Source: http://www.law.unc.edu/faculty/news/
Timestamp: 2019-04-21 16:12:56+00:00

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On the 10th anniversary of the 2008 financial crisis, UNC School of Law’s Center for Banking and Finance hosted an historic conference in Washington, D.C. The September 21st program highlighted the role attorneys played in crafting creative solutions to the legal and policy issues presented during September 2008.
“The 2008 Financial Crisis: A Legal Retrospective” brought many of the lawyers who played leading roles in Congress, at the agencies, and in private law firms together to reflect on the events of that fateful month. Senator Chris Dodd, then-FDIC Chair Sheila Bair and H. Rodgin Cohen were principal speakers.
Burton Craige Distinguished Professor Lissa Broome, the director of the Center for Banking and Finance, says this was one of the most significant events the center has hosted in its 18-year existence.
The program was held at the offices of Arnold & Porter in Washington, D.C.
A portion of the registration fees funded travel grants for 25 UNC School of Law students to attend the conference.
“It is important that our students appreciate this time in our nation’s economic history and hear the stories of how lawyers participated in the efforts to ensure our economy survived even as it teetered near the abyss,” says Broome.
The conference was planned with assistance from Eric Spitler ’85, with FINRA and previously the director of the Office of Legislative Affairs of the FDIC (co-director of the program), Dave Freeman with Arnold & Porter, Beth DeSimone with CenterState Bank, N.A., Gene Katz, retired from Wells Fargo & Co., and Michael Shumaker ’07 with SunTrust Banks, Inc.
On Wednesday, September 26, Carolina Law faculty traveled to Raleigh to offer a review of the most recent U.S. Supreme Court term and a preview of the October 2018 term at the North Carolina State Bar. In front of an audience that included North Carolina Supreme Court’s Chief Justice Mark Martin ’88 and members of the state legislature, the faculty discussed several blockbuster cases from the October 2017 term.
Professor Bill Marshall began the panel discussion with an overview of Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission. Employment and labor law expert, Professor Jeff Hirsh, continued the discussion with an overview of Janus v. AFSCME. Professor Kathleen Thomas, who directs the UNC School of Law’s Tax Institute, explained why consumers will soon pay sales tax on internet purchases in the wake of South Dakota v. Wayfair. Next, Professor Andrew Chin, who submitted an amicus brief in Gill v. Whitford, explained how the Supreme Court’s decision in that case will affect the ability of future plaintiffs in political gerrymandering cases to establish standing. Professor Richard Myers rounded out the discussion of the 2017 term with a description and analysis of the Fourth Amendment cellphone case, Carpenter v. United States.
Following the review of the most recent cases, the panel discussion turned to the future. Professor Mary-Rose Papandrea discussed how the retirement of Justice Anthony Kennedy is likely to affect the Court’s doctrines in the future. Professor Andy Hessick closed with a preview of several cases the court has agreed to hear this fall.
Soon after Allison Cottle 2L started at Carolina Law last fall, fresh off finishing her undergraduate psychology degree in 2017 at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, she had a realization about legal writing. It’s “as different from undergraduate writing as the scientific journal article is different from an historical analysis,” she says.
That means legal writing is concise. It’s ultra clear with the use of conventions for various types of documents. And definitely no fluff, as some students call “the flowery language included in an undergraduate paper to fill in the gaps between your points,” Cottle says.
Through Carolina Law’s two-semester Research, Reasoning, Writing and Advocacy (RRWA) program, required for all 1Ls, Cottle developed solid writing skills with one-on-one attention and constructive critiques from faculty that have helped her refine her analysis.
It’s not just students who recognize how significantly the RRWA builds their skills and prepares them for legal practice. The RRWA program is ranked 12th among the country’s legal writing programs in U.S. News & World Report’s “America’s Best Graduate Schools” 2019 edition, an increase in ranking over the previous year.
That’s a testament to the structure and content of the six-credit program and to the cohesion and collaboration of the professors who teach RRWA.
The program fosters experiential learning aimed at developing competencies that the professors have collaboratively articulated. In addition to immersion in the nuances of legal research and writing, students participate in simulations of office interactions and other situations they will encounter in legal practice. They have regular one-on-one conferences with faculty and get detailed feedback on their writing. The program also has developed standard student assessments, aligned with proficiency expectations, to measure how well students have progressed.
Through the RRWA program, students also develop skills in oral advocacy and are coached in various aspects of professionalism. These include managing time, addressing supervisors and judges, setting agendas for meetings, asking for help, and both offering and accepting constructive criticism.
Through RRWA, Cottle, of Elizabethtown, North Carolina, has gained experience writing office memos, motion memos and appellate briefs in working with multiple faculty members. “I’ve learned how to adapt my work to the expectations of different professors, which I believe provides a competitive advantage in the job market in that I know I can adapt with ease to any work environment and future supervisors’ expectations,” she says.
Preparing students for various legal work environments — such as externships, clinics, summer jobs or full-time positions after graduation — is the ultimate goal of RRWA. The program also helps 1Ls prepare to succeed as upper-level students.
“Carolina Law lays a solid foundation right away in the first two semesters, not just for good ‘thinking like a lawyer’ but also for actually doing the research and writing that lawyers routinely do,” Smith says.
Gurvich and Sean Marotta, a Washington, D.C., lawyer she met through another Twitter legal forum, tweet from their personal accounts, @RachelGurvich and @smmarotta, using the hashtag #PracticeTuesday. They set up the Twitter account @practicetuesday for their blog #PracticeTuesday (www.practicetuesday.com).
Now, many students, lawyers and judges look to #PracticeTuesday for perspectives on legal practice: tips to excel as a summer or junior associate, effective ways to write and respond to written discovery, how to prepare for depositions or oral arguments, avoiding burnout in the legal profession, and other best practices.
Gurvich and Marotta met through #AppellateTwitter and began co-hosting the weekly #PracticeTuesday conversations in November 2016 to expand on their #AppellateTwitter tweets.
The #PracticeTuesday tweets capture perse experiences from law students and professors, government attorneys, solo practitioners — and judges. “There are a number of great judges who have embraced Twitter and are very active” with the medium, Gurvich says.
Some of Gurvich’s Twitter followers are UNC students. “I get a lot of really good engagement from them,” she says.
From #PracticeTuesday tweets by legal professionals, Gurvich has gained insights on legal practice, legal writing pedagogy and other issues. “That has been instrumental in my growth as a professor,” she says. “It informs how I teach my students and helps me stay current in terms of what is expected” of new lawyers across the profession.
More broadly, “The opportunity to engage in conversations and learn from people you might not otherwise encounter is good for the profession,” notes Gurvich.
She and Marotta finally met in person when he came to Carolina Law to speak on a panel about appellate practice that Gurvich organized last semester—mostly through Twitter. Fellow panelist and D.C. appellate attorney Jaime Santos even filmed Gurvich and Marotta’s first meeting—and, of course, promptly tweeted the video.
“I’ve been surprised that I’ve formed meaningful relationships with people I’ve only known through Twitter,” Gurvich says.
Teaching comes first for Clinical Associate Professor of Law Luke Everett. And practicing informs his teaching. For years Everett has engaged in high-profile pro-bono service by handling a case that’s challenging both federal and state Supreme Courts to address the privacy rights of convicted GPS-tracked criminals. The case has implications for everyone who uses a smart phone or other GPS-equipped device. In 2015, Everett won Grady v. North Carolina in the Supreme Court of the United States. His arguments persuaded the Court to vacate a decision of the Supreme Court of North Carolina because North Carolina’s “system of nonconsensual satellite-based monitoring” of certain convicted criminals “is plainly designed to obtain information. And since it does so by physically intruding on a subject’s body, it effects a Fourth Amendment search.” Grady v. North Carolina, 135 S.Ct. 1368, 1370–71 (2015). Following remand, the case has worked its way again to North Carolina’s highest court, where Everett will continue to argue it. He brings his advocacy experience with him into both his first-year legal research writing classroom and his Small Firm Civil Practice course, which he developed to teach students both the substantive law and the practice-management skills needed to run a small or solo practice.
Carolina Law’s Clinical Associate Professor, Peter Nemerovski, was recently recognized by the Association of Legal Writing Directors (ALWD) for his five years of service on the ALWD Annual Survey Committee.
ALWD is the non-profit professional association of directors of legal reasoning, research, writing, analysis, and advocacy programs from law schools throughout the United States, Canada and Australia.
ALWD has more than 300 members representing more than 150 law schools.
CE3 will host an interdisciplinary conference on November 9 exploring two energy-related challenges facing rural areas: (1) maximizing the local benefits of new energy infrastructure investments and (2) mitigating the economic impacts in communities that are losing coal-related jobs.
Carolina Law is pleased to welcome Sheldon “Shelley” Holliday Welton as a visiting assistant professor of law and the Thomas F. Taft Distinguished Fellow in Environmental Law for the 2018 Fall semester. Welton is an assistant professor at the University of South Carolina School of Law. Her research focuses on how climate change is transforming energy and environmental law and governance. This semester she is teaching Energy Law and Environmental Law, and is partnering with Carolina Law’s Center for Climate, Energy, Environment, and Economics.
A new CE3 white paper analyzes recent state efforts to determine the value of distributed energy resources. In some states, these processes are part of broader rate reform efforts. In others, the focus on valuing solar energy arises specifically in the context of rooftop net metering. This paper examines recent efforts to revise distributed energy valuation in nine states, comparing key factors that each state considered as part of the valuation process.

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