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Summer Letter 2000

A Letter from Dean Van Zandt:

"Welcome Back to Northwestern Law"

August 2000

Key developments

Dear Students:

I hope you are enjoying your summer. We have had a beautiful summer in Chicago, with the weather staying in the 70s and 80s and lots of sun along the lakefront. It is a great time of year to be in Chicago. We've also had the chance to watch the White Sox become baseball's best team. And the Cubs.well, they are still the Cubs and Wrigley Field is still a great place to watch baseball.

We ended our academic year on a very high note. We were honored by the presence and address at graduation by Attorney General Janet Reno, who singled out the Center on Wrongful Convictions, the Children and Family Justice Center and the Center for International Human Rights as "great efforts [the Law School] has undertaken." She also commended the goal of the Law School's strategic plan "to promote a faculty whose scholarship not only informs and challenges students, academia and the profession, but also contributes to resolving the leading issues of the day."

As I do each summer, I write to bring you up to date on the changes that have occurred since you left and the developments that await you on your return. The Law School and faculty are increasingly active on a year-round basis. This summer, we have hosted our regular Short Courses for prosecutors and defense attorneys, the Summer Mock Trial Institute and the Summer Institute in Law and Business, a joint program with Kellogg that provides international lawyers and executives with increased knowledge of U.S. law and business. New international students in the LLM/Kellogg Program in Law and Business are already hard at work taking Business Associations and Kellogg courses. Several faculty members are teaching in all of these programs.

Consistent with our strategic initiatives to expand our admissions interviewing program, to attract new and more diverse employers to campus and to enhance our team building, trial advocacy and negotiations programs, we are building a series of multi-purpose rooms adjacent to the walkway between McCormick and the Atrium. Additionally, the Student Affairs office has been moved opposite these offices, providing more space for the office and for student meetings. The International Programs Office, which formerly occupied that space, has moved into the former Student Affairs space.

As you will see throughout this letter, there are countless other examples of how we are continuing to enhance the Northwestern Law Difference and implementing our Strategic Plan to build the great law school for the changing world. Through the summer, I have visited with alumni around the country and even at this year's ABA Annual Meeting in London. I have also spent a great deal of time with law firm hiring partners and recruiting coordinators. They continue to be very positive and excited about our plans and progress and believe that we are headed in the right direction. Our competitors remain impressed with the boldness and vision in the plan.

As you will note by the manner in which you are receiving this report, our plan is to use EsqwireCentral and the resources of the Internet for much of our communications this year and in the future. Just as we made the smooth transition from paper to email, I hope that checking EsqwireCentral and its calendar of events will become part of our daily routines because the Internet is an efficient and effective way to communicate.

This year, you have had the opportunity to be away for two more weeks than in the past, as classes do not begin until the day after Labor Day, September 5 (Academic Calendar). And, for those of you who are interested, the first Northwestern football game is on Thursday, August 31 at home against Northern Illinois at 7 p.m.
	Orientation for the first year class, which has been planned by students led by Todd Church, Will Dennison and Terry Ryan with the Office of Student Affairs begins the week of August 28. Steve Drizin, the faculty member who leads our work on juvenile justice issues in the Bluhm Legal Clinic and who is a 1986 graduate, will speak on August 30 at 5:15 p.m. You are, of course, invited to attend.

I wish you the best of luck for the remainder of the summer. Please enjoy all that you are doing and return ready to go for an exciting year.

Sincerely,

David E. Van Zandt

Faculty Developments

Three Rising Scholars, Distinguished Senior Lecturer to Join Faculty

We continue to be very active in recruiting new faculty as we seek to carry out our strategic initiative to develop and retain an internationally renowned research and teaching faculty. This year, we focused our efforts on attracting rising scholars whom we expect to build their careers and reputations here at Northwestern Law. Thanks to the members of the Faculty Appointments Committee (chaired by Steve Calabresi) and to all the students and faculty, we have had significant success in attracting the following new research scholars as Assistant Professors of Law:

	Richard R.W. Brooks comes to us from the Department of Policy Analysis & Management at Cornell University. A 1988 graduate of Cornell in policy analysis, he holds an MA and PhD in economics from the University of California at Berkeley and a JD degree from the University of Chicago Law School. This year, Rick will teach Contracts and a seminar on Race, Crime and the Law. In coming years he will teach in the areas of business and law and economics. His research uses economic and legal tools to analyze broad policy issues, such as race and legal enforcement, criminal law, environmental law and accident law. Much of his work focuses on the legal determinants of the boundary of the firm -- how laws and regulations influence the way companies organize themselves internally and decide what to contract out, and on theoretical aspects of contracts and applied game-theoretic modeling.
Janice Nadler, also a graduate of Cornell (BA 1985) holds an MA and PhD in psychology from the University of Illinois, and a JD. from the University of California at Berkeley (Boalt Hall), where she was associate editor of the California Law Review. In July, Janice became the proud parent of a son, Jack. She will be teaching Law and Psychology in the spring semester. Her research interests are social judgment and deference to legal authority; trust, learning and emotion in negotiation and conflict; and procedural mechanisms and distributive fairness in individual and group decision-making. Janice will also be a research fellow at the American Bar Foundation and has an appointment in the Management and Organization Department at Kellogg.
	Robert H. Sitkoff joins Northwestern after a clerkship with Chief Judge Richard A. Posner of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit. He received his undergraduate degree from the University of Virginia, with distinction, in 1996, and his JD with high honors from the University of Chicago, where he was Order of the Coif, managing editor of the law review, and was selected by the faculty as the outstanding graduating student in law and economics. Rob's research interests are in business law, in particular all things fiduciary. He will teach Contracts in the fall and Business Associations in the spring.
In addition to these three new full-time, research faculty, we also have added an experienced lawyer as a Senior Lecturer in the securities regulation area. Such faculty bring years of experience to the classroom and are with us on a full-time basis for a number of days each week.
Allan Horwich, who has served as an adjunct professor in past years, has joined us as a Senior Lecturer, teaching Securities Regulation and Securities Litigation. He is a partner as Schiff, Hardin & Waite, and has practiced for more than 30 years in litigation, with concentration in federal and state court and administrative proceedings involving federal and state securities laws. Allan received his undergraduate education at Princeton University (AB, 1966, cum laude) and obtained his law degree from the University of Chicago Law School (JD, 1969).

We have also added five faculty members to the Communication and Legal Reasoning Program (formerly Legal Writing). Their backgrounds and the program changes will be more fully described below.

Henry Smith	Annelise Riles	Andy Koppelman

An excellent school must always work hard to keep its best faculty. The academic market for the best scholars is very competitive today. This year we were fortunate to have lost none of our research faculty. As a sign of the growing quality of our faculty, more of them are being asked to visit at other top schools. This coming year, Henry Smith will spend the fall semester at the University of Chicago, returning in the spring to teach Property, and Annelise Riles will spend the spring semester at Cornell's Law School. As you may know, this past year, Annelise, Henry and Andy Koppelman were all promoted to Associate Professor.

Regrettably, Vanessa Meléndez Lucas of the Bluhm Legal Clinic will be leaving us as she moves to London as her husband has taken a new position there. Please join me in thanking her for her contributions and wishing her the best of luck.

Visiting Faculty

As always, our research faculty will be enriched by a number of visiting scholars. This coming year, four visitors will join us from other universities:

Gerald N. Rosenberg (below), associate professor of political science and lecturer in law at the University of Chicago who will be visiting in the spring semester as the Jack N. Pritzker Distinguished Visiting Professor of Law, teaching Constitutional Law and a course on U.S. Courts.
	A Phi Beta Kappa, summa cum laude graduate of Dartmouth College, he earned a master's degree in politics and philosophy from Oxford University, a law degree from the University of Michigan and a doctorate in political science from Yale University. His work has appeared in the University of Chicago Law Review, the University of Virginia Law Review, Law & Social Inquiry, Supreme Court Review, the Journal of Supreme Court History, The Green Bag, and other law reviews and journals. He has contributed to multiple edited collections and is the author of The Hollow Hope: Can Courts Bring About Social Change?
Tracey E. George (right), an associate professor of law and adjunct assistant professor of political science at the University of Missouri-Columbia, will be visiting for the fall semester and teaching Contracts. A graduate of Southern Methodist University and Stanford Law School, Tracey joined the University of Missouri law faculty in 1996 after clerking for the Honorable Francis D. Murnaghan Jr. on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, and practicing with the law firm of Miller, Cassidy, Larroca & Lewin in Washington, D.C.
	Claire Hill (left), an assistant professor of law at IIT Chicago-Kent College of Law, has been visiting this summer, teaching Business Associations. She will return in the spring semester to teach Corporate Transactions. Claire received a BA and MA in philosophy from the University of Chicago, a JD from American University, Washington College of Law, and an LLM and JSD. from Columbia University School of Law.
Wayne K. Lewis (right) will be returning to the Law School in the spring semester, teaching Negotiable Instruments (he visited at Northwestern in fall 1999 when he taught Commercial Law: Sales). Wayne is associate dean and professor of law at DePaul University College of Law where he teaches Contracts, Sales, Commercial Paper and Consumer Protection. He is a multiple recipient of the College of Law and University's Excellence in Teaching Awards and has twice served as Professor-Reporter for the Regional Seminar Committee on Commercial Litigation for the Illinois Judicial Conference. He received a BA in history, cum laude from Rutgers-The State University of New Jersey and his JD from Cornell Law School.
In addition to these visitors from other schools, we will also have at least three Visiting Assistant Professors in the coming year in residence at the Law School. Our Visiting Assistant Professor Program brings to the Law School excellent young scholars who are just beginning their academic careers. Of these, one is new and the other two are continuing on from last year:
Brendan Cummins is visiting from the law firm of Miller, O'Brien & Bloom in Minneapolis. He received a BA in English with honors, and a BA in Hispanic Literature and Culture, from Brown University where he was a Rhodes Scholarship finalist. He received his JD from Yale Law School. He has taught private sector labor law at the University of Minnesota, Labor Education Service, and the Carlson School of Management. He will be teaching First Amendment Law in the spring semester.
		Scott Kieff, who was a visiting assistant professor last year, is returning as well. He will teach Contracts in the fall semester and Patent Law in the spring semester and is faculty adviser for the Student Intellectual Property Law Society. Scott is a graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of Pennsylvania Law School. He was with the Chicago office of Jenner & Block.
Chris Bracey, who was also a visiting professor last year, is returning and will teach Civil Procedure I and Criminal Process in the fall, and Race Relations Law in the spring. Chris, a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, received his JD from Harvard Law School. Prior to his arrival at Northwestern, Chris served as a law clerk to Judge Royce C. Lamberth of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia, and worked as a litigation associate in the Washington, D.C. office of Jenner & Block

New Initiatives and Name in Communication and Legal Reasoning Program

The substance of what has been called our "legal writing" program involve much more than "writing". The program is aimed at teaching legal analysis and reasoning. In addition, while writing represents one important vehicle through which legal analytical skills are taught, the course is also expanding to include greater emphasis on oral and presentational skills, consistent with our strategic plan. To reflect more accurately the program's curriculum and the initiatives that are being pursued to further the goals of our strategic plan, the name has been changed to the Communication and Legal Reasoning Program.

Judy Rosenbaum (left) will be succeeding Helene Shapo as leader of the program. A graduate of the University of Michigan Law School, Judy has taught in the program since 1984 and has most recently served as assistant director. I want to take this opportunity to thank Helene for building an extraordinarily strong program for us since joining the faculty in 1978. Fortunately, Helene will remain on the faculty and focus her teaching and research interests in the area of estates and trusts. She will also teach Advanced Legal Communication in the fall semester.

In addition to the traditional program offerings in legal research, reasoning, writing and oral argument, we will be pursuing some new initiatives designed to further the following objectives: to encourage teamwork and collaboration, to provide a greater variety of settings for developing oral communication skills, to make better use of technology both in and out of the classroom, and to take advantage of our location amidst the vibrant Chicago legal community to show our students the value this community places on the skills they are learning. Examples of these initiatives include the following:

• Students will write their first memorandum assignments on their own as they have done in the past, but instead of working on a rewrite by themselves, they will work with a partner, blending together the comments on both of their papers into a single jointly-authored rewrite.
• Some of the research exercises will be done in groups and the groups will submit a single final product.
• In one set of fall conferences, students will be asked to engage in a role play in which they assume the role of a junior attorney reporting to a senior attorney on the status of work in progress.
• Each section will spend one class period observing oral arguments in the 7^th Circuit.
• Speakers from the larger Chicago legal community will be invited to speak to the first year classes in Communication and Legal Reasoning, either individually or in panel discussions, so that students can see the relevance of their coursework to the work of lawyers in practice.

As you know, Jim McMasters has left the Law School to pursue a degree in library science. In addition, Lisa Pearl is home for a semester with her new baby girl and Christina Heyde is spending the year at home with her three children. We have recruited a very talented group of attorneys to fill these positions. Our new additions to the Communication and Legal Reasoning faculty are:

• Susan Alexander, who received her AB from Washington University, an MA in political science from Northwestern, and a JD from Harvard University. Susan was a legal writing instructor at Northwestern from 1987 to 1990. She has worked as a law clerk to a federal judge, as a public interest lawyer, and as a writer and editor for a number of legal publications. Since leaving the law school in 1990, Susan has worked as an in-house legal writing instructor, writer, and editor at three Chicago law firms, most recently at Lord Bissell & Brook. She also serves as an arbitrator and works as a legal writing consultant to law firms in the Chicago area.

• Amy Newman Berger, a 1993 graduate of Northwestern Law, who received her BA cum laude from American University. While at Northwestern, she served on the editorial board of the Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology and published an article examining cruel and unusual punishment in Eighth Amendment cases. She has practiced for seven years as a litigator at Mayer, Brown & Platt where she had extensive experience in all phases of discovery and pre-trial litigation. She has had trial experience in a variety of substantive areas.

• Susan Irion, who received her undergraduate degree from Northwestern's Medill School of Journalism and graduated from Loyola University School of Law, where she received numerous academic awards. She clerked for the Honorable Frank J. McGarr and the Honorable Suzanne B. Conlon at the US District Court for the Northern District of Illinois. She then practiced for eight years as a litigator at Mayer, Brown & Platt, followed by four years as an in-house attorney at the Ameritech companies. For the past six years, she also has served as an adjunct professor at Northwestern, teaching Trial Practice and Pre-Trial Litigation.  In addition to teaching Communication and Legal Reasoning, she will be an adjunct professor of trial practice at Northwestern as well as an adjunct professor of trial practice, appellate advocacy and e-commerce law at Loyola University School of Law.

• Marianne Richardson, who received her BA. from Loyola University, an MA. from Medill School of Journalism and a JD from Northwestern, will teach the LLM students. She taught Legal Writing at Northwestern from 1989 to 1997 and then went on to become a trial attorney with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and then a staff attorney with the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services.

• Cliff Zimmerman comes to Northwestern from DePaul University College of Law, where he has taught for the past 10 years. The courses he has taught include Legal Writing, Evidence and Current Issues in Section 1983 Litigation. While at DePaul, he also coached the moot court team and served as faculty advisor to the Business Law Journal. Cliff received his undergraduate education at the University of Michigan and his law degree from Rutgers-Newark University School of Law. At Rutgers, he was articles editor of the Women's Rights Law Reporter and a co-recipient of the Carol Russ Memorial Prize. He is currently enrolled at the DePaul University School of Education and anticipates receiving a master's degree in 2001.

Curriculum Developments

We continue to revise and expand our curriculum to meet the needs of the changing world. In addition to the curricular changes brought by new faculty and those taking place in the Communication and Legal Reasoning Program, we are also making the following changes:

• We continue to expand the Law and Social Science Program and will be offering the following courses:

• Environmental Law Seminar to be taught in the spring semester by Keith Harley, an attorney for the Chicago Legal Clinic, Inc and an adjunct professor of law. The course will explore the skills attorneys need to represent clients in environmental cases. Students will work on assignments derived from public interest environmental cases being handled by the Chicago Environmental Law Clinic. The course will offer opportunities to learn by interacting with experienced practitioners, clients, regulators and, in some cases, Northwestern engineering students and professors.
• Health Care Fraud and Abuse, to be offered in the fall semester as part of our Health Law concentration with Kellogg, taught by adjunct professors Daniel H. Melvin II and Joan E. Polacheck who practice in the Health Law Department of McDermott, Will & Emery's Chicago office.
• Financing Entrepreneurial Ventures, to be taught in the fall semester by Marc Lane, a 1971 graduate of Northwestern Law and an adjunct professor. Mark is a business and tax attorney, a master registered financial planner, a registered financial consultant and a certified investment specialist. He is also an adjunct professor of business at the University of Illinois.
• International Team Projects -- four projects to be offered, building on our highly successful program over the past two years in which more than 80 students traveled to Ghana, Singapore, South Africa and Tanzania. To learn more about these unique and innovative courses, including information on the policies and procedures, registration and student leader responsibilities and incentives, please see the ITP web page.
  

On the administrative front, we continue to expand and refine our ability to provide on-line registration and add-drop procedures. I think you will also see more faculty members using CourseInfo in order to effectively communicate with our classes.

Key Changes in Student Affairs

As many of you know, Assistant Dean Amy Sherman has left the Law School to become executive director of the Workforce Development Policy Project for the Chicago Federation of Labor. The project will bring together a broad, representative consortium of labor, business, government, and community organizations to design a workforce development system for the manufacturing sector in the City of Chicago and Cook County. We will miss Amy's contributions and leadership.

I am pleased to announce that Theresa Cropper will assume responsibility for entire Student Affairs function as our new Associate Dean and Dean of Students. Theresa's goal will be to continue to build and expand the cooperative, teamwork-oriented culture among our students that is such an essential element of the Northwestern Law Difference.

We are already very distinct in this area, but we have even more to do to develop the leadership and entrepreneurial skills of our students, are so important to their long-term success after law school. Ours is a student-led culture and the faculty, the administration and I rely on your efforts to improve our wonderful school. An important part of this are the efforts of the Student Bar Association and its committees. Every important function at the Law School has an SBA committee or liaison.

This year, as we have done in the past, members of the senior staff and I will meet weekly with SBA President Isaac Robinson and the SBA Executive Committee and I encourage you to use them as your vehicle to make your views known. Once again, I encourage you to make Esqwire Central a primary source for information and communication.

We are also restructuring Student Affairs. Sandra Moffett has been promoted to Student Events Coordinator and she will be responsible for the programming and execution of student events and programs.We are adding a new position, Operations Manager. Gina Green, joining us from Kellogg, will be starting in that role on September 8th. She will be responsible for the administrative and budgetary functions of the office. The Office of Minority Affairs will be conducting a national search for a Director. In the interim, Stefan Griffin will serve as Interim Director. Stefan (Jd/Phd.), Class of 1997, is completing his dissertation with Northwestern's Sociology department. I am confident that with these new additions under Theresa's leadership, we will continue to empower our students to contribute to our distinctive culture and prepare themselves for future opportunities and challenges.

One other personnel change that will be of interest is that Meagan Earley has joined us as Special Events Coordinator, replacing Isabel Schechter. Meagan comes to us from Washington, D.C., where she served as an assistant and advisor on special events for the Office of Deputy Secretary, Department of Energy, and before that as special assistant to the director of special projects for the White House. Meagan will be responsible for working with students and members of our community to ensure the success of the hundreds of events that are held at the Law School annually.

Those of you who have been reading Esqwire Central this summer know that U-Pass is here. This is an example of a student-initiated program for the benefit of students led by the SBA and reflects our students' leadership abilities. Student accounts will be charged $67.93 per semester for this special CTA pass. You will need to have a special photo ID. Check out Esqwire Central for the dates when photos will be taken.

Student Computing and Library Developments

We continue to improve and upgrade our computing capabilities. Our strategy in this area is to have all students use notebooks and to upgrade our internal resources to facilitate computer use both inside and outside the classroom. The core of this is our Notebook Program.

• We believe that notebook computers offer students the most flexibility because they can be used for taking notes in classes, connecting to the Law School network from connections in the Law School, library and residence halls and for writing exams in some courses. If you have not done so, we strongly advise you to purchase a notebook or laptop computer recommended and supported by the Law School Information Technology department.
• The main computer lab will be upgraded with 15 new computers by the time you return and the student network has been converted to Windows NT, eliminating the need for law students to have a separate logon to get onto the computers in the labs - your netID will serve as your logon name and password.
• Software in the labs will be upgraded from Microsoft Office 97 to Office 2000.
• An additional high-speed printer has been added to the network to better handle student printing. And we are exploring the possibility of using WildCards for student printing.
• There will be improved printing in the Electronic Reference areas.
• The Government Documents Electronic Reference area has been upgraded with a new computer.
• We have installed signage in the library identifying carrels that have network connections making it easier to find locations in the library to connect to the Law School network.
• Later in the academic year we plan to test the feasibility of installing a wireless network in certain parts of the law school.

The Pritzker Legal Research Center has added the new position of Associate Director for Access Services. Mary Hollerich, who has worked previously at the University Library, and at the University of Southern California and the University of Illinois libraries, joins the library staff in the new position. Mary is responsible for developing and implementing innovative initiatives for interlibrary loan and document delivery using print and electronic technologies. These new initiatives will continue to ensure that Library patrons have prompt, reliable, and efficient access to needed information, regardless of format or location.

The Library has added a variety of new information resources to its web page. Students will soon have access to the full range of Canadian legal resources through QuickLaw and to domestic legal resources through LoisLaw. Additionally, we have licensed the web-based version of the popular Index to Legal Periodicals, which also will be available from the Library's web page.

The Pritzker Legal Research Center was the lead agency on a grant of $115,000 from the State Library to acquire hardware and software to permit Internet-based document delivery among the nine Illinois academic law libraries and the Illinois Supreme Court. (This marks the second consecutive year that the Library has received major funding from the State Library for innovative electronic information projects - the first was for the digitization of the Supreme Court papers of Arthur J. Goldberg). Once implemented, the project will permit improved electronic document delivery for students including better and faster delivery of electronic information resources. Specific implementation plans will be announced later in the year.

Admissions and Financial Aid

Four years ago, we made a strategic decision to develop an interviewing program so that we could assess the judgment, maturity, and interpersonal skills of our applicants as well as evaluate their academic credentials. This personalized approach to admissions also sent a positive message to all applicants about the Northwestern Law community. And now, with all JD students at the Law School having had the opportunity to participate and to benefit from this program, I am pleased to say that our student body is stronger and more diverse than ever.

This year's entering class will match last year's record 167 median LSAT, one of the highest of any law school. The median GPA has risen to 3.57, a significant jump from recent years. Our applications continued to rise, a sign of our growing reputation and our admit percentage is one of the best in the nation.

About half of the students in the entering class are women and more than 30 percent are minorities. Our focus on attracting a more national base is also showing results as more than two-thirds of the first-year students will come from outside our home Midwest region; the Class of 2003 will be perhaps the most regionally diverse of any law school. Additionally, nearly 80 percent of the class have some work experience and over 40 percent have more than two years' experience.

In the current year, thanks to more than 400 alumni and 20 students, we interviewed more than 2,000 applicants, an increase of 20 percent from last year, and more than 65 percent of our enrolling students were interviewed. We interviewed applicants in 40 states and six foreign countries, compared to 28 and three, respectively, last year. Moreover, for the first time, we began to interview our international LLM candidates to ensure that they have many of the same qualities as our JD students.

Our Admitted Students Weekend, where we describe the benefits and opportunities of attending Northwestern, is achieving its objective of encouraging admitted students to choose Northwestern over our competitors, as more than two-thirds of those attending the weekend chose to enroll at Northwestern.

In addition to the hard work of everyone in our Admissions Office, many of you deserve credit for our continued improvement in attracting the students we want. During their campus visits, the incoming students' interactions with many of you played an important role in their decisions to attend Northwestern.

The transition to the University's new People Soft administrative computer system has created significant challenges in the areas of financial aid, billing and loan processing. We continue to work closely with the University in its implementation. When fully implemented, we hope that this new system will bring increased financial aid efficiencies for students. Also, although the Chicago campus financial aid office continues to provide all existing services to law students, Mary Beth Busby, Don Rebstock, Sarah Rewerts and Johann Lee in our Admissions Office continue to serve as on-site financial aid counselors. Please help us improve service by making them your first contact for any financial aid-related issues you may have. General financial aid questions can also be addressed via e-mail to law-financial-aid@northwestern.edu.

Center for Career Strategy and Advancement Created

We are charting a new course for our former "Center for Career Strategy and Advancement" office. While we will continue to work with students on the nuts and bolts of searching for that first job, such as interviewing techniques and resume writing, we are expanding our efforts to help students strategize about their careers and goals in what for most of you will be an exciting, multi-job career. To more appropriately describe this changing role, we have renamed the office as the Center for Career Strategy and Advancement.

As I announced earlier this summer, Kristin Nichols (photo, right) has been promoted to the position of Director of the Center for Career Strategy and Advancement . A former litigator at Sidley & Austin, Kristin's responsive and innovative leadership has been apparent since she joined Northwestern Law only a year ago. Her approach to the position and the challenges and opportunities of the future impressed all of us who were involved in the search for a new director. Kristin will report to Don Rebstock, who was recently promoted to Associate Dean for Enrollment Management and Career Strategy. Don will be active in working with Kristin in developing the strategy for the center. Tina Sciabica (photo, left) recently joined the center as Associate Director. Prior to joining Northwestern, Tina practiced law for five years - both at Chapman & Cutler and Grippo & Elden.

Our job placement rate continues to improve as 99 per cent of the class of 2000 graduated with jobs, a substantial increase over 9 \1 per cent last year. In addition, we are seeing more variety in the geographic placement of our students - more and more students are choosing to work outside of the Midwest. Similarly, the types of first jobs are changing, with an increasing number of students working outside of the traditional legal market, such as in investment banking, the public sector, or in "dot coms." We plan to continue these initiatives with an increased focus on marketing the Law School and our students to employers throughout the country.

Our efforts are already seeing some success. This year, we have commitments from a number of companies and firms, such as Cravath, Swaine and Moore, to recruit at Northwestern for the first time or to return after an absence of several years.

Our strategic plan aims to expand clerkships dramatically because we believe that the benefits of judicial clerkships are exceptional and we strongly encourage all students to consider a post-graduate clerkship. The experience gained by working with a federal or state judge is foundational for any career path-whether in transactional work, litigation, business, or public interest-and will broaden career opportunities. This year, Professor Rob Sitkoff, working with Kristin, will be leading our clerkship efforts.

International Program Growing

Our international program continues to grow. As I noted above, 18 international students from 13 countries are now on campus pursing an LLM from the Law School and a certificate in management from Kellogg. In addition, we expect to enroll a record number of international LLM students this fall, with more than 60 students from 25 countries.

Since the graduate students will participate in classes with JD students, I hope you will get to know them and make personal and professional international contacts that will serve you throughout your legal career. I encourage those of you who are interested in international law or business to consider spending a semester abroad in one of our exchange programs. We currently maintain exchange relationships with law schools in Amsterdam and Brussels, where the courses are conducted in English; in Australia; in Israel, where students must be fluent in Hebrew; and in Argentina where students must be fluent in Spanish.

The Bluhm Legal Clinic Developments

With its strengths in live-client representation, simulation, and practica, our nationally ranked clinical education programs continue to set Northwestern Law apart from other law schools. Some noteworthy activity this summer included:

• Participation by Larry Marshall and the Center on Wrongful Convictions in the death penalty appeal of Gary Graham in Texas. Although the appeal was unsuccessful, Larry and the center continue to bring to public and legal attention some of the significant problems with the death penalty and our legal system.

• A petition for asylum was granted on behalf of a young man from El Salvador who entered the U.S. after fleeing persecution by the Black Shadow, a death squad infamous for killing dozens of street children and suspected gang members. He was represented by a team from the clinic including Ora Schub and Vanessa Meléndez Lucas and students Chris Norborg and Susanne Jennings(below, left to right).

• Clinic faculty and students also won reversal of a murder conviction because of the state's failure to disclose evidence favorable to the accused. The evidence withheld was information concerning the extent of the investigating officer's numerous contacts with and influence over the state's key witness in the case.

• A team of clinic attorneys and students led by Angela Daker (with Tom Geraghty and Steve Drizin) won a ruling suppressing the statement of M.W., a 13-yearold mentally retarded youth who was charged with murder. The court held that M.W. did not knowingly and intelligently waive his Miranda rights when he agreed to answer questions from police detectives in August of 1997.

Conferences and Speakers to Enrich Community

As always, our community will be enriched by a number of conferences and lectures series. Of particular note is that Hilary Putnam, professor of philosophy at Harvard University, will deliver the Rosenthal Lectures November 6-8. Putnam has been described as "one of the most distinguished living philosophers, whose brilliant and fertile writings now span half a century. His range is enormous: it is difficult to think of an aspect of philosophy that he has not touched, from formal logic to the philosophy of religion, from quantum theory to ethics. He has been constantly at the center of debates in the philosophy of mind and language, where positions that he was the first to articulate have become landmarks in the field. He is a 'big picture' thinker, yet he is capable of deploying the most technical arguments. Indeed, Putnam has invented some of the most discussed arguments in recent philosophy." The New Republic, April 17, 2000.

In addition, Professor Leigh Bienen is chairing our Third Annual Faculty Conference on November 17,2000 titled "Learning from the Past, Living in the Present: Patterns in Chicago Homicides, 1870-1930." The Conference will bring together criminologists, sociologists, historians, ethnographers, criminal law professors and others to analyze a recently discovered database of more than 11,000 homicides in Chicago during the period 1870-1930.

The Chicago Police maintained this rare data set consistently during the contemporaneous time period. Participants from a variety of disciplines will consider the patterns exhibited by these homicides and their legal dispositions, against the background of changes in immigration, concomitant ethnic and labor- related violence, and other social and economic factors.

In the spring, Professors David Haddock, Tom Merrill and Henry Smith are planning a conference entitled "The Evolution of Property Rights." The conference is currently scheduled for April 21-22, 2001.

Development and Alumni Relations Advances

Since we kicked off our capital campaign in April 1999 with $33 million in cash and pledges, we have added almost $25 million in new commitments, bringing us to nearly $58 million. As we close in on our initial goal of $60 million, I anticipate announcing an increased goal this fall. Our main focus remains increased funding for our general endowment and a higher on-going level for our Law School Fund, a primary source of unrestricted funds for the school. This past year was the most successful year for the Law School Fund, with alumni and friends contributing more than $1.7 million. The Class of 2000 also got into the act by pledging more than $19,000 over the next three years, a sum that was matched by a number of alumni parents and me. The increased funding we have received over the past few years has gone toward implementing elements of the Strategic Plan, including recruiting new faculty, expanding our curriculum, revamping our admissions and placement operations and enhancing Law School technology.

I am also pleased to report that two of our alumni have been confirmed as federal judges. Richard Tallman ('78), formerly a partner in the firm of Tallman & Severin, LLP, will be joining the 9^th Circuit Court of Appeals and Joan Lefkow ('71) who is currently a federal bankruptcy judge in the Northern District of Illinois, will be a district court judge for the Northern District.

We expect hundreds of our alumni to return to campus from all around the globe for class reunions on September 22-23. Reunion 2000 will provide a variety of fun and interesting activities designed to enable our graduates to reconnect with one another and with the Law School. Something new this year is that all of our celebrating classes will host their individual class parties in and around the Law School. As always, there will be a number of opportunities for students to participate in reunion activities, including a special reception for our international alumni and our First Annual Career Symposium.

The Law Alumni Association is also working closely with the Center for Career Strategy and Advancement to develop great opportunities for students to meet, network with and learn from our talented and successful alumni. They are currently working to develop more online-networking resources, as well as bring more alumni back to campus.

We will also be enhancing the marketing of our Northwestern Law products. When you return, you will see a new variety of apparel and other products that will enable you to wear the Northwestern Law N with pride.