magee thinks bankruptcy cases are useful for students because they require knowledge of many different areas of the law, including personal property, real estate, tax and state law, as well as certain UCC articles. In addition, bankruptcy cases expose students to both negotiation and litigation.

“Of course, it’s in everyone’s interest to avoid litigation and for the reorganization plan to be approved,” he said. “If the business is simply liquidated, 95 percent of the creditors get nothing.” He added, “Good lawyers will negotiate all the conflicts and present the plan to a judge all wrapped up with a bow.” Q

The third year’s practicums and two-week immersion course in practice skills required students to exercise professional judgment, work in teams, solve problems, counsel clients, negotiate solutions, serve as advocates and counselors—the full complement of professional activity that engages practicing lawyers as they apply legal theory and legal doctrines to real-world issues of serving clients ethically and honorably.

Chip Magee ’79L goes over a waterfall payment setup in his Bankruptcy Practicum. Magee, who founded Magee, Foster, Goldstein & Sayers in Roanoke, chose an ongoing bankruptcy case involving a failing Virginia auto dealership that he represents. The students took the matter from the pre-petition stage to a confirmation of a plan of reorganization.

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From l. to r.: John LaMont ’10L and Bryan Hoynak ’10L take part in the two-week immersion course in practice skills under the guidance of Mary Natkin ’85L, assistant dean for Clinical Education and Public Service. Students are required to take one immersion course each semester, one focusing on office skills and transactional practice and the other on litigation and conflict resolution.

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During Reunion Weekend, alumni returned under sunny skies to renew friendships, visit former professors, hear the dean’s report and meet with students participating in the Third-Year Program. Along the way, alumni pledged more than $232,814 to support scholarship, clinical programs and student organizations The returning members of the Class of 1960L, back for their 50th, received special recognition at a gathering in the Millhiser Moot Court Room. Once they had received a commemorative medal and greetings from W&L President Ken Ruscio ’76 and Law Dean Rodney Smolla, George Anthou ’60L, from Canonsburg, Pa., asked to address the assembly.

Anthou had brought with him a rather unusual bit of memorabilia from his law days: a canceled check from the First National Bank of Lexington in the amount of $282.50, made out to Washington and Lee University. The check, written on Feb. 1, 1960, was his final tuition payment, plus the charge for his Davis Hall room.

As he correctly noted, “Today, perhaps it might not even cover the cost of a couple of law books.”

Anthou, who spent 46 years in private practice in his hometown of Canonsburg, remembers Professor McDowell telling them, “Don’t worry about what grade may result from your studies, because the A students become judges, the B students work for the state or federal government and the C students become trial lawyers and earn all the big fees.” Fees large enough, no doubt, to make that $282.50 for tuition and room worth the cost.

Law Reunion April 16 & 17

Top Left George Anthou ’60L proves that tuition for one semester at the Law School once cost only $282.50.

Left Chris Wolf ’80L (left) received the 2010 Outstanding Alumnus Award from Dean Rod Smolla. Wolf is widely recognized as one of the leading American practitioners in the field of privacy and data security law.

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Above The Class of ’95L poses for a group shot.

Above Alumni who graduated 50 years ago or more received special recognition during the Saturday morning events. From l. to r.: George Anthou ’60L, Don Messenger ’60L, Bill Crowell ’60, Charles McCormick ’58, ’60L, Neal Lavelle ’60L, Bill Haley ’60L, Jim Flippen ’53L, Al Knight ’51L, Ernest Gates ’50L, Sam White ’50L, George Grady ’50L, Curly Greenebaum ’56, ’58L.

Right An evening gathering for the Class of ’85L. From l. to r.: Angeline Fleeman Mathis ’85L, Charlie Martel ’85L, Chip Johnson ’85L, Edo van der Zee, Mary Beth Powell van der Zee ’85L, Susan Hammock, Gordy Hammock ’85L. S p r i n g / S u m m e r

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During the day, Powell “Nick” Leitch III ’84, ’87L (center) focuses on medical mal-

practice and products liability claims for LeClair Ryan in Roanoke. But away from the office he sings, most recently as the tenor soloist with the Roanoke Symphony Orchestra’s production of Mozart’s “Requiem.” His performance drew a rave review from Seth Williamson in the Roanoke Times: “Leitch held his own with the pros in the dramatic ‘Day of Wrath’ section.”

This is not Leitch’s first appearance on the Roanoke stage. Last May, he performed in Opera Roanoke’s production of “Othello,” and in 2005 he performed in “Jesus Christ Superstar,” a joint production of the Roanoke Symphony and Mill Mountain Theatre at the Roanoke Civic Center. Recent performances include the tenor solos in Handel’s “Messiah,” Bach’s “Magnificat,” and 22

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Orff’s “Carmina Burana,” as well as the role of Obadiah in Mendelssohn’s “Elijah.” He routinely sings with the Roanoke Symphony Chorus and has returned to Lexington to perform with the Rockbridge Choral Society and the W&L Chorus.

Leitch began voice lessons at age 14 and continued to sing as an undergraduate at W&L in Southern Comfort and the Glee Club. He seriously considered pursuing a singing career, but said, “At the end of the day, I decided there were a legion of people out there far more talented than me. Plus, I didn’t want to leave Lexington, so I decided to attend law school. And I am an attorney, first and foremost— singing is my avocation. Some people play sports or collect stuff. I sing. I’m an amateur in the truest sense of the word, as the word originates from the Latin amare, ‘to love.’ ” Initially a baritone, Leitch develW & L

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oped his upper register over the years, and his voice brightened. Although he can handle everything from Broadway tunes to opera, he is happiest singing Renaissance sacred music and has performed with the renowned Tallis Scholars, based in London, England.

Back at his day job, Leitch represents health-care providers, including physicians, hospitals, nursing homes, assistedliving facilities and ancillary health-care providers, and he counsels hospital and physician groups on various issues.

But while he concentrates on legal matters, he also thinks about someday performing the tenor role in Beethoven’s “Ninth Symphony.” Until that moment arrives, he continues to perform and practice. “Singing is an organic process,” he said. “I can’t imagine any singer ever reaching an end point of that process. You can always find more to improve.”

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1969

Hunter Lane Jr. (’51)

John B. Adams Jr. joined

received the Elmore Holmes Award from the Community Legal Center for his pro bono work in Memphis, Tenn. A citation describing his lifelong commitment to the community appeared in the March/ April 2010 edition of Memphis Lawyer.

the American Revolution Center’s board of directors.

He is president, CEO and director of Bowman Co., a private real estate holding company in Fredericksburg, Va. He is chairman of the board of the George C. Marshall Foundation and Fauquier Bankshares Inc., a community bank in Warrenton, Va., where he has been a director since 2003. He is also a member of the board of Universal Corp., headquartered in Richmond.

Adams serves as chairman

1958 G. Dewey Oxner Jr. (’56)

received the 2009 DuRant Distinguished Public Service Award. This annual recognition by the South Carolina Bar Foundation is the most prestigious statewide award that members of the bar can bestow on a fellow attorney. Oxner, who practices in the Greenville office of Haynsworth Sinkler Boyd P.A., served as president of the South Carolina Bar (20002001). He has been a trial lawyer for more than four decades and has successfully tried more than 100 cases to jury verdict.

N o t e s of the National Theatre Corporation in Washington and is a former trustee of the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts and the Virginia Historical Society.

1972 John A. Wolf (’69) is listed in

the 2010 edition of Maryland Super Lawyers. He focuses on construction litigation at Ober | Kaler in Baltimore.

1979 Susan Hamilton Churuti

was honored by the Girl Scouts of West Central Florida

John A. Cocklereece Jr. (’76) is listed among the

Legal Elite in the January issue of Business North Carolina. John was honored for his work in tax and estate planning at Bell, Davis & Pitt P.A. He lives in WinstonSalem.

Philip L. Hinerman is listed among the distinguished Leaders in Law in the 2010 Chambers USA Guide. He works in the environmental law practice of Fox Rothschild L.L.P and lives in Wayne, Pa.

1980 Jordan D. Dorchuck is the

1964 Robert G. Bannon (’57) is

a mediator with the Center For Resolution. He belongs to various professional mediator and family law organizations, including the Florida Bar Association’s family law section and its mediation and collaborative law committee. He is a panel mediator for local mandatory foreclosure mediation programs and is an active member of the Eagle Society of the Indian River Medical Center Foundation, as well as other charitable and community organizations. He lives in Vero Beach, Fla. The Hon. J. Leyburn Mosby Jr. (’62) retired from

Lynchburg’s 24th Judicial Circuit Court after nine years.

1967 Richard E. Israel was elected to a second four-year term as an alderman for Annapolis, Md.

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as one of four 2010 Women of Distinction. She works for Bryant Miller & Olive in its Tampa office, where she is co-chair of the state and local government practice group.

She lives in St. Petersburg.

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Running (and Walking) for Office Giles G. Perkins ’92L (checkered shirt), a candidate for attorney general in Alabama, launched his campaign in an unusual way—he joined marchers on the 51-mile walk between Selma and Montgomery to re-create the voting rights march 45 years earlier.

Perkins, executive director of the Alabama Democratic Party from 1997 to 1998, said in an interview with the Montgomery Advertiser, “Being out there has given me a real sense of what people need in an attorney general.” He observed that the office is less about the people who can afford expensive lawyers to represent them, and more about those who cannot.

During the trek to Montgomery, Perkins developed a better understanding of the issues folks face every day.

He said people talked about safety issues—particularly gangs—and their concerns over garbage from other states being dumped into their community.

“The law is a powerful tool,” he said. “The charge to the attorney general is so broad, you can get involved in any number of conversations if you're willing to. I am willing to use that tool for what’s right.”

Follow Giles’ candidacy on his campaign Web site, perkinsforalabama.com, or on his Facebook fan page.

executive vice president, chief legal officer and secretary at American Home Mortgage Servicing Inc. in Coppell, Texas. He was a finalist in the Dallas Business Journal’s best corporate counsel awards program for 2009. He is a co-chair of the American Securitization Forum’s servicing sub-forum for 2010 and the 2010 chair of the Mortgage Bankers Association Residential Loan Administration Committee.

He is also a member of the Housing Policy Executive Council, a financial institution trade group focusing on mortgage issues. He lives in Colorado.

1982 James B. McLaren Jr. has

been named a leader for the transactions and corporate advisory services practice group at Adams and Reese L.L.P. He lives in Memphis, Tenn.

Lizanne Thomas was named to the Georgia Super Lawyers Top 50 Women list for 2010.

She works for Jones Day in Atlanta.

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Capt. Kelly Repair ’06L

joined the Marine Corps with a single purpose in mind—to became a judge advocate so she could work as an attorney while serving her country.

“As a lawyer, I have a desire to uphold individual rights and ensure that the system works fairly for its citizens,” said Repair. “It is an honor for me to be able to do that for the people who are serving our country. The most rewarding part of my job is the privilege of having the opportunity to ensure that they get the best defense that they can.”

So far, she’s doing an admirable job. Repair received the Defense Counsel of the Year Award (DECOY) for the Eastern Region of the Marine Corps, given annually to recognize the judge advocate who provided the biggest impact to the defense bar. Repair was selected from more than 25 eligible counselors for her work ethic, litigation skills and mentorship abilities. Repair earned more acquittals over the past year for her clients than any other defense counsel in the region.

1983 Linda A. Klein , a manag-

ing shareholder with Baker Donelson, was nominated as the 2010 chair of the American Bar Association’s House of Delegates. She will assume her post for a two-year term in August. She lives in Atlanta.

1986 Margaret Ann Bollmeier

was named executive director of the Curry School of Education Foundation at the University of Virginia.

Margaret Ann and her husband, Kyle, have two daughters, Greta, 11, and Elsa, 9.

1988 Mark S. Yacano was named

the executive vice president of Hudson Legal. Hudson provides temporary staffing, 24

managed review and consulting services and is part of the North American Division of Hudson Highland Group. He is based out of New York.

1989 Donald C. Schultz was

among Virginia Business Magazine’s Legal Elite for 2009 for his work in bankruptcy law. He works for Crenshaw, Ware & Martin P.L.C. and lives in Virginia Beach.

1990 Andrew R. Lee was named to

New Orleans City Business’ Leadership in Law class of 2010. This marks the second time he was honored with this distinction. He practices with Jones Walker L.L.P.

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Although Repair’s cumulative work throughout 2009 attributed to the DECOY award, her service as the assistant defense counsel in a capital retrial, United States v. Walker, highlighted her legal skills.

In 1993, Lance Cpl. Wade Walker received the death sentence on a conviction of two premeditated murders, as well as several other offenses. In the resentencing, which addressed both murders again, the jury had the option of giving Walker a minimum of a life sentence and the maximum of a death sentence. After 18 months of work, Repair and her team were able to convince the jury—in a unanimous decision—to reverse the original death sentence.

Repair and her team relied on W&L’s Virginia Capital Case Clearinghouse (VC3), the capital defense clinic directed by Professor David Bruck.

“The VC3 brought a level of eager and competent help to the team,” said Repair. “We certainly credit a lot of our success to Professor Bruck and the law students. They helped us tremendously, sometimes sending us motions and research literally in the middle of the night. I enjoyed returning to the Law School to work on this case. This was a huge success for our team, and truly the most rewarding and educating experience I have had as a judge advocate so far.”

In the aftermath of United States v. Walker, Repair is preparing for a slight career change. In the Marine Corps, judge advocates do not stay in one area of law for their entire time of service. This summer, she will move to the Pentagon for a three-year stint as an assistant counsel in the Office of the Counsel for the Commandant of the Marine Corps.

1991 Wood W. Lay has joined

Winston & Strawn L.L.P. in its Chartlotte, N.C., office.

Lay focuses on labor and employment issues, with an emphasis on employment, ERISA, non-competition and trade secret litigation.

1994 Kevin D. Pomfret joined the

Richmond office of LeClair Ryan as a partner in the intellectual property, corporate service and venture capital practices to help develop the firm’s spatial law capabilities.

Todd A. Rodriguez is a contributing author to Representing Physicians Handbook, 2nd ed., a publication of the American Health Lawyers Association.

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L.L.P., where he co-chairs the health law practice.

1995 Andrea K. Wahlquist was

named a Leader in the Field in employee benefits and executive compensation in the 2010 Chambers USA— America’s Leading Lawyers for Business. She works for Simpson, Thatcher & Bartlett in New York.

1998 Mary Beth Long was

named senior vice president at NeuralIQ Government Services Inc., a cyber-intelligence company. Previously, she was assistant secretary for International Security Affairs at the U.S. Department of Defense, where she advised the Secretary of Defense on strategy for the Middle East, M a g a z i n e

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Garrison Keillor Meets Paula Deen Steve Johnson ’81L, who penned a trilogy about life in Walla Walla, Wash., under the pen name Sam McLeod, now turns his talents to a childhood memoir in My Southern-Fried Search for the Meaning of Life (Touchstone/ Simon & Schuster).

In the book, Johnson describes himself as a big-boned guy with a passion for good cooking—a delicious consequence of the “Jolley gene” passed down from his mother. But when a friend suffers a sudden heart attack, he takes a good look at the number on the scale and decides it’s time to make some changes.

His doctor tells him diets don’t work: “You’ve got to find some meaning in your life that will motivate you to take care of your body—something that gets under your skin, something that grabs your imagination.”

While pondering his doctor’s advice en route to his childhood home in Nashville, Tenn., he thinks about the people, the places, the foods, the lessons and the stories that colored his childhood. He remembers how his mother fed five growing boys two hot meals every day—aided by a round table that seated eight comfortably and sported a fast-spinning lazy

Arabian Gulf, Europe and Africa.

1999 Erika Harmon Arner was named a partner at Finnegan, Henderson, Farabow, Garrett & Dunner L.L.P., one of the largest intellectual property law firms in the world. She lives in McLean, Va. Charles E. James Jr.

was appointed chief deputy attorney general by Virginia’s Attorney General Kenneth T. Cuccinelli II. He lives in Richmond.

Virginia L. Price was named to San Diego Metro Magazine’s 10th annual 40 under 40 list. She chairs the transportation practice group at Klinedinst P.C. She primarily focuses on representing S p r i n g / S u m m e r

trucking companies and the transportation industry in litigation matters involving catastrophic loss claims and cargo liability. She also works with the San Diego Volunteer Lawyer Program to train and mentor high school students on peer mediation and received the group’s Wiley W. Manuel Award for Pro Bono Legal Services.

Melissa E. Whitman was named a shareholder at Smith Haughey Rice & Roegge.

She practices family law and lives in Traverse City, Mich.

2000 Michael G. Abelow received

the Harris Gilbert Pro Bono Volunteer of the Year Award from the Tennessee Bar Association for his work on a federal court case, Crabtree 2 0 1 0

Susan; the secret hideout cave, the site of a significant showdown; his mother’s lime-green 1954 Ford Country Squire station wagon, the Toad, which met an untimely, yet memorable, end; and Dr. Pritchard, who made a fortune removing no less than four sets of tonsils, an appendix, an arrow, a splinter the size of a toothpick and a Hog’s Feather steeltipped competition dart from Johnson and his brothers.

With these memories come the smell of his mother’s meatloaf, the tang of pickled shrimp on a hot summer night, a side of macaroni and cheese with oysters and strawberry pie for dessert. He concludes that his memories, old friends and the foods that carry the love of the women who cooked it are all he needs to know of the meaning of life.

Johnson lives on a farm near Walla Walla, where he writes a column called “View from the Porch” for the Walla Walla Union-Bulletin, occasionally hosts a variety show called “Neither Here Nor There” and tells stories to civic groups, women’s clubs and most anyone who will listen. This summer, Johnson will again revisit the haunts of his youth on a multi-city book tour supported by the Waffle House restaurant chain.

v. Goetz, which protected the rights of clients under the Americans with Disabilities Act. He is an attorney at Sherrard & Roe P.L.C. and lives in Nashville.

2002 Tobi Bromfield Wiseman

joined the litigation and dispute resolution group of Taylor English Duma L.L.P. She lives in Roswell, Ga.

2003 Kathryn Roe Eldridge

was named a shareholder of Maynard Cooper & Gale P.C. She practices in the firm’s securities litigation group and specializes in the defense of brokerage firms and financial institutions against claims asserted by customers in arbitration proceedings across the country before the Financial

Industry Regulatory Authority, and in state and federal court.

She, her husband, Jamey, and their two boys live in Birmingham, Ala.

2004 Timothy R. Lankau was named a partner in the Houston office of Ware, Jackson, Lee and Chambers.

He focuses on civil commercial and personal injury litigation, representing both plaintiffs and defendants.

2006 Jillian L. DiLaura was named to the Maryland Superlawyer 2010 Rising Star list. She practices family law with Fait, Wise & DiLima L.L.P. Malik Shareef is an NFL

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Law and Literature: Oct. 29–30, 2010

Haden, joined the Cleveland Browns as the 7th pick in the 2010 NFL draft. He lives in Washington.

2007

In its 18th year, the Law and Literature Seminar will turn to another American classic, Native Son, by Richard Wright. This is the story of a young black man, Bigger Thomas, whose flight from an accidental crime leads to more serious crimes for which he is eventually caught, charged and condemned to death.

As one of the seminal works on racial segregation in America, Wright’s novel illustrates the psychological predicament of the racially disadvantaged and the systematic injustices that lead, with tragic inevitability, to further impoverishment or, in Bigger’s case, to mayhem and despair. Wright is often credited with inventing modern African-American literature, and Native Son is regarded as the novel that first raised the plight of the black underclass to the nation’s consciousness. It remains one of the most powerful portrayals of racial strife and its implications in American literature.

The program will again be led by Dave Caudill and Marc Conner, with two guest faculty from the W&L Law School.

As a bonus to practicing attorneys, the program will again seek approval for two hours of Continuing Legal Education ethics credit. The program is open to anyone interested in law and literature. For more information go to www.wlu.edu/x38352.xml.

Broderick C. Dunn joined

the business and professional litigation practice at the Richmond office of Sands Anderson.

2008 Ernani J. DeAraujo is the

east Boston liaison in the Office of Neighborhood Services for Mayor Thomas Menino of Boston.

2009 Daniel H. Ennis joined

Parker, Hudson, Rainer & Dobbs L.L.P. in Atlanta. He is an associate with the firm’s commercial finance practice group, where he will focus on representing banks and other lending institutions in connection with the documentation and closing of corporate financing transactions.

M arr i age S

Circle of

Honor Jerrald Roehl ’71L (right)

From l. to r.: Jim Beller; John Wolf ’69, ’72L, best man and brother to Chris; and Chris Wolf ’80L. P h o t o

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wrote, “In 1995 I established the Roehl Circle of Honor for Trial Lawyers at the New Mexico State Bar Center here in Albuquerque in honor of my father, Joseph E. Roehl, longtime New Mexico trial lawyer. Every year, distinguished trial lawyers from the state are selected for induction based upon a long career that exemplifies the best traditions of trial advocacy. In Nov, Jackson Akin ’40 (left) was one of four new trial lawyers inducted. He received his A.B., summa cum laude, from W&L and his J.D. from Harvard. He had been a partner in Rodney, Dickason, Sloan, Akin & Robb, one of the state’s largest firms, for over 50 years until his retirement.”

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(From left) Joe Thelin and his wife, Tara Mooney, raised money to build a playground at Royal Lake Park in memory of their daughter (pictured in the frame). Here they stand at the playground with their daughter, Mia, 8 months.

L i s a F a i r f a x

Edward D. Neufville ’03 to Bahia Akerele on

Dec. 19, 2009, in Montego Bay, Jamaica. They live in Columbia, Md. He was listed among the Rising Stars in the 2010 Maryland Super Lawyers magazine. He works for MoraisNeufville L.L.C. in Silver Spring, Md., focusing on immigration and international law.

b i rths Paul A. Driscoll ’85, ’91L

and his wife, Amy, a daughter, Eleanor Elizabeth, on Sept.

4, 2009. She joins Matthew, 6, and Constance, 4. They live in Virginia Beach.

Rob J. Aliff ’91, ’97L and his wife, Tracy, a daughter, Nora Evlyn, on Dec. 22, 2009. She joins Meredith, 8, and Wilkes, 2.

They live in Charleston, W.Va. Mark A. Cobb ’91L and his wife, Dorothy, a daughter, Caroline Rossiter, on April 8.

They live in Thomasville, Ga.

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Frances Eva, on Aug. 2, 2009.

Laney joins brothers Noah and Rowan and sister Lilah in Matthews, N.C. Brian was listed among the Charlotte Business Journal’s 40 Under 40. He is a senior associate with Littler Mendelson, where he specializes in employment law and employment and employee benefits litigation. He taught an employment practicum with Mark Grunewald at W&L.

Brian S. Clarke ’99L and Christina Miller Clarke ’99L , a daughter, Elena

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Remember

Christopher B. Wick ’97, ’00L and Jennifer Wick ’98, ’01L , a son, Carter Cromelin,

on Aug. 11, 2009. Carter joins sister Piper at their home in Cleveland Heights, Ohio.

Dean T. Howell ’02L and

his wife, Elizabeth, a son, Timothy Walton, on April 9.

They live in Knoxville, Tenn.

Christina Pignatelli ’02L

and Daniel E. Solander ’02L , a son, Axel James, on Christmas Eve 2009. Tina and Daniel are in Park City, Utah, practicing law in-house at Rocky Mountain Power and skiing, hiking, biking and golfing.

Bari A. Steinholz ’97L and

her husband, Todd Speiser, a daughter, Emery Jane, on Oct. 19, 2009. She joins sister Isabelle Fae and brother Eli Preston. After a brief 11-month stay in Maryland, they live in Missouri City, Texas.

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Carrie Bowden Freed ’03L and David S. Freed ’04L ,

a son, George Adler, on Feb. 20. They live in Richmond.

Kelly Jones Leventis ’03L and Henry C. Leventis ’03L , a daughter, Lucy Allen,

on Oct. 15, 2009. They live in Charleston, S.C.

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Remembering Katie

In December 2008, Tara Mooney ’02L and Joseph Thelin ’02L suffered devasting news, the stillborn birth of their daughter, Katie. While grieving the loss of their first child, they found solace in philanthropy.

“When you have a child that passes away, you want the world to remember your child,” Mooney said in an interview with the Fairfax Times.

They decided on was a park in their neighborhood in Burke, Va. With the help of friends, family and neighbors, Mooney and Thelin raised $22,000 by staging small fund-raisers and collecting donations online. A $9,200 discount from equipment manufacturer Gametime and a $10,000 matching grant from the Park Authority covered the remainder of the cost for the equipment. “People we knew were extremely generous and people we didn’t know were extremely generous,” Thelin said. “Everyone in the community really united to bring this thing together.”

In May, a little more than a year after the initial undertaking, Katie’s Playground at Royal Lake Park in Burke officially opened. The playground serves as a permanent place where the couple can remember their daughter. Their second daughter, 8-month-old Mia, played on a swing for the first time at her sister’s playground. “One of the good things about this is to be able to talk about it,” Mooney said of the project. “This allows us an opportunity to remember our daughter and acknowledge her life.”

The couple plan to continue raising money for other community service projects via the Katherine Rose Thelin Children’s Charity. They are considering raising funds for additional playground equipment for younger children at Royal Lake, as well as other initiatives that would benefit children or help other families who have experienced a stillbirth.

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and Andrea Chase Glasgow ’05L , a son, Wade Harrison, on March 24. They live in Richmond.

ob i t u ar i es Col. Charles W. Wilkinson ’38L , of Virginia Beach,

Va., died on Jan. 9. He was a retired Army colonel who served in World War II. He attended the JAGC Advanced School of Law at the University of Virginia and served as a trial lawyer and was an advisor to the office of the Secretary of Army. He was a circuit judge in the U.S. Army Judiciary and an appellate judge on the Army Court of Appeals. He was the father of William C. Wilkinson ’71.

The Hon. John A. MacKenzie ’39L , of

Portsmouth, Va., died on Jan. 1. He served as an officer in the Coast Guard during World War II. He later worked as an assistant judge in Portsmouth Police Court. He was elected to the General Assembly of Virginia and later appointed to the U.S. District Court. He was on the Council of Boy Scouts and belonged to the Rotary Club. At W&L, MacKenzie belonged to Kappa Alpha.

The Hon. Paul D. Brown ’41, ’43L , of Washington, Va., died

on Nov. 6, 2009. He served as judge of the county court until his appointment in 1966 to the Arlington Circuit Court.

He worked there until his retirement. He was a member of Arlington Lions Club for 65 years. Brown belonged to Delta Upsilon.

Joseph A. Overton Jr. ’42L ,

of Arlington, Va., died on Nov. 9, 2005. He was president of the American Mining Congress. Overton belonged to Phi Kappa Psi. The Hon. Benjamin A. Williams Jr. ’42L , of Norfolk,

Va., died on Jan. 16. He was 28

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Evelyn Whitehurst Huntley

of Virginia, and a friend of the J.P. Morgan Library and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The Hon. Robert J. Smith ’46, ’50L , of Richmond, died

Evelyn Whitehurst Huntley , first lady of Washington and Lee from 1968 to 1983, died on March 29 at her home in Lexington. She was 78.

Huntley was born on April 14, 1931, in Norfolk, Va., the daughter of Eldridge and Edith Whitehurst. She grew up in Virginia Beach and graduated from the College of William and Mary, where she majored in English.

Following her graduation, she began a career as an elementary school teacher. She taught second grade in Virginia Beach before moving to Lexington, where her husband, Robert E.R. Huntley ’50, ’57L, was attending the W&L Law School.

After teaching fourth grade in Lexington for three years, she taught the fourth grade in Alexandria, Va., before moving back to Lexington in 1968, when her husband joined the faculty of the W&L Law School. He later became dean of the School of Law and president of the University.

During the 15 years that Bob Huntley served as president, Evelyn Huntley managed the daily operations of the Lee House as a center for University gatherings.

She welcomed countless visitors from inside and outside the University to Lee House throughout the academic year. She also planned and supervised activities at many campus venues, such as Evans Hall.

Longtime members of the W&L community fondly recall her special events, including the annual faculty and children’s Christmas parties, and she initiated the nowprevalent local custom of white lights in windows during the holiday season.

In addition to her duties as Washington and Lee’s first lady, she headed a circle at Lexington Presbyterian Church for many years. Above all, she considered her greatest role to be that of wife, mother and grandmother.

In addition to her husband of 55 years, Evelyn Huntley is survived by her three daughters and their husbands, Martha and Dyer Rodes, of Nashville, Tenn.; Catherine (Katie) and James McConnel, of Mount Crawford, Va.; and Jane and Robert Hopkins, of Lexington; and six grandchildren, Huntley Rodes ’07, Sarah Catherine Rodes ’11, Jordan McConnel ’10, Robert Huntley McConnel, and Cole and Colin Whitmore.

a veteran of World War II, where he earned a Bronze Star, three Purple Hearts and a Combat Infantryman Badge.

He served as a town judge, county judge and clerk of the Southampton County Circuit Court. He was elected as a judge for the Fifth Judicial Circuit of Virginia by the General Assembly. He was

the father of Benjamin A. Williams III ’71L.

on Dec. 30, 2009. He began practicing law with his father and then practiced with other partners. He later worked as the Henrico County Juvenile and Domestics Relations District Court judge. Smith belonged to Lambda Chi Alpha. He was the father of Robert J. Smith Jr. ’76.

Bernard J. Natkin ’51L , of Lexington, Va., died on Nov. 28, 2009. He served in the Army during World War II and received the Bronze Star and Purple Heart. He practiced law in Lexington and was the first county attorney for Rockbridge County. He was a member of the Veterans of Foreign Wars. He was the father of H. David Natkin ’83L and the father-in-law of Mary Z. Natkin ’85L. The Hon. Robert B. Spencer Jr. ’51L , of Dillwyn,

Va, died on Oct. 17, 2009. He served in the Army in France during World War II and later practiced law in Dillwyn. He served as a judge until his retirement in 1995 and continued to substitute until the spring of 2009.

Douglas E. Ballard ’64L , of Reston, Va., died on Dec. 29, 2009. He studied Arabic and international law at Georgetown University.

He served in the Army and then worked as acting president of the Dyna Systems International. He was chairman of the American Heart Association of Norfolk. Ballard belonged to Kappa Alpha.

Donald R. Andrews ’43L ,

of New York died on April 5, 2007. He received his brokers license from New York University and was selfemployed. He was a member of the Bibliographic Societies of America and the University

W & L

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Ronald T. Gold ’73L , of

Marietta, Ga., died on Dec. 1, 2009. He served in the Marine Corps and practiced law in Georgia as a partner with Merolla and Gold.

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Grads& Dads

The class of 2010 posed for a picture in front of Lee House with their alumni dads.

From l. to r.: Charles Yates III ’06, ’10L, Charles Yates Jr. ’70, Mike Gardner ’10L, Phil Gardner ’72L, Benton Keatley ’10L, Bob Keatley ’75, Stewart Crosland ’10L and Ed Crosland ’66, ’70L.

The Washington and Lee University S c h o o l O f L a w L e x i n g t o n ,

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l a w. w l u . e d u

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P e r m i t N o. 508 N o r f o l k, Va

Massie Payne ’10L (fourth from left) earned a trip to China on the basis of her real-time blogging on W&L’s and the United Nations’ joint symposium on International Investment and Alternative Dispute Resolution, held in March at the Law School.

Payne will serve as an expert assistant for the United Nations Conference on Trade Development International Investment Agreements Conference 2010 in Xiamen, China.

At the symposium, more than 80 practitioners, scholars and government officials from around the world joined the students to augment conference dialog through posts on a Facebook group page and through Twitter using a dedicated conference hashtag. Others watched the live web feed and joined in through the social networking sites.

Moderators of each of the symposium’s three main panels monitored the online micro-blogging, selecting questions and observations posted online to highlight alongside questions and exchanges from in-person participants.

Organizers selected Payne, who also served as one of several student symposium organizers, on the strength of her reporting and critical analysis of investment disputes.