MIAMILAW UNIVERSITY OF MIAMI SCHOOL OF LAW
Nell Jessup Newton
Interim Dean and Visiting Professor University of Miami School of Law Dear Alumni and Friends of the University of Miami School of Law, As Thanksgiving nears, I am filled with gratitude. Although I have only served as Interim Dean of the School of Law for a few months, I am immensely proud of the work that we are doing here at Miami Law and excited about the opportunity to help the school move forward.
STUDENTS
Students are at the heart of our mission—our reason for existing and the focus of our attention. Every day I am inspired by our students’ commitment, innovation, and dedication. Miami Law’s future is bright, and our students continued to excel through the pandemic—in the classroom, in the work of our impactful clinics, and in the community. Consider:
Students in our Immigration Clinic recently helped overturn an anti-immigration law in federal court. Furthermore,
students in the Innocence Clinic partnered with the Innocence Project of Florida and assisted in overturning a wrongful conviction. It is not surprising that our law school’s success in clinical legal education earned it a Top 25 U.S. News ranking in 2021. Miami Law was proud to welcome 72 LLM students from 36 countries. Two of the LLM students are from our new dual degree agreement with the Pontificia Universidad Católica Madre y Maestra in the Dominican Republic. This year’s JD class includes 393 students from 33 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and 10 countries. Because of Miami Law’s commitment to training talented international students and dedication to international and comparative law scholarship, I am proud to announce that the law school is launching a Doctor of Juridical Science Program (SJD) in the Fall 2022 semester. Miami Law will join a group of select U.S.
MIAMILAW UNIVERSITY OF MIAMI SCHOOL OF LAW
law schools offering such a program to focus on training the finest international law students who are aspiring legal academics, public policy makers, and members of the judiciary. Our student organizations have hit the ground running this academic year. To give just a few examples, the student chapter of the Cuban American Bar Association has hosted various events on the current state of Cuban law, policy, and cross-border practice. The Technology Law Club is building on Miami’s startup culture by exposing students to technology lawyers, startups, and data privacy experts. Our incoming class joins Miami Law with impressive credentials, including a median LSAT score of 160 and median undergraduate GPA of 3.63, and diverse backgrounds—they come from 133 undergraduate institutions, 33 states, Washington D.C., Puerto Rico, and 10 countries, with 46% minority representation, and 70% of students as the first person in their immediate family to attend law school. On September 21, 2021, Senior U.S. District Judge Federico Moreno, JD ’78, administered the attorney oath to 203 Miami Law graduates. Our newest alumni achieved the second-highest bar passage rate among law graduates in Florida, with an overall pass rate of 82.5% for the July 2021 administration of the Florida Bar Exam.
In addition, our students continued to secure internships and fellowships in all areas of law. The HNBA/Microsoft IP Law Institute chose two more Miami Law students—Victor Bruzos and David Fernandez-Fidalgo—to attend its summer institute, designed to provide opportunities for Latino students interested in IP law. 3L Kayla Lawless was a summer intern in the legal department of Salesforce, and 3L Milind N. Khurana worked in Atlanta with the legal department of AT&T, the world’s largest telephone company. Additionally, students involved in the HOPE Public Resource Center are being recognized. This past summer, 2L and Miami Scholar Lauren O’Neil interned with the office of the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, and Miami Scholar Daniela Torres and HOPE Fellow Laura Silva were awarded the Squire Patton Boggs Public Policy Fellowship. In spring 2021, The Robert H. Waters Chapter of the National Black Law Student Association and Miami Law recognized Jaret L. Davis, JD ’99 and BA ’96, with the virtual re-dedication of the Jaret L. Davis BLSA Racial Justice Collaborative Workspace, located within the Law School Student Organization Suite at the Donna E. Shalala Student Center. Our moot court programs have also been recognized for their success. Miami Law’s Charles C. Papy, Jr. Moot Court Board was ranked 21st in the nation for the 2020-2021 academic year by Blakely Advocacy Institute at the University of Houston Law Center. Also, Miami Law’s Trial Team was ranked 15th in the U.S. according to Fordham Law’s Brendan Moore Trial Advocacy Center’s Trial Competition Performance Rankings. Our students are looking ahead to their postgraduate careers and taking advantage of opportunities to gain firsthand experience by clerking for local legal employers, including federal judges, law firms, government agencies, and public interest organizations. On campus recruiting
through the Career Development Office’s fall program has turned virtual because of the ongoing pandemic but is no less robust. Since early August, over 900 interviews have taken place through this program. Soon, our 1L law students will embark on their summer job search and with it, an opportunity to begin exploring the interests that brought them to Miami Law. Our long-time assistant dean of the Career Development Office, Marcy Cox, recently left Miami for the private sector and I am working with the CDO to ensure that we recruit a first-rate assistant dean, and that we have the breadth and depth of CDO staff to assist our students.
FACULTY
Congratulations are due for faculty honored for their scholarship. Professor Rebecca Sharpless received the University of Miami Provost’s Excellence in Experiential Teaching Award. Professor Mary Anne Franks was appointed to the Michael R. Klein Distinguished Scholar Chair, and Professor Bernard Oxman received the Hudson Medal from American Society of International Law, the organization’s highest honor. I am proud to announce that Professor Caroline Bettinger-López, Director of Miami Law’s Human Rights Clinic, was appointed as a Special Advisor on the White House Gender Policy Council. Our Associate Dean of Experiential Learning, Professor Kele Stewart, was selected to join the Editorial Board of the Clinical Law Review. She was also chosen as a 2021-22 Bellow Scholar by the American Association of Law Schools. Further, I am delighted to share that Professor Charlton Copeland has agreed to serve as the Associate Dean for Intellectual Life. It is especially fitting that he serves in this role, as he is a Dean’s Distinguished Scholar and a renowned scholar of federalism. This past year he received the Clyde Ferguson Award, the highest award bestowed by the American Association of Law Schools’ Section on Minority Groups, and he also received a Mellon CREATES grant for his project, “Confronting Jim Crow Miami.” Professor Marcia Narine Weldon has been chosen to lead our new Transactional Skills Program, and Associate Dean Caroline Bradley and Assistant Dean Carmen PerezLlorca are heading up the new Global and International Law Program.
Innovative Programs In September, we hosted the 10th annual We Robot Conference, the interdisciplinary virtual conference on the emerging legal and policy questions relating to robots and the artificial intelligence (AI) that often control them. A. Michael Froomkin, the Laurie Silvers and Mitchell Rubenstein Distinguished Professor of Law, co-founded the conference and led this year’s event. Miami Law also has kept its finger on the pulse of innovation, hosting the Zoom series “#MiamiTech Movement and the Law.” Professor Andres Sawicki and Jaret L. Davis moderated, and topics included “Priority Legal Issues for Miami’s Evolving Tech Scene” and “Perspectives on Current Legal Issues for Entrepreneurs.” In association with Holland & Knight, we have hosted a
MIAMILAW UNIVERSITY OF MIAMI SCHOOL OF LAW
Green Financing Series, taking an in-depth look at its core features, and analyzing its regulation and far-reaching implications. Our annual lectures also brought prominent scholars to campus. Juan E. Méndez, a former UN Special Rapporteur on Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman and Degrading Treatment or Punishment, delivered the lecture, “Human Rights and Democracy in a New Era,” at the Ninth Annual Henkin Lecture on Human Rights in February 2021. We also welcomed co-chair of Debevoise & Plimpton’s International Dispute Resolution Group and a past president of the International Bar Association, David W. Rivkin, to speak at the White & Case International Arbitration Lecture sponsored by Miami Law’s International Arbitration Institute and White & Case International Arbitration LLM Program. He spoke on “Post-Pandemic Arbitration: Will It Be Contact-Free?” We also continued our groundbreaking Miami Law Explainer podcast, now in Season 7, where faculty and clinician experts examine and explain the law, one headline at a time. With 29,000 downloads from listeners as far away as Brazil and Germany since its unveiling in 2018, the podcast is closing in on its 100th episode. The law school’s Entertainment, Arts, and Sports Law LLM program also launched The Leadership Gameplan podcast hosted by Marc Trestman, JD ’82, lawyer, coach, and adjunct faculty member, which examines leadership through the lens of accomplished guests from the worlds of sports, business, journalism, and law.
ALUMNI
I am grateful to Julie B. Kane, JD ‘93, and the Executive Committee of the Law Alumni Association, as well as all the alumni volunteer boards for their warm welcome and support during this period of transition. Our alumni continue to support their alma mater. The law firm of Becker & Poliakoff recently made a generous donation to establish the Alan S. Becker & Gary A. Poliakoff Preeminent Leaders in Law Speaker Series in memory of the founders of the firm, who both graduated from Miami Law in 1969. The inaugural speaker series featured Keith Ellison, the attorney general of Minnesota who prosecuted Derek Chauvin. To honor the life and memory of Gail D. Serota, JD ’79, her family, colleagues, and friends have chosen to name the spacious Reading Room in the law library. The room will be dedicated on November 29th. Carolyn B. Lamm, JD ’73, and her husband Peter E. Halle, JD ’73, recently made a generous gift that will also name a reading room in the library. Many of our young alumni are finding great success early on in their careers. That our most recent graduating class is thriving in their professional lives is a tribute to their resiliency and to the support of fellow Miami Law alumni. The pandemic arrived just after the halfway point of their law school careers, requiring an ability to transition not only to virtual learning but also to virtual employment. In some instances, they saw hard-earned summer internships rescinded due to pandemicrelated economic concerns. At that time, Miami Law called upon our alumni to assist with employment opportunities and the response was resounding. Today, these graduates are starting their careers in a broad array of positions. For alumni seeking assistance during a career transition
or in fulfilling hiring needs for their own practices, the Career Development Office (CDO) remains available to help. During this time of transition, the CDO leadership is in the capable hands of Acting Assistant Dean Diane Quick. She and her team of advisors, including one dedicated to alumni advising, are available to assist. To reach the CDO, please contact Diane Quick at dquick@law.miami.edu.
Join me in making a year-end gift.
In celebration of this wonderful law school and gratitude for the opportunity to serve as interim dean, I just made a gift to the annual fund. As an experienced dean, I know that annual support is a source of encouragement to the faculty and students. The leadership roles that law alumni play in this academic institution are remarkable—from the former Chair of the Board of Trustees, Hilarie Bass, JD ’81, to the current Chair of the Board of Trustees and generous benefactor of our school, Laurie Silvers, JD ’77. My gratitude to the School of Law’s Fundraising Committee, Honorary Chair and Trustee Aaron Podhurst, and Vice Chairs Peter Prieto, JD ’85, Carolyn B. Lamm, JD ’73, and Harley Tropin, JD ’77. They are all eager to talk with you about your philanthropic interests and the many naming opportunities at Miami. You can visit the law school page in the University’s Ever Brighter website at: www.everbrighter.miami. edu/school-units/school-of-law/, or feel free to reach out to Georgie Angones at gangones@law.miami.edu.
A force for positive change. I was aware of Miami’s reputation for innovation before I came here, but now that I am here, I have experienced the excitement generated by the law school’s programs, students, and faculty. Miami Law aspires to be a force for positive change in the nation and the world and is ready to meet the 21st century’s greatest challenges, from transforming criminal justice, to fostering innovation in technology, business, and health, to structuring the global response to climate change. Our students are immensely talented, intellectually curious, hardworking, and amazingly diverse. They will become the bold, innovative leaders that our nation needs to move forward. I am honored to serve as your Interim Dean and look forward to meeting as many of you as possible in the year to come. On behalf of all of us at Miami Law, I wish you a happy and healthy Thanksgiving. Sincerely Yours,
Nell Jessup Newton Interim Dean and Visiting Professor