Graduate Report

GRADUATE REPORT Serving Non-Profits Faculty News Around Campus Profiles Alumni Awards Dinner Giving Back Class Notes Spring/Summer 2011 etter from the Dean Dear Graduates: L Summer session is going full tilt and the beautiful May morning on which Attorney General Jepsen addressed the Class of 2011 has made way for a glorious July 4 weekend. I am grateful for the invigorating effect of New England’s change of seasons as we begin planning a new school year. There is much work to do. Legal educators everywhere are facing a changing profession in which entry level jobs are growing scarce, and in which greater rewards are going to smaller numbers of lawyers. Conceptual dexterity and analytical rigor, long the hallmarks of our craft, are no longer sufficient to guarantee success. Law schools must adapt our curricula accordingly. Professor Paul Chill will lead a review of our program to determine what reforms might best fit our students’ objectives. We welcome your ideas. Harsh economics have also driven down law school applications by roughly 11% nationally. We have been hit by a decline in the number of candidates for our evening program. Building a class from a smaller pool puts enormous pressure on our entering statistics and further harms our U.S. News ranking, even as our academic program continues to soar. Professor Peter Lindseth will lead a committee considering ways to respond to this changing market. As we prepare for the future, there is much to celebrate about the fabulous year just past. The University attracted Susan Herbst, a warm, thoughtful, energetic, and articulate academic administrator to serve as its first woman president. Law School faculty scholarship reached new heights with ten thorough and insightful books and several outstanding law review articles. We successfully recruited James Kwak, co-author of Thirteen Bankers, and Dalié Jiménez, a prize-winning bankruptcy scholar, to join our tenure track faculty. Our Intellectual Property and Entrepreneurship Law Clinic took a major step when its clients secured the program’s first two patents. And our Asylum and Human Rights Clinic students won seven consecutive cases securing refuge for victims of persecution in their home countries. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit heard arguments in the William R. Davis Courtroom. David Kappos, director of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, delivered the first Cantor Colburn Distinguished Lecture. Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist Bob Woodward and U.S. Court of Appeals Judge Denny Chin each served as Day Pitney Visiting Scholars. The Entergy Corporation sponsored a symposium on spent nuclear fuel, the first public event run by the Center for Energy and Environmental Law. Famed media- tor Kenneth Feinberg gave the keynote address at the Insurance Law Journal’s symposium on mass tort settlements. And both GLAAD President Jarrett Barrios and NYU Professor Derrick Bell were featured speakers during our first ever Diversity Week. We have also been buoyed by the continuing investments so many of you have made in the Law School’s future. Overall gifts and pledges for fiscal 2011 increased by one-third to a total of nearly $1.3 million. I, and your friends here on Elizabeth Street, thank you! With your help, and the combined efforts of our talented community, we look forward to building a law school that prizes theory for the sake of practice, values scholarship grounded in evidence, and sustains those who will write the rules for the twenty-first century. With warm regards, Jeremy Paul Dean and Thomas F. Gallivan, Jr. Professor of Real Property Law Table of Contents 2 Serving Non-Profits 10 Faculty News 17 Faculty Profile: Barbara McGrath ’83 18 Around Campus 26 Graduate Profile: Marilda L. Gándara ’78 28 Student Profile: Martha Perez ’12 30 Alumni Association Awards Dinner 34 Giving Back 38 Class Notes Graduate Report Spring/Summer 2011 Edition XXIV Editor: Michelle G. Helmin Lead Writer: Todd H. Rosenthal Design/Production: Farrell Marketing & Design Tina Covensky Photography Matt Kelley Photography Lanny Nagler Photography Spencer A. Sloan Photography Printing: Integrity Graphics, Inc. The University of Connecticut policy prohibits discrimination in education, employment, and in the provision of services on the basis of protected group identity, or any other unlawful factor. In Connecticut, protected class characteristics include race, sex (gender, sexual harassment), age, national origin, ethnicity, physical or mental disabilities, learning disability, sexual orientation, marital status, religion, status as a disabled veteran or veteran of the Vietnam Era, and any other group protected by civil rights law. erving Non-Profits or the last fifteen years, Ellen Willmott ’90 legal assistants and pro F has dedicated her professional life to helping bono outside counsel. S Save the Children serve impoverished, marginalized The department is and vulnerable children all over the world — an responsible for evaluat- organizational mission that dates back nearly 100 years. ing the organization’s “The Save the Children movement started in 1919 in domestic and overseas England in response to the plight of the world’s children legal needs and risk after Word War I,” says Willmott, who has served as the exposures, as well as organization’s general counsel and vice president since advising the board of January 2011. “Save the Children USA (which is based in trustees, management Westport, CT) is the largest member of the 29 Save the and staff on various Children organizations operating around the world.” legal issues, including Willmott started at Save the Children in 1996 after corporate governance, experiencing “burnout” at a small Fairfield County law intellectual property protection, fundraising, regulatory firm that represented banks and other financial institu- and administrative compliance, tax matters and employ- tions confronting the growing number of foreclosures ment. “In a single day I might spend a morning looking at that took place in the mid-1990s. When the firm merged the risks associated with a licensing transaction involving with a personal injury firm, she decided to move on Save the Children intellectual property,” says Willmott, and contacted a close friend who had just been named who is quick to point out that her job is, in no way, a solo general counsel at Save the Children. Willmott soon practice. “The afternoon might be spent trying to figure signed on, first as a volunteer and then as an outside out how we can get funds and resources to hospitals and contractor. Within 18 months, she was working full time feeding stations in a country ravaged by violence and as a legal advisor, the first of Willmott’s several increas- drought but subject to a U.S. foreign policy embargo, like ingly responsible positions at the organization. the Darfur section of Sudan. What I find amazing about In her role as general counsel, Willmott manages Save Save the Children is that it also has established mutually the Children’s U.S. Legal and Compliance Department, supportive domestic and international programs with a which is composed of a small, dedicated team of lawyers, focus on literacy, health and nutrition, and livelihoods… In addition, our domestic emergency response team, All in a Day’s Work which is becoming a national leader, is working with state Ellen Willmott ’90 says that her torts professor, Judge Douglass governments to ensure that emergency response plans B. Wright ’37, taught her to “spot a legal risk at ten paces as focus on children’s special needs, such as ensuring safe well as at 10,000 feet” — a skill she relies on when presented places and providing training for childcare providers.” with a request from the field such as this one: “Hi, Ellen. We’d For Willmott, addressing the special needs of chil- like to transfer our child-health expert, a Malawi citizen, to work dren extends beyond the good work she does at Save in our Nicaraguan program, but we’d like to base her in the the Children. In recent years, for example, she has Dominican Republic so she can spend some of her time served as a trustee for Clothes Helping Kids, a charity supporting our newborn health program in Haiti. Can you help working to benefit children in the Navajo Nation. She FACus T put together her employment contract?” also is a founding member of the International General Counsel’s Forum — an informal group of in-house counsel working for U.S. nonprofits operating overseas — 2 sidebar In October, Jessica Stein ’11 was the recipient of the “Exemplary Public Service Award” from Equal Justice Works, a national 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization “dedicated to creating a just society by mobilizing the next genera- tion of lawyers committed to equal justice.” Stein, who was honored and a member of the Charity and Security Network, a project at the organization’s annual awards dinner in Washington, DC, was focused on aligning security policies in order to eliminate the recognized for the role she played in helping to establish and run challenges that prevent legitimate charities from delivering the Hartford chapter of the Homeless Experience Legal Protection needed resources to civilians and non-combatants. (H.E.L.P.) Project in 2009, when Stein was a 1L at UConn Law. Today, Willmott credits her Law School education, including her Hartford H.E.L.P. sends two Law School students and at least one time on the Student Bar Association, for honing the analytical attorney to a Hartford shelter every Tuesday to help homeless and negotiating skills she calls on to achieve what she refers to individuals with their legal issues. as beneficial outcomes from conflicting priorities. “It’s all about Stein first became interested in H.E.L.P. when she attended a Public figuring out how I can take finite resources — time, expertise Interest Law Group-organized meeting with H.E.L.P.’s founder, the Hon.

Load more