Access Restricted to Northwestern Law CommunitySummer Letter 2003
| August 2003 A Letter from Dean Van Zandt: Welcome Back to Northwestern Law |
|||
 |
Dear Students: The 2002-2003 academic year ended on a high note with Sen. Paul Simon (below) delivering the graduation address. Neil O'Connor, a 1974 JD graduate, also continued the tradition of an alumnus welcoming a graduating class that includes one of his or her children. Neil's son, Neil O’Connor Jr., was a member of the JD class of 2003. |
||
Many second- and third-year JD students have returned to the Law School this week to take part in on-campus interviewing (OCI), which began August 18 (see OCI schedule). We will welcome all students back on September 2 (see the academic calendar). We look forward to welcoming you back soon. Please enjoy all that you are doing and return ready to go for an exciting year. Sincerely, |
|||
Jump in Applications Leads to Most Impressive Entering Class Yet
The Law School experienced a significant increase in applications this year: from 4,439 JD applicants last year to 5,222 this year, an 18 percent jump. About 240 JD students will enroll this year (including 22 JD/MBA students), a number comparable to last year; 30 transfer students will also be joining us. In June, 22 students from 12 countries joined us to begin studying in the year-long Graduate Program in Law and Business (LLM/Kellogg). About 65 general LLM students from 26 countries and five international two-year JD students will also join us this fall. In the LLM Tax program, there will be 25 full-time students as well as nine new part-time students, and six joint JD and LLM Tax students. We also welcome the first five students in the new joint law and journalism program (MSL/MSJ) with the Medill School of Journalism.
 |
In addition to the hard work of everyone
on our Admissions team, many of you deserve credit for our continued
improvement in attracting the students we want. During their campus
visits and Day at Northwestern Law, the incoming students' interactions
with many of you played an important role in their decisions to attend
Northwestern Law. |
Our unique admissions interview program continues to grow in scope. Alumni and student volunteers helped the Admissions team interview 3,100 applicants this year. As we have begun to interview more applicants, our student body has become not only more diverse but also academically stronger. The median LSAT score of this year's entering JD class is 169, up one point from last year and up five points from 1996. The middle range of LSAT scores - the 25th to 75th percentiles - also rose to 166-170 in 2003 compared to 165-169 last year and 159-167 in 1996.
Our message about the importance of work experience is also making an impact. This year, 93 percent of the entering JD class of 2005 have at least one year of work experience; 68 percent have two or more years; 100 percent of JD/MBA, LLM, and LLM/Kellogg students have work experience.
Today's classes also represent more geographic diversity than
those of a few years ago. This fall, 70 percent of first-year JD students
come from outside the Midwest, making for perhaps the most regionally diverse
first-year class at any law school.
First-job Placement Rate at Graduation Improves in 2003
We are pleased to report that we had an impressive first-job placement record at the end of the last school year. At graduation, 95 percent of the class of 2003 was employed. This numbers are actually up from last year’s numbers despite a limited and difficult economy. The Center for Career Strategy and Advancement has done an excellent job of helping students execute effective job searches during these tough times and is preparing students to manage their careers in any economic environment.
Much of our success can be attributed to the fact that our Career
Strategy Center offers more educational programming
and individualized attention than most other law schools.
In addition to helping students plan and develop searches for summer employment
and first jobs, the center helps students and alumni recognize and pursue
opportunities as they embark on multi-job careers, in which their first jobs
will be, in most cases, just the first in a series of wonderful opportunities.
Throughout the year, we visit hiring partners and recruiting partners around the country to gather feedback and to market the Law School and our students. This year, we have added to our eight-member staff, an associate director, Julie LaEace, who will be working with International LLM and LLM Tax students. Through one-on-one counseling, workshops, mock interview programs, recruitment programs, job posting databases, and other programming, we give all of our students the tools to conduct their own effective job searches in parallel with off-campus job fairs, resume collection programs, and the on-campus interviewing (OCI) program.
This year, OCI has begun early, in August instead of September (see OCI schedule). We decided to to move OCI up a couple weeks after conducting an extensive benchmarking study with peer schools. As we found that a greater percentage of top schools have shifted recruiting programs to earlier in the cycle, we realized that having recruiters at Northwestern concurrently would be crucial to the success of our program. A small second phase of OCI will take place in September. In looking ahead at what is to be expected of the job market this year, it is important to remember that the legal profession has not been immune to the effects of the economic downturn. Placement patterns at all of the nation’s top schools have been impacted. |
 |
Legal employers have reacted to market conditions by shrinking the size of summer associate programs and reducing the number of new associates hired. There is little indication that the economy will experience a sustained recovery or growth in the coming year, and we expect the demand for law school graduates to remain about the same.
That being said, we continue to focus our overall strategy on admitting and educating students who will be more attractive to employers in all economic environments. Strong interpersonal skills, prior work experience, and excellent academic abilities help to render our graduates the most attractive for employment opportunities regardless of economic conditions.
Another one of our goals is to place more students in judicial clerkships. On September 2, JD and JD/MBA students in the class of 2004 will begin the process of searching for clerkships available for the 2004 term. At that time, applications and letters of recommendation can be mailed to judges. While some federal judges in major cities will begin to interview shortly after that date, many other federal and state judges will be considering applications from third-year students into next year.
We strongly urge you to apply. The benefits of clerkships are exceptional. 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.
A record 30 Northwestern Law graduates will serve as law clerks
for the 2003 term (see historical
clerkship data). And 2003 graduate Jeff Oldham will clerk for Supreme
Court Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist during the 2004 term. This year,
the Faculty Clerkship Committee, chaired by Professor James
Speta, will work with Melisa Rosado
to lead our clerkship efforts.
FACULTY:
Welcome Nine New Residential Faculty
We continue to actively recruit talented scholars and teachers as we seek to carry out our strategic initiative to develop and retain an internationally renowned research and teaching faculty. We have had significant success in attracting the following new research faculty:
New Research Faculty:
- Emerson Tiller, an expert in the role of political forces in regulatory and judicial decision-making, joins us as a professor of law and will also have a courtesy appointment at the Kellogg School of Management. Emerson first came to Northwestern in fall 2002 as a visiting professor from the business school at the University of Texas. This fall, he will teach two sections of Contracts.
- Ronen Avraham, an expert in economic analysis of torts, property, and contracts, joins us as an assistant professor of law after serving as a visiting assistant professor of law in 2002-2003. This fall, he will teach a section of Torts and the Law and Economics Colloquium with Rob Sitkoff.
- Max Schanzenbach, an empirical researcher with interests in labor economics and antitrust law, joins us as an assistant professor of law. He will teach a section of Business Associations in the fall.
New Senior Lecturers:
|
New Clinical Faculty:
|
New to the Communication and Legal Reasoning Program:
|
|
|
| Visiting Professors:
Visiting Scholars:
|
Visiting Assistant Professors (VAP):
|
Professors Richard Speidel and Stephen Goldberg have retired but will remain a part of the Northwestern Law community as Professors of Law Emeritus. Both may continue to teach on a limited basis.
An excellent school must always work hard to keep its best faculty. The academic market for the best scholars is very competitive today. Recognizing the excellence of our faculty, other law schools regularly court the rising scholars we have recently attracted, as well as distinguished long-term members of our research faculty.
I am sorry to report that Professors Richard Brooks and Thomas
Merrill have left Northwestern. Rick has accepted an offer to join the faculty
at Yale Law School while Tom has joined the Columbia law faculty. While we
will surely miss them, we wish them the best of luck in their new endeavors.
|
We continue to revise and expand our curriculum
to meet the needs of the changing world. With the help of excellent
adjunct faculty and visiting professors in addition to our residential
faculty, we are able to offer as broad and diverse a curriculum as
substantially larger law schools. |
|
| Lawyer as Problem Solver Program for First-year Students in Fall and Spring | |
|
First year students will attend the award winning Lawyer as Problem Solver (LPS) program again this year. The interactive LPS curriculum provides perspective as well as training in creativity, decision making, negotiation, communication, conflict management, ethics, and counseling for the modern lawyer. At Northwestern Law, we believe in emphasizing these areas at the start of legal education and reinforcing them in the upper-class courses. |
The format of the program has changed from the previous two years. Instead of a full day of programming in the spring, LPS will be split into four two-hour modules: two will take place in the fall, September 19 and October 3, and two will take place in the spring, January 15 and February 26 (spring dates still tentative). The classroom components will be complemented by social events for
participants as well as opportunities to interact with representatives
from the legal community and faculty, many of whom do not typically
teach first year courses. |
|
|
To find out more about any of these courses, click here. Clinical Practice: Mental Health Issues in Juvenile Court
(Julie Biehl and Barbara
Kahn) Children in Trouble with the Law (Bernardine
Dohrn) Advanced Issues in Corporate Theory (Sharon
Hannes) Structuring Transactions: Real Estate (Edward
Malstrom) Colloquium Series
Brings Experts to the Law School The Law and Economics Colloquium, the Legal and Constitutional History of the United States Colloquium, and the Empirical Legal Studies Colloquium are similarly structured. Northwestern faculty and students attend six colloquia workshops at which a leading scholar presents a paper growing out of his or her research. Any interested Northwestern Law student may attend the presentations.
Up to 15 students can enroll each semester in a seminar that is taught
in conjunction with the colloquium. Participation in workshops is
mandatory for students enrolled in the seminar. Bluhm Legal Clinic: Winning Cases and Reforming Laws Bluhm Legal Clinic students and faculty have recently won an unprecedented number of cases for clients in juvenile, appellate, political asylum, wrongful conviction, and criminal matters. And thanks, in part, to the work of many Northwestern students and faculty, this summer Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich signed into law the first statute requiring police officers to electronically record interrogations of suspects in homicide cases. In the area of juvenile justice and political asylum, faculty and students in the Children and Family Justice Center obtained an acquittal on a murder charge (the client was found guilty of a lesser offense) on behalf of a juvenile in a rare juvenile court jury trial and won political asylum on behalf of five clients in proceedings before immigration judges and the Immigration and Naturalization Service (now the Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Services). Students and faculty in the clinic also won a not guilty verdict on behalf of Maria Gabriel, who was charged with the murder of her infant daughter. |
|
| In the area of wrongful convictions, faculty and students working in the Center on Wrongful Convictions were successful with three major cases involving clients Michael Evans, who walked out of prison for the first time in 27 years when DNA testing excluded him as a source of the genetic material found on the murder victim; Dana Holland (right, center with Karen Daniel and students who worked on the case), who was freed after serving 10 years for a rape and aggravated assault when DNA tests proved his innocence; and Randy Steidl, whose petition for writ of habeas corpus was finally granted by a federal district court judge. | |
| The Center for
International Human Rights has been strengthened by the arrival
of its new assistant director, Bridget
Arimond, who has 25 years experience as a civil rights lawyer.
She comes just in time to help the center in major litigation dealing
with indefinite detentions of prisoners at Guantanamo without due
process of law, the alleged involvement of a U.S. oil company in the
bombing of a civilian village in Colombia, and other human rights
issues around the world. |
|
|
The first five graduate students to participate in a joint-degree program being offered by the Law School and the Medill School of Journalism will join us this fall. We look for the same qualities in these students as we do in our JD students — maturity and ambition, prior work experience, and strong interpersonal and communication skills. The students joining us have worked for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, the Atlantic Council of the United States, the Chile Information Project in Santiago, Chile, and the International Crisis Group in Washington D.C. The program of study which begins and ends at Medill (and includes a term as a reporter for the Medill News Service in Washington D.C. or an internationally based residency through Medill’s Global Journalism Program) involves two semesters of work at the Law School studying torts, criminal law, civil procedure, legal writing and electives of the student’s choice. Upon completion of the program the students will earn
both a Master of Science in Journalism and a Master of Studies in
Law. The joint degrees will enable the journalists to understand the
legal nuances involved in so many news stories today. Law School and Kellogg Take Collaborative Approach to Executive Education Joe Hannigan, who joined the Law School in June as Director of Executive Education and the Kellogg School of Management as Associate Director of Executive Education, hopes to tap into new executive education markets. By developing programs with Kellogg, he plans to meet the needs of non-lawyer professionals at a time when law and business are increasingly integrated. Joe’s primary role will be to further engage Law School faculty in executive education programs. Some of these programs will be offered independently by the Law School and others will be jointly offered by the Law School and Kellogg. Joe has spent this summer directing Kellogg’s Advanced Executive Program. Under his leadership, we expect our emerging executive education partnership with Kellogg to be a great success. |
|
COMMUNITY:
|
|
There is much to look forward to this year, beginning with a visit from U.S. Supreme Court Justice Anthony M. Kennedy (right) who will serve as the Howard J. Trienens Visiting Judicial Scholar, October 1-2. Although Justice Kennedy will not make a formal speech, he may participate in class discussions, hold informal meetings with students, faculty, and alumni, and perhaps give some informal remarks to student groups. Judge John T. Noonan, Jr., United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, will also join the Law School as a Howard J. Trienens Visiting Judicial Scholar, October 20-22. His recently published book, Narrowing the Nation’s Power: The Supreme Court Sides with the States, examines the common-law origins of the doctrine that a sovereign monarch is immune from suit. |
 |
| Other lecture series that will take place this
spring include the Julius
Rosenthal Foundation Lecture Series, to be delivered by Stephen
L. Carter, the William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Law at Yale;
and the Pope & John
Lecture Series on Professionalism, to be delivered by David
Wilkins, the Kirkland and Ellis Professor of Law and Director of
the Program on the Legal Profession at Harvard. |
|
| The Public Service Program Kicks Off with a Day of Service | |
 |
On Saturday, August 23, during orientation week, more than 150 incoming students will participate in volunteer projects for the Greater Chicago Food Depository, YMCA Lawson House, Chicago Park District, or Animal Care Control Center. The service progjects are sponsored by the student organization SERV (Student Effort to Rejuvenate Volunteering). A community wide event involving students, faculty, and staff is being planned for October. We have a long history of fostering a commitment to public service at Northwestern Law, and each year the number of opportunities and the variety of public service projects grows. The Public Service Strategy was developed by students and faculty in 2002 to build an ethic of service and giving among all students. The program, which includes curricular, extra-curricular, and career related activities, broadens the definition of public service beyond just public interest lawyering and pro bono to include community service and philanthropy, policy development, and government service. |
All students, regardless of their career aspirations, are encouraged to give back to the community and are expected to complete at least 40 hours of public service prior to graduation.
Maureen Stratton,
Public Service Coordinator, works to develop partnerships with organizations
in the Chicago area to facilitate students’ public service efforts.
For more information visit the Public Service Program
web site.
| Record
Funds Raised For Student Events Last Year More than 30 organizations have grown out of students’ academic and recreational interests. Each year student groups plan and celebrate a variety of special events ranging from Public Interest Law Week and International Law Week to Diversity Week and Black History Month. In addition to choosing topics and enlisting speakers students also develop budgets and conduct fundraising. In 2002 - 2003 students raised more than $60,000, and 45 firms and corporations participated as sponsors of student events. For more information about firm or corporate sponsorship of events contact Kalli Hilbrenner, Director of Firm and Corporate Relations. |
 |
Firms and Corporations that sponsored student events in 2002-2003: |
|
| Altheimer & Gray Baker & McKenzie Barack Ferrazzano Kirschbaum Perlman & Nagelberg Bell, Boyd & Lloyd Brinks Hofer Gilson & Lione Butler, Rubin, Saltarelli & Boyd Drinker, Biddle & Reath Epstein, Becker & Green Foley & Lardner Gardner Carton & Douglas Goldberg Kohn Grippo & Elden Hinkshaw & Culbertson Holland & Knight Horty, Springer & Mattern Jenkins & Gilchrist Jenner & Block Jones, Day, Reavis & Pogue Katten Muchin Zavis Rosenman Kirkland & Ellis Latham & Watkins Lawrence, Kamin, Saunders & Uhlenhop |
LexisNexis Lord Bissell & Brook M.R. Bauer Foundation Mayer, Brown Rowe & Maw McAndrews, Held & Malloy, Ltd. McDermott, Will & Emery Neal, Gerber & Eisenberg Piper Rudnick Quarles & Brady Ross & Hardies Sachnoff & Weaver Sandridge & Rice Schiff Hardin & Waite Seyfarth Shaw Sidley, Austin, Brown & Wood Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom Sonnenschein Nath & Rosenthal Thompson & Thompson Vedder, Price, Kaufman & Kammholz Wildman, Harrold, Allen & Dixon Wilson, Sonsini, Goodrich & Rosati Winston & Strawn Womble Carlyle |
Hundreds of Alumni Returning to Campus for Reunions in October
| In October, we will welcome hundreds of our alumni to campus for Reunion 2003. A variety of activities, designed to reconnect our graduates with one another and with the Law School, will take place on October 24 and 25. Three years ago, we began a new tradition of hosting individual class parties in and around the Law School; the courtyard will be tented for the cocktail party and dancing after dinner. As always, we invite you to participate in reunion activities, the pre-game tailgate party for the Wildcats homecoming game against Wisconsin. |
 |
Alumni support through volunteering continues to flourish. This year more than 500 alumni interviewed about 1,000 applicants. Also, this past spring, the Julius H. and Arlyn Miner Moot Court competitions boasted a record 263 alumni who volunteered their time and experience to serve as judges.
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. In June, the Law Alumni Association held a
networking event for current students working as summer associates and young
alumni in New York.
RESOURCES AND
TECHNOLOGY:
Building Renovations and Technology Upgrades Accommodate Expanding
Student Body
 |
As part of our ongoing efforts to meet
the changing needs of our community, building renovations have taken
place over the summer. The second floor of the Coon Library has been
renovated to create a suite of 12 faculty offices for our expanding
faculty population. The library collection that was housed in the
space has been relocated to the second floor of the Rubloff building,
and the international periodicals and international monographs have
been moved from the Coon Library to the third floor of the Rubloff
portion of the Library. |
| Because the lower levels of the Coon Library are now closed stacks, the library has established a regularly scheduled service to retrieve materials for students. The new faculty suite closely resembles the Gary Faculty corridor on the second floor of Levy Meyer. We also continue to improve upon the computing and audiovisual infrastructure to provide the best service for students, faculty, and staff. Some of the improvements that have taken place this summer or will take place soon include: |
|
|
|
Exclusive Catering Service Chosen; Harry’s Café Under New Management
The food service and catering contract for the Law School has been awarded to Tri-Star Catering. After sending out a request for proposals to more than 30 vendors and narrowing the selection to three finalists, Tri-Star Catering was chosen based on several variables, including customer service, food quality and presentation, and financial considerations.
Tri-Star will not only continue to provide exemplary catering service but also will take on the duties of managing Harry’s Café. In addition to making the service areas more attractive, some of the changes Tri-Star plans at Harry’s Café include implementing a customer loyalty program and surveying customers for quality control. New menu items, which will vary every week, include hot breakfasts, potbelly sandwiches, Ben & Jerry's ice cream and Starbucks coffee. They will also begin selling box lunches at a new food cart in the atrium. While there may be an interruption in service at Harry’s during the transition, we are going to make the procedure as seamless as possible.
We also will be working closely with Tri-Star's on site catering manager to design a web based ordering system to simplify the catering request process.
Thank you for your continued support with this decision, and
please join us in welcoming Tri-Star Catering as the food service and catering
vendor at the Law School.
