Gargoyle
volume 34 no. 1 SummeR/FAll 2008
Wisconsin Legal Education
+ NYC Opportunities = Perfect Fit
Why practice in New York appeals to the Law
School’s rising young generation.
INSIDE:
• Three Top NYC Prosecutors
Reflect on UW Law School Start
• Professor Larry Church:
Having Fun with Teaching
• In Foreign Supreme Courts
University of Wisconsin Foundation l 1848 University Avenue l P.O. Box 8860 l Madison, Wisconsin 53708-8860 l 608-263-4545 l [email protected] l www.uwfoundation.wisc.edu
For additional information
on how to plan for your future
as well as the future of your
University, contact the
Office of Planned Giving,
University of Wisconsin
Foundation
It was a magical moment with thousands of fans cheering you,
hours of study behind you, the brightest of careers before you.
Getting your first client and winning your first case seemed as
simple as a cane toss over the goal post. Now, with a planned
gift, you can guarantee the same magical moments for students
at the University of Wisconsin Law School. You can designate
your gift to benefit the Law School or another area of personal
interest and make a real difference. You also can rely on the
planned giving professionals at the UW Foundation to help
you serve your clients with their planning needs.
Your legacy is the UW Law School’s future.
JEFF MILLER PHOTO, COURTESY OF UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN-MADISON ARCHIVES
Remember how
you guaranteed
that first win?
2817 UWF Gargoyle Ad 3/10/08 :2675 UWF Gargoyle Ad 7/11/08 11:27 AM Page 1
Why Gargoyle?
I
n 1963, when the existing Law School
was demolished to make way for a new
building, Law School Dean George Young
found and rescued a sandstone gargoyle from
the rubble. This figure and its departed twin
had sat on the roof of the 1893 building for
almost 70 years. While one of the pair had
perished in its fall, the second had landed
unscathed.
That rescued gargoyle, which is now
permanently installed in the Law School’s
atrium, gives its name to this magazine,
representing the indomitable strength and
spirit of our University of Wisconsin Law
School and its many graduates.
For an illustrated history of the
Law School’s gargoyle, see www.law.wisc.
edu/about/lore/gargoyle.htm..
Gargoyle
12 Wisconsin Legal Education
+ NYC Opportunities = Perfect Fit
Wisconsin law graduates have always looked to
New York City as an exciting place to practice,
in both the public and private sector. This issue’s
cover story checks in on the Law School’s ris-
ing young generation of legal professionals who
chose to practice in New York firms.
16 For Three Top Prosecutors, the
Road to NYC Began in Wisconsin
Three members of the Class of 1983 reflect on
their paths straight from the UW Law School
to high-level New York careers.
20 Professor Larry Church Has a
Teaching Style All His Own
William Lawrence (Larry) Church is widely
acknowledged as a highly effective and original
teacher whose focus is on developing his stu-
dents’ capacity for analysis and logical thought.
How did he get here, and why has he won all
those teaching awards?
26 Commencement 2008
Photos capture the excitement as the Class of
2008 was launched into the legal profession at
Monona Terrace in May.
30 In Foreign Supreme Courts
It is rare for Americans to work as clerks or
interns on the Supreme Courts of other nations,
but two recent UW law graduates did just that,
in India and Germany.
Summer/Fall 2008
Volume 34, No. 1
The Gargoyle is the alumni magazine of
the University of Wisconsin Law School,
975 Bascom Mall, Madison, WI 53706-1399.
It is funded by private donations.
Editor: Dianne Sattinger
Please stay in touch:
Jini Rabas
Director of Alumni Relations
Campus Adviser/Art Direction:
Niki Denison/Colleen O’Hara
Wisconsin Alumni Association
Cover: Among UW law students and recent
alumni who are excited to practice in New York
City are, from left, Brian Jenks, Janell Wise,
Mark Noel, Anwar Ragep, Amanda Croushore,
and Erin Ehlke. Photo by Mike Appleton.
Correction: The description (upper left) of the famous fall of the
gargoyle includes a newly-corrected date. It was in 1963, not
1962, that the former Law School building was demolished. Thanks
to George Whyte ’65, who brought this error to our attention.
2 A D ean’s View
4 Student Life
7 News
28 Student Awards
32 Alumni Activities
36 Class Notes
39 In Memoriam
40 Photo Finish
T
hese past few months as I
traveled across the country
and around the state meet-
ing and talking with many of you,
I heard a number of recurring mes-
sages about the Law School. One
stood out. It came from alumni in
all areas of the country, in every type
of practice, and at all stages of pro-
fessional life. “Don’t underestimate
the importance to us of our school’s
national stature and reputation,” you
told me.
Along with the importance of
teaching students the skills to be
successful practicing lawyers and
providing an excellent education at
a reasonable cost, you emphasized
the significance to you and your
classmates of having graduated
from one of the very best public law
schools in the country — a highly-
ranked school with a commitment
to excellence. It was an important
message at an important time, and
your comments resonated with me.
For most of our history, the
University of Wisconsin Law School
has occupied a very special position
within legal education. We are the
only public law school in a state that
has historically been strong eco-
nomically; we are part of one of the
world’s leading research universities;
and we are one of only two or three
law schools in the nation that helped
shape the kind of interdisciplinary
approach to legal scholarship that
now represents the mainstream at
law schools everywhere. As such,
the Law School is fortunate to be
the beneficiary of a rich legacy, a
long-standing national reputation,
and a first-tier listing in the national
rankings. In an atmosphere of com-
petition for national recognition, for
top students, and for sought-after
faculty, we can’t rest on our laurels
or take anything for granted.
Nor can we forget that one
of the things that differentiates us
from other law schools is that we
have Wisconsin at our heart. As our
state’s only publicly-supported law
school, we have a special place in
the state’s educational system and a
special responsibility to the citizens
of Wisconsin. We have always pro-
duced a very high share of our state’s
leaders in law and in fields outside
law, most notably business and
government, and we will continue
to educate the professionals who will
take leadership roles in Wisconsin.
Our faculty are deeply commit-
ted to preserving what has made the
UW Law School special, and they
are thinking innovatively about its
future direction. ey are involved
in finding ways to use their knowl-
edge and expertise to gain national
recognition for the Law School
and to connect with the state of
Wisconsin in a way that I hope will
literally redefine what it means to be
a law school that is both public and
preeminent.
I’ve written before in this col-
umn about the increasingly compet-
itive nature of law schools and the
importance of reputation and rank-
ings. e principal determinants
of a law school’s reputation and its
rankings in today’s marketplace —
and the things that matter when
C&N PHOTOGRAPHY
2 GARGOYLE Summer/Fall 2008
A DEAN’S VIEW
A National Law School with
Wisconsin at Its Heart
In an atmosphere of
competition for national
recognition, for top stu-
dents, and for sought-
after faculty, we can’t
rest on our laurels or
take anything for granted.
Preeminent and Public
A DEAN’S VIEW
www.law.wisc.edu/alumni GARGOYLE 3
competing for the best faculty and
students — are well known. ey
are: (1) the collective opinion about
faculty scholarship and reputation
(as judged by other law faculties)
combined with a school’s reputation
among lawyers and judges, par-
ticularly those in major population
centers; (2) success in recruiting the
most academically qualified students
(both residents and nonresidents);
and (3) placement success.
In the effort to enhance a
school’s national stature and reputa-
tion, other factors, although not
measured by those who rank law
schools, also are influential, such as a
well-designed curriculum, includ-
ing a solid business curriculum; a
diverse and dynamic student body;
and superb teachers who successfully
prepare students for the rigors of
practice and give them the confi-
dence to successfully compete on
a national playing field if they so
choose. In addition, one cannot un-
derestimate the power of a school’s
alumni — both their continuing
involvement and support and their
ability to secure positions with
the most prominent firms, the top
businesses, and the most interesting
nonprofit organizations. ese are
things that have a direct impact on
a school’s national reputation and
ultimately on its success in recruit-
ing the best teachers and students …
and the circle continues.
What options do we have
to more effectively enhance our
national stature? Our alumni are in
prominent positions and our new
graduates are increasingly successful
in competing for the most sought-
after jobs across the country. A sig-
nificant number of graduates work
internationally and in major cities
across the country, with a substantial
concentration outside of Wisconsin
in cities like Chicago, Washington,
Los Angeles, San Francisco,
Minneapolis, and, as this issue of
the Gargoyle describes, New York —
markets where those who influence
our reputation live and work. Con-
necting with alumni is critical.
We can also make a difference
through a renewed emphasis on
recruiting, with a combination of in-
novative programs and an increased
emphasis on merit scholarships that
will enable us to recruit the best
students — both by keeping top
resident students in the state for
law school and by enticing highly
qualified nonresidents to Wisconsin.
And, we can support our faculty in
their efforts to increase the amount
they publish and the importance
and visibility of their scholarship so
that our academic reputation, one of
the largest influences in the national
rankings, elevates us as we deserve.
As we move forward to redefine
what it means to be both preemi-
nent and public, I look forward to
increasing alumni involvement and
working with you to enhance the
national prestige of a Wisconsin law
degree. Your message to me about
what you expect from your alma
mater is an important one, and I
share your enthusiasm for meeting
the challenges of the future and
enhancing the stature and reputa-
tion of this remarkable institution.
I believe that we belong at the top
and that our school can be as great
as you and I want it to be.
— Dean Kenneth B. Davis, Jr.
Your message to me
about what you expect
from your alma mater is an
important one, and I share
your enthusiasm for meet-
ing the challenges of the
future and enhancing the
stature and reputation of
this remarkable institution.
One cannot underestimate
the power of a school’s
alumni — both their con-
tinuing involvement and
support and their ability to
secure positions with the
most prominent firms, the
top businesses, and the
most interesting nonprofit
organizations.
4 GARGOYLE Summer/Fall 2008
STUDENT LIFE
T
roy Vosseller completed his
undergraduate degree in
three years — with a triple major.
Simultaneously, he found time
to distinguish himself in quite a
different sphere: as a freshman, he
co-founded Sconnie Nation LLC,
which started as a modest project
to sell T-shirts celebrating Wiscon-
sin pride and quickly grew into a
booming business with a nationwide
clientele.
“I think my desire for entrepre-
neurship came from my childhood,”
Vosseller says. “My grandparents on
both sides were entrepreneurs. On
my dad’s side they were Iowa farmers,
and my mom’s parents immigrated
here from Italy and operated their
own tailor shop in Racine. My
dad started a small manufacturing
business that made salt and sand
spreaders for ice control, my mom
owns her own business finding live-in
caregivers for elderly family members,
and even my older brother started his
own business as a teenager, assem-
bling computer hard drives. I guess
starting a business isn’t seen as an
unusual thing or an obstacle.”
Vosseller entered law school
knowing that a legal background
would be useful for whatever he
chose to do. After two years of law
school, he finds himself ready
to delve into whatever legal issues
arise for his company. After his first
year, he decided to enter a joint
degree program, in which he will
earn his M.B.A. from the School
of Business in 2009 and his Law
School degree in 2010.
Vosseller, whose success with
Sconnie brought him consider-
able media attention, was in the
news again in spring 2008 when he
and Keith Agoada, then a Busi-
ness School senior, won first place
in the G. Steven Burrill Business
Plan Competition. ey received
$10,000 to invest in their project
Sky Vegetables, a plan to operate
soil-less hydroponic greenhouses on
the rooftops of supermarkets and
then sell the crop of fruits and veg-
etables to the stores below. e lack
of necessary transportation, packag-
ing, or storage costs would provide
Sky Vegetables with a competitive
advantage, the two young entrepre-
neurs wrote in their proposal.
“We received very positive
feedback from the judges, many of
whom are from the venture capital
and investment world,” Vosseller
says. “We’ve since incorporated and
are working on pulling together
various advisers and consultants to
make this a reality.”
In June, Sky Vegetables went
on to win second place in the 2008
Governor’s Business Plan Com-
petition in the Business Services
category.
Vosseller, working on his two
graduate degrees, will leave manag-
ing Sky Vegetables to Agoada, but
both are working on the start-up
plans. “Our roadmap includes so-
lidifying our Board of Advisers and
contracting with various suppliers
(roofing companies, construction
firms, etc.). Simultaneously, we’re
working to solidify letters of intent
from prospective supermarket
clients. With that in place, we’ll go
forward and solicit funding from
angel investors.”
is summer Vosseller was in
San Diego as a legal intern with
QUALCOMM, focusing on con-
tracts and licensing. “As an intern
with in-house counsel, I think it’s a
great experience to see the intersec-
tion of business and law — the big
picture,” he says.
Asked where he sees himself
professionally in five years, Vosseller
says, “I’d love to be working on a
company I started or helped start,
or if that’s not the case, I’d love to
work for a start-up company in
any and every capacity. I don’t see
myself as strictly legal or strictly
business. I think that a mentality
of ‘do anything’ and ‘whatever it
takes’ is very conducive to entrepre-
neurial settings.”
Troy Vosseller ’10
As a freshman in college, Troy
and a friend had an idea for
selling T-shirts celebrating
the Wisconsin lifestyle. Sales
boomed, Sconnie Nation became
a trademarked company, and
Troy had embarked on a career
in entrepreneurship. He is working
on his J.D. and M.B.A. degrees
concurrently, and is about to
launch a new entrepreneurial
venture that has already won
prizes in two business-plan
competitions.
Hometown: Brown Deer, Wisconsin
Undergraduate Institution: University
of Wisconsin-Madison
Undergraduate Majors:
Political Science, Economics, History
BOB RASHID
STUDENT LIFE
www.law.wisc.edu/alumni GARGOYLE 5
S
cience has been a part of
KaSandra Rogiérs’ life since her
childhood. “I used to play with bugs
in our flowerbeds and make ‘potions’
using random chemicals from our
garage,” she recalls. “My father was
an engineer for NASA, and my
mother is a huge museum buff, so as
a family we spent a lot of time at the
various Smithsonian Institutes and
exhibits around D.C.”
Rogiérs attended a science-
and-technology high school, and
before she even entered college she
had done years of research in bio-
medicine and published a paper in a
medical journal. “By the time I went
to college, I realized that I was also
curious about the impact of health
science on the population at-large,”
Rogiérs says. “at led to my studies
as a Mellon Fellow in anthropology.”
When Rogiérs graduated from
college, she was planning to apply
to doctoral programs in anthropol-
ogy, but first she accepted a job
with Pennsylvania State Senator
Constance Williams, and the
experience greatly influenced her
career path.
“I was working for Senator
Williams when I first thought about
law school,” Rogiérs recalls. “Many
of her platform initiatives involved
health law and policy issues, and I
wanted a career where I could be
at the forefront of those issues. To
me, it seemed like applied medical
anthropology. Instead of taking field
notes and writing a study, I was now
engaged in a career that involved an
action step.”
When her applications to both
anthropology and public health
graduate programs yielded several
acceptances, she decided to pursue
a Master of Public Health degree at
Yale University. “is was definitely
the right call for me,” Rogiérs says.
“I was ready to try my hand at
policy, and then ease my way into
the law.”
After completing her M.P.H.,
Rogiérs worked for a year in a “truly
awesome job” as a policy analyst in
Washington, D.C., for the Govern-
ment Accountability Office (GAO)
in their Health Care Group, and
then turned her attention to law
schools. She chose Wisconsin over
several East Coast schools at the rec-
ommendation of a mentor and other
UW law alumni she met during her
decision-making process. “ey were
all so remarkable, dynamic, fun, and
brilliant — and they were certain that
Wisconsin was the best fit for me.”
Rogiérs’ law school work
has both confirmed her interest
in health law and amplified her
concept of how she will practice
it. “I wasn’t expecting to want to
litigate, but I fell in love with the
idea early on as a 1L. I have Profes-
sor Schwartz to thank for that. He
taught our Civ. Pro. I class ‘law-in-
action’ style. I got such a rush from
it that litigation has been on my
mind ever since.”
Another highlight for Rogiérs
was her Health Law Externship
with the General Counsel of the
UW Hospital and Clinics. “I abso-
lutely loved it. It was as if the precise
reason why I came to law school
had been satisfied. I got to practice
health law, and I felt very much at
home. It was incredibly encouraging
to know that this field was every-
thing I had hoped it would be.”
is summer, Rogiérs was
a summer associate with Pepper
Hamilton LLP in Philadelphia,
working with the Health Effects
and Commercial Litigation practice
groups. “e skills and substantive
knowledge I am acquiring should
be very relevant to a career in health
law and litigation,” she says.
As Rogiérs contemplates her
future, she envisions working on
litigation related to pharmaceuticals,
hospitals, and food-and-drug issues.
“Whatever I end up doing,” she says,
“I hope that I can always have the
opportunity to keep ‘law in action.’”
KaSandra Rogiérs ’09
A graduate of a science-and-
technology high school, KaSandra
had published a research paper
in a medical journal by the time
she entered college. After grow-
ing interested in health law and
policy when she worked for a
Pennsylvania senator, she earned
a degree in public health at Yale
and worked as a policy analyst in
Washington, then headed for the
UW Law School. Her coursework
and Health Law Externship with
the General Counsel of UW Hos-
pital and Clinics have confirmed
that health law is the field for her.
Hometown: Upper Marlboro, Maryland
Undergraduate Institution:
Bryn Mawr College
Undergraduate Major: Anthropology
Graduate Degree: Master of Public
Health in Health Policy, Yale University
BOB RASHID
6 GARGOYLE Summer/Fall 2008
STUDENT LIFE
I
n every aspect of her life, Erica
Christian takes the ball and
runs with it.
Most recently and most literally,
she does this as a wide receiver for
the Wisconsin Wolves, a women’s
professional football team based
in Middleton, now in its third
year. “I’m a rookie,” Christian says.
“It’s my first experience with team
sports. I heard about the Wolves
and I thought, ‘I could never play
football.’ en I thought, ‘And why
couldn’t I?!’ It’s turned out to be
outstanding.”
But team practice, workouts,
and out-of-state travel to compete
against other teams in the Indepen-
dent Women’s Football League are
only one part of Christian’s life. She is
active in such a wide range of projects
that her schedule would seem to
preclude adding football to the mix,
even before one considers the thought-
provoking sentence on the Wolves’
Web site, “is is full contact tackle
football and [players] come away with
the same injuries as the men.”
For her Gargoyle interview,
Christian arrives not in football
cleats but in high heels, straight from
prosecuting her first jury trial, part
of her Prosecution Project intern-
ship with the Dane County District
Attorney’s Office. “I know I want to
litigate,” she says of her future work.
“Whether it’s criminal or civil,
I’ll know more by the end of the
summer.”
At the Law School, Christian
has taken every opportunity to
acquire hands-on experience. She
was a summer legal clerk with the
Department of Corrections after her
1L year; worked with the Reming-
ton Center’s Criminal Appeals Proj-
ect and the Employment Appeals
Clinic; was a Study Group Leader
for contracts and civil procedure
courses, Mock Trial team captain,
and Children’s Justice Project con-
ference coordinator; took Lawyering
Skills in her second year; and this
fall will have a judicial internship in
addition to her work at the D.A.’s
Office. She has taken a minimum of
18 credits every semester, and plans
to graduate a semester early this
December, ready to join the working
world as an attorney. “I can’t wait to
be out there,” she says.
It’s an impressive list, but the
picture is not yet complete. Raised
in a family with an extremely low
income, Christian has worked since
she was 14 years old. “Graduating
from high school was a feat in my
family,” she says. “A professional
degree was not a realistic goal.”
Scholarships enabled her to
attend college and law school. She
worked 40 hours a week as an un-
dergraduate and continues to work
as a law student, with the nature
of her job changing to reflect her
growing experience. Currently, she
has her own independent consult-
ing business, doing marketing and
strategic planning.
Despite her academic and
extracurricular overload, Chris-
tian finds time to do a geat deal of
volunteer work. She is a Big Sister
with Big Brothers Big Sisters of
Dane County; gives animal foster
care in her home; helped in Missis-
sippi with Hurricane Katrina relief;
coached the James Wright Middle
School 2007 Mock Trial team (they
won) — and the list goes on.
When asked how she is able to
do so many things, Christian says,
“I’ve always done work, school, and
extracurricular activities. From an
early age I’ve been into time man-
agement. I want to do so much, and
if you want to do things, you rank
them in priority and stay focused.”
Staying focused: good advice,
whether one is in the courtroom,
on the football field, or, like Erica
Christian, tackling both at the
same time.
Erica Christian ’08
Erica’s schedule was already ex-
tremely full when she read about
the Wisconsin Wolves, a women’s
professional football team in the
Madison area. This summer she
took on the double challenge of
making time for contact football
while working at the Dane County
District Attorney’s Office for her
Prosecution Project internship.
Both turned out to be terrific
experiences.
Hometown: Wausau, Wisconsin
Undergraduate Institution: University
of Wisconsin-Madison
Undergraduate Major: Journalism
and Mass Communications
BOB RASHID
www.law.wisc.edu/alumni GARGOYLE 7
Wisconsin Law Review to
host national conference
in October, co-sponsored
by Institute for Law and
Economic Policy
T
he Institute for Law and Eco-
nomic Policy and the UW Law
School are co-sponsors of the Wis-
consin Law Review’s 2008 Sympo-
sium, “e Continuing Evolution of
Securities Class Actions,” to be held
Friday, October 17, at the Edgewa-
ter Hotel in Madison.
e conference will present
four major panels featuring promi-
nent speakers and commentators
from law firms and scholarly institu-
tions around the country. Panel
topics are: “Basic: Twenty Years
Later,” “Compensation and Deter-
rence,” “ird Party Accountability,”
and “Trans-National Issues and
Pleading after Tellabs.”
Chief Justice Shirley Abraham-
son of the Supreme Court of Wis-
consin will be the group’s luncheon
speaker, discussing “Litigation: A
View from the Bench.”
“is is an important event for
the Law School, securities litigators
and society at large,” says Keith L.
Johnson, Program Director for the
Wisconsin International Corporate
Governance Initiative (WICGI) and
a partner at Reinhart Boerner Van
Deuren, S.C. “Corporate fraud has
produced some of the largest and most
controversial cases of our time. Enron
and WorldCom come to mind, but
there are dozens of securities fraud
class actions filed every year.”
Johnson, who will be a com-
mentator at the symposium, notes
that the issues to be addressed are
“central to the integrity and health
of our financial markets.” He adds,
“More than half of Americans
have assets invested in the financial
markets, often through retirement
and college savings accounts. e
law that governs these corporate
fraud lawsuits can have life-changing
ramifications, both for investors and
for those who depend on the health
of our corporations for employment.
I’m excited to be a participant in
these important discussions.”
e program has been approved
for Continuing Legal Education
(CLE) credits.
For more information on the
speakers and schedule, and to register,
contact symposium coordinators Erin
Ehlke (eehlke@wisc.edu) or Brian
Jenks (bmjenks@wisc.edu). ose
interested in attending the luncheon
(in addition to the full day of panels)
should register by October 10.
On the third day of competing at the
Willem C. Vis International Arbitration
Moot Court Competition in Hong
Kong in March, UW Law School
team members Kate Bruce and Sina
Javaherian, at left, paused for a photo
with members of the team from the
University of Otago (New Zealand),
at right, and three arbitrators. More
than two hundred teams from fty-two
countries competed.
Symposium Will Examine Securities Class Actions
UW Law School students placed
with distinction in March 2008 at
the two venues of the 15th Annual
Willem C. Vis International Arbitra-
tion Moot Court Competitions.
More than two hundred teams from
fifty-two countries competed.
Members of the Wisconsin
team were divided into two groups
to compete in Hong Kong and
Vienna. e Hong Kong team won
first Runner-up for Best Brief, and
the Vienna team advanced to the
final elimination rounds.
Team members were Lara Aziz,
Sophy Chhun, Lucas Divine,
Maya Ganguly, Kate Bruce,
Sina Javaherian, David Moore, and
Maha Kahn. Coaches were students
Leanne Holcomb, James Isaac, and
Nicole Moody.
is is the third year that the
Law School has entered teams at the
Vis competitions.
Law School Wins Honors in Hong Kong and Vienna
NEWS
8 GARGOYLE Summer/Fall 2008
NEWS
P
atrick J. Fitzgerald, U.S.
Attorney for the Northern
District of Illinois, devoted
his Fairchild Lecture in April to
reflections on the consequences
of treating juries with respect or
disrespect. He looked back to juries
of several centuries ago and to juries
he has witnessed himself in his high-
profile career as a prosecutor.
“In the history of juries, some
issues have been sorted out, but
not all,” Fitzgerald told his audi-
ence of UW Law School students
and alumni, faculty, and friends.
“ere is room for improvement in
how judges treat jurors and how the
public respects them afterwards.”
Fitzgerald decried the current
phenomenon of a media probe
after a jury verdict is returned,
with people second-guessing a jury
and criticizing the verdict. “When
people besmirch juries cavalierly,” he
said, “it is very dangerous.”
As U.S. Attorney in Chicago,
Fitzgerald serves as the top fed-
eral law enforcement official for the
18-county Northern District of Il-
linois. He manages a staff of approxi-
mately 300 employees, including 145
Assistant U.S. Attorneys, who handle
civil litigation and criminal investi-
gations and prosecutions involving
public corruption, narcotics traffick-
ing, violent crime, white-collar fraud,
and other federal crimes.
Before taking his current posi-
tion in 2001, Fitzgerald served for
thirteen years as an Assistant U.S.
Attorney for the Southern District
of New York. He was Chief of the
Organized Crime/Terrorism Unit,
and participated in the prosecution
of numerous high-profile cases in-
volving terrorism, receiving numer-
ous high-level awards for distin-
guished service.
e omas E. Fairchild
Lecture at the UW Law School was
established in 1988 by the former
clerks of Judge Fairchild as a tribute
to their distinguished mentor.
Fairchild, a graduate of the UW
Law School Class of 1937, served
in numerous capacities, including
Wisconsin Attorney General, U.S.
Attorney for the Western District
of Wisconsin, Justice of the Wis-
consin Supreme Court, and Chief
Judge and Senior Circuit Judge on
the U.S. Court of Appeals for the
Seventh Circuit.
How Does the Legal System Treat Jurors?
(Left) Fairchild Lecturer Patrick Fitzgerald addresses his Law School audience.
(Above) Speaker Fitzgerald receives the traditional gift of a gargoyle statuette from
Dean Ken Davis at the conclusion of his talk.
U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald presents Twentieth
Thomas E. Fairchild Lecture.
www.law.wisc.edu/alumni GARGOYLE 9
NEWS
(Counter clockwise from left)
Law students (from left) Melanie Black, Zina Deldar, Derek
Gilliam, and Scott Colom.
Two of Judge Fairchild’s former clerks reconnect with the
judge’s daughters. From left, Jennifer Fairchild Lord, Attorney
Matt Flynn ’75, Susan Fairchild Chase, and R. Nils Olsen, pro-
fessor and former dean of the University at Buffalo Law School.
Judge Reena Raggi (center), who gave the Fairchild Lecture
in 2003, is joined by (from left) Dean Ken Davis, attorney
John Skilton ‘69, Law School Director of Development Abby
Sanford, and attorney William Conley ’82. Skilton, Raggi, and
Conley were all clerks of Judge Thomas Fairchild.
Fairchild speaker Patrick Fitzgerald (left) in conversation with
David Bonner 1L.
JAY SALVO (6)
10 GARGOYLE Summer/Fall 2008
NEWS
LEO Banquet Celebrates Diversifying the Legal Profession
T
he thirty-ninth annual
banquet of the Law School’s
Legal Education Oppor-
tunities program (LEO) brought
approximately four hundred people
to the Concourse Hotel in Madison
in April 2008.
Keynote speaker was Judge
William J. Haddad, the first Arab-
American full Circuit Court judge
in Chicago’s Cook County.
Hosting the evening were
members of the newest LEO group,
the Middle Eastern Law Students
Association (MELSA).
Many out-of-town LEO alumni
come to Madison for the event, to
reconnect and celebrate the achieve-
ments of the organization whose
mission is to recruit and support
students of color on their way to
becoming legal professionals.
Professor Peter Carstensen,
Chair of the LEO Committee,
noted with appreciation the growing
number of firms who sponsor tables,
thus contributing financially to the
organization and showing support
in attending the event. “I see this as
a further step by firms in Wisconsin
and adjacent states to support their
commitment to have a diverse work-
force,” Carstensen said.
e twelve law firms and other
organizations sponsoring tables at
the event were:
• Foley & Lardner LLP
• Godfrey & Kahn S.C.
• Hinshaw & Culbertson LLP
• Quarles & Brady LLP
• Reinhart Boerner Van Deuren S.C..
• Robins, Kaplan, Miller & Ciresi
L.L.P.
• Smith Amundsen
• Staord Rosenbaum LLP
• State Bar of Wisconsin
• UW Law School East Asian Legal
Studies Center
• Whyte Hirschboeck Dudek S.C.
• Wisconsin Asian Bar Association
To learn more about the UW
Law School’s nationally prominent
LEO organization, visit law.wisc.
edu/LegalEducationOpportuni-
tiesLEO.htm or request a copy of
the LEO newsletter, On the Rise,
by sending an e-mail giving your
mailing address to Susan Sawatske,
JAY SALVO (5)
Clockwise from top left: Keynote
Speaker, Judge William Haddad;
Hazem Isawi ’08, President of
the Law School’s Middle Eastern Law
Students Association; Payal Khandhar
Adriaens ’09; MacKenzie Bishop ’08;
Erick Tyrone ’09 (left) and Brandon
Vaughn ’08.
www.law.wisc.edu/alumni GARGOYLE 11
Elizabeth Mertz Wins Law & Society Book Prize
Professor Elizabeth E. Mertz was named one of two winners of the Herbert
Jacob Prize for the best book of the year by the Law & Society Association at
the association’s annual meeting in Montreal in May.
Mertz’s book, e Language of Law School: Learning to “ink Like a
Lawyer,” (Oxford University Press, 2007) has been featured prominently in
the news because of its role as a key source of information for a report by
the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, which critiques
legal education in the United States and Canada.
Mertz’s study is a unique empirical examination of the dynamics in
first-year law school classrooms, based on transcripts of the first semester of
Contracts classes in law schools across the country. e Carnegie Founda-
tion report, “Educating Lawyers: Preparation for the Profession of Law,” uses
Mertz’s research to reexamine the merits of traditional “Socratic method”
teaching in law schools, questioning whether this method is optimal in help-
ing students to “think like a lawyer.”
Cheryl Weston Is Named Woman of Distinction
Professor Cheryl Rosen Weston ’71 has been named a recipient of the
2008 Women of Distinction Award from the Madison YWCA. e
Women of Distinction Awards have been called “a Who’s Who in the
movement for social justice.”
Weston is the tenth UW Law School graduate to be honored with this
award. Most recently, Law School professors and alumnae Martha (Meg)
Gaines ’83 and Marygold Shire Melli ’50 received the honor.
In addition to teaching at the Law School, Weston is a founding partner
of Cullen, Weston, Pines & Bach, and CEO of e Douglas Stewart Com-
pany, the largest woman-owned business in Wisconsin.
Tuerkheimer Interviews Eichmann Prosecutor
An interview by Professor Frank Tuerkheimer of a prosecutor in the trial of
Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann has been recorded in DVD format and
is available online. Tuerkheimer interviewed Justice Gabriel Bach in 2006
about his role as senior prosecutor in the trial 45 years earlier.
Highlights of the interview, Tuerkheimer says, are an extensive discus-
sion of the power Eichmann wielded, “contrary to the image of him as a
low-level bureaucrat following orders”; insights into Eichmann’s psychology;
and “incredible vignettes — stories about the one person who was locked in
the gas chamber at Auschwitz-Birkenau who survived and amazing narra-
tives of resistance to and subversion of the German occupiers.”
Funding for the interview, which took place in Jerusalem, was pro-
vided by the Mae Temkin Fund set up by UW Law School alumnus Victor
Temkin ’60 with the purpose of supporting Holocaust Research. In prepara-
tion for the interview, Tuerkheimer read the entire trial manuscript of 3,000
pages, which took more than six weeks. “It made me somewhat of an expert
on the trial,” he says. “It was an eye-opener.”
e DVD can be viewed online at www.eichmannprosecutorinterview.org.
Beginning New Chapters: In June, three dedicated teach-
ers and program directors marked their ofcial retirement
from the Law School. From left are clinical professors
Louise Trubek, Director of the Health Law Project and a
prominent scholar of health law; Susan Steingass, Director
of the Legal Research and Writing Program and longtime
adjunct professor of trial advocacy as well as a former
Dane County Circuit Court judge and President of the State
Bar of Wisconsin; and Krista Ralston, Director of the Legal
Defense Program and former Chair of the Criminal Law
Section of the State Bar of Wisconsin.
Victoria Nourse’s
Book Investigates
American Eugenics
Professor Victoria Nourse’s new
book, In Reckless Hands: Skinner v.
Oklahoma and the Near-Triumph of
American Eugenics (W.W. Norton,
2008) is a comprehensive study that
“reads like a cliffhanger” (Kirkus
Reviews) of the history of American
eugenics, when thousands of men
and women were sterilized in the
1920s and 1930s at asylums and
prisons across the country.
Believing that criminality and
mental illness were inherited, state
legislatures passed laws calling for
sterilization of “habitual criminals”
and “the feebleminded.” e process
was challenged in 1936, when
inmates at an Oklahoma prison
refused to cooperate. Inmate Jack
Skinner was the first to come to
trial, in a case that was taken all the
way to the U.S. Supreme Court.
FACULTY UPDATES
12 GARGOYLE Summer/Fall 2008
w
Wisconsin Legal Education
Among the many UW law students and recent
alumni who set their sights on practice in New
York City are, from left, Mark Noel, Janell Wise,
Anwar Ragep, Amanda Croushore, Brian Jenks
(partially obscured), and Erin Ehlke.
www.law.wisc.edu/alumni GARGOYLE 13
w
“I knew I wanted to practice law in
New York City, so the only question
was which firm to join,” says Marisa
Shemi ’07 (Kirkland & Ellis). “I
interviewed with a handful of top
rms, but ultimately Kirkland & Ellis
was the best fit.”
Shemi is part of a noticeable
trend: new graduates and current
students are choosing New York
firms for cutting-edge work and the
draw of the city itself.
“Our top students have a lot of
opportunities to choose from, and
many of them choose New York,”
says Assistant Dean Jane Heymann,
Director of the Law School’s Office
of Career Services. “New York is the
legal capital of the world, so it’s an
obvious choice. Almost every big na-
tional law firm has an office in New
York. e big banks are there, and
most international organizations.”
Mark Bussey ’06 (Simpson
acher & Bartlett) is among those
who found New York to be the clear
choice. “I worked abroad as a para-
legal prior to law school, and com-
ing out of that experience I knew
that I wanted to practice corporate
law,” he says. “New York seemed
the perfect place to get a broad-
based corporate experience. I was
particularly interested in Simpson
acher because of the strength of
its mergers-and-acquisitions practice
and private equity client base, and
also because of its rotation system,
which allows corporate associates to
work for a period of months in the
rm’s credit, securities and M&A/
fund formation groups prior to set-
tling into one practice area.”
Lisa Infield-Harm ’06 (King
& Spalding), who is originally from
the Northeast, combined the op-
portunity to be closer to home with
significant professional advantages.
“New York is a great place for in-
ternational transactional work,” she
says, adding, “I’ve been able to work
in the Middle East/Islamic Finance
practice, which is one of our firm’s
key practices.”
For Sinan Kalayoglu ’07 (Weil
Gotshal & Manges), the choice also
began with the city. “I wanted to be
in New York,” he says. “I had previ-
ously worked in the city the summer
after my 2L year and enjoyed my
New York experience. e firm I
chose appealed to me because I liked
UW law students and recent graduates
share thoughts on choosing to practice
in NYC firms.
=
Perfect Fit
+ New York Opportunities
MIKE APPLETON
14 GARGOYLE Summer/Fall 2008
its people, reputation, and breadth
of practice areas.”
e pull of New York was tied
to a focus on litigation for Brian
Jenks (Cravath, Swaine & Moore
summer associate). “For litigators,
New York is really one of the most
exciting places to practice law,”
Jenks says. “I wanted to be on the
cutting edge of my profession, and
that’s what I’m finding here.”
Amanda Croushore (Kaye
Scholer summer associate) had the
same motivation. “New York is where
all of the highest profile, most ground-
breaking legal disputes are litigated,”
she says. “I wanted to see what it
would be like to be a part of that! So
far I have not been disappointed.”
Wisconsin-educated attorneys
When the Law School hosted a re-
ception for New York area alumni in
January, a Waldorf-Astoria banquet
room was filled with Wisconsin-
minted attorneys from a wide range
of practice areas, public and private,
who came to reconnect with each
other and greet new arrivals.
“Because we have an increas-
ingly large group of alumni in
New York, it’s a welcoming place
for graduates,” Heymann says. “In
addition, a growing number of our
students are interested in going to
New York to work as summer asso-
ciates. is year we have the biggest
number of 2Ls so far who are choos-
ing New York.”
Ready for the challenge
UW law graduates who choose
to work in New York firms are
prepared to roll up their sleeves and
tackle long hours and challenging
work. “I’ve definitely put in my time
at work and then some,” says Chi-
ann Bao ’07 (DLA Piper US), “but
I entered into this market know-
ing the expectations. As long as I
am working with good people and
learning, I am okay with the hours.”
Adam Trigg ’07 (UBS Invest-
ment Bank), who may win the prize
for most hours spent at work, has a
similarly positive mindset. “My ex-
perience has been every bit the New
York experience. I regularly work
100-plus hours a week. On average I
arrive home between 2 and 3 in the
morning and put in 10-to-12-hour
days. While I work way more than
I’d like to, I have had opportunities
here in New York that I wouldn’t
have had anywhere else. In my first
year I have had the chance to travel
several times to Argentina, Brazil,
and Asia, as well as various domestic
locations. I have been the lead on a
$200 million transaction and worked
on a $150 billion transaction.”
A wide range of UW Law
School experiences helped prepare
these young attorneys for their chal-
lenging work.
“I focused on courses that
related to corporate law and, where
possible, those that focused on
building transactional skills,” says
Mark Bussey of Simpson acher.
Bussey cites his courses in business
organizations, securities regulation,
fundamentals of business transac-
tions, and tax as providing him with
a solid background.
Adam Trigg of UBS Investment
Bank also says his course in fun-
damentals of business transactions
was “absolutely invaluable for the
transactional work I do every day.”
Erin Trigg ’07 (Seward and
Kissel) comments, “I took almost
every business class that the UW
Law School offered.”
Lisa Ineld-Harm of King &
Spalding alludes to the UW Law
School’s law-in-action teaching focus
as helpful preparation: “I benefit from
being trained not just in legal analysis
but to think about non-legal factors
when helping clients evaluate their op-
tions and make choices. at happens
to fit in very well with the approach of
the partners I work with.”
Others point to their hands-on
training. “Clerking for Judge Barbara
Crabb, participating in the yearlong
Consumer Law Litigation Clinic,
and taking Pre-Trial Advocacy all
helped me to develop my research
and writing skills and to gain experi-
ence with client interaction, motion
practice, and the litigation process,”
says Marisa Shemi of Kirkland.
Jessica McNamara (Skadden,
Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom sum-
mer associate) names her clinical work
at the Remington Center as the best
Jessica McNamara ’09 and Emily Gold ’09 Mark Bussey ’06 Chiann Bao ’07
www.law.wisc.edu/alumni GARGOYLE 15
preparation for her summer work.
“I knew how to handle real work on
my own, and had plenty of hands-on
experience with legal writing.”
Emily Gold, the Law School’s
second Skadden summer associate
this year, credits clinical work with
developing her client-interviewing
and writing abilities. Gold adds,
“e other experience that prepared
me for my New York summer is
having taken Professor Christians’
intro tax class my 2L year. at class
changed a lot of my perceptions
about what it might be like to prac-
tice tax law. When I got to Skadden
this summer, I gave tax law a try. Tax
ended up being my favorite practice
area and will likely be what I pursue
as a new associate.”
Anwar Ragep (Cadwalader,
Wickersham & Taft summer as-
sociate) also cites his clinical work.
“e best preparation for the work
I am doing now was the Wisconsin
Innocence Project.”
One summer, two jobs
ree students this year took on
the particular challenge of a “split
summer.” Anwar Ragep followed his
work at Cadwalader with an intern-
ship working for the chief counsel
at the Internal Revenue Service’s
regional office in New York. Jessica
McNamara combined Skadden in
New York and the Alaska Public
Defender’s Office. John Cornelius
(Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamil-
ton summer associate) split his time
between the firm’s New York and
London offices.
Ragep, whose chief focus is
tax law, had planned to spend his
entire summer at a large New York
firm specializing in tax work, but
when the IRS came to campus for
interviews, he was intrigued and
applied there as well. With offers
from the IRS and New York firms,
he thought he would have to forgo
the IRS experience, but the Career
Services Office had another idea: a
split summer.
“I contacted people at the firms
I was interested in, and they were all
extremely accommodating,” Ragep
says. “In fact, every time I contacted
a firm, I was encouraged to do a split
summer with a government agency.
I thought this was an opportunity I
shouldn’t miss.”
Jessica McNamara chose both
Skadden and the Alaska Public
Defender’s Office, pleased that both
were willing to let her split her
summer. New York was her home
territory, while Alaska was a new
adventure. “I’m really glad I chose
to come here,” she e-mailed from
Alaska in July. “People have been
very welcoming, and from what I’ve
seen so far it is a beautiful state.”
John Cornelius split his sum-
mer between two offices of Cleary
Gottlieb. “e firm offered half the
summer in London and half in New
York, and I gladly accepted,” Cor-
Adam Trigg ’07 Erin Trigg ’07
nelius says. “e primary challenge
was that it takes a while to settle
into one office, and when you arrive
at the other office you have to start
all over. e benefits were that I
was able to see more of the firm and
get experience in the European and
Emerging Markets practices.”
New York pastimes
Newly-hired New York attorneys all
have favorite ways of enjoying the
city. Mark Bussey favors “running
in Central Park and ramen in the
East Village,” while Chiann Bao
enjoys “checking out the many
ethnic restaurants, going to rooftop
establishments, and hanging out in
Central Park.” Sinan Kalayoglu lists
“museums, shows, concerts, cafés,
bars, etc.,” adding, “It’s endless!”
For summer associates, firms
typically organize a packed schedule
of social events. At Skadden, reports
Jessica McNamara, activities range
from casual events, such as baseball
games and a poker night, to more
formal events such as Broadway
shows and an evening at the Mu-
seum of Modern Art. Brian Jenks
at Cravath lists “movie screenings,
parties, benefits, golf outings, sail-
ing, cooking classes, beer tastings,
networking events, and Broadway
theater, just to name a few.”
Balancing the demands of work
with the offerings of the city is a job
in itself, but young attorneys who
choose New York wouldn’t have it
any other way. “My job has been
a lot like law school so far, in that
it’s challenging but rewarding,” says
Amanda Croushore. “I am very
encouraged by that, because it reas-
sures me that I have found a profes-
sion that I will enjoy and continue
to find interesting. Also, New York
is a great place to be. I don’t think I
could ever get bored here!” n
MIKE HALL (5)
16 GARGOYLE Summer/Fall 2008
T
he Class of 1983’s trio of
top New York prosecutors
have become colleagues and
friends in the course of the twenty-
five years since they earned their law
degrees and headed east. When the
Gargoyle first called Luke Rettler
at the New York County District
Attorney’s Office, where he is Chief
of Homicide Investigations, he
happened to be on the phone with
Bridget Brennan, New York’s Special
Narcotics Prosecutor, discussing a
case. Brennan and Deborah Landis,
who shared a New York apartment
for four years early in their careers,
have recently been on the phone
discussing plans to attend their
twenty-fifth Law School reunion.
All three speak enthusiastically
of their work as career prosecutors,
describing the paths that took them
from the UW Law School straight
to our nation’s largest city.
Bridget G. Brennan ’83
Special Narcotics
Prosecutor for the City
of New York
Bridget Brennan
is in charge of the
only agency in
the country dedi-
cated exclusively
to the investiga-
tion and pros-
ecution of major
narcotics offenses.
e Office of the Special Narcotics
Prosecutor (OSNP — often referred
to as “Special Narcotics”) coordi-
nates investigations into national
and international narcotics traffick-
ing and prosecutes approximately
three thousand felony cases a year.
As Special Narcotics Prosecu-
tor, Brennan was appointed by the
District Attorneys of all five counties
of New York, a procedure devised so
For ree Prominent Prosecutors, the
Road to New York Began in Wisconsin
Bridget Brennan, Luke
Rettler, and Deborah
Landis, all members of
the Law School’s Class
of 1983, share memo-
ries of the Wisconsin
experiences that led to
their New York careers.
www.law.wisc.edu/alumni GARGOYLE 17
that no county jurisdiction prob-
lems impede the agency’s efficiency.
Now in her tenth year as head of
OSNP, Brennan focuses on high-
level felony cases. Her long list of
achievements includes establishing
a Narcotics Gang Unit, developing
innovative programs that stemmed
the flow of drugs into the city,
expanding investigations of money
laundering, targeting Internet drug
sales, and dismantling organizations
that distribute narcotics throughout
the country.
Twenty-five years ago, law
student Bridget Brennan would have
found these facts difficult to believe.
Raised in the Milwaukee suburb
of Brookfield, she had come to law
school from a career in journalism.
Her intention was to return to jour-
nalism with expertise in legal issues
to enhance her reporting.
is whole plan was derailed,
however, on the day when Bren-
nan gave her closing argument in
Professor Frank Tuerkheimer’s Trial
Advocacy course.
Tuerkheimer, now a Professor of
Law Emeritus, remembers it vividly.
“It was phenomenal. I’ve seen a
lot of closing arguments. is was
better than 90 percent of practicing
lawyers could have done.”
A few weeks earlier, Tuerkheim-
er had been in New York, having
lunch with Manhattan District
Attorney Robert Morgenthau, as
he usually does when he is in New
York. (Tuerkheimer had been an
Assistant U.S. Attorney for the
Southern District of New York when
Morgenthau was U.S. Attorney.)
Over lunch, Morgenthau had said,
“If you see anybody good, send ’em
my way.”
After Brennan’s outstanding
argument, Tuerkheimer remembered
Morgenthau’s request. He left a mes-
sage for Brennan to come to his office.
Brennan, like Tuerkheimer,
recalls the events of that day well. “I
had never gone to his office to see
him,” she says. “He asked me, ‘Have
you ever thought of working in the
Manhattan District Attorney’s Of-
fice?’ I said, ‘No, because I’ve never
even been to Manhattan.’”
Although the idea had come
out of the blue, Brennan thought
it over and decided to give it a try.
She went to New York for a set of
three interviews, the final one with
Morgenthau. He offered her the job,
and she accepted on the spot.
Brennan at first feared that she
would have to leave behind all her
favorite outdoor activities in a city
of concrete. She learned differently,
and now shares her enthusiasm for
tennis and bike-riding in New York.
In the midst of talking with
the Gargoyle about a bike path on
the New Jersey shore she is inter-
rupted by an assistant. “Can I call
you back?” she asks. “Something
has come up.” Fifteen minutes later
she is back on the phone. “I had to
do a TV interview,” she explains.
“We seized four hundred pounds
of cocaine in a very sophisticated
concealed compartment — every-
thing about this operation looks like
an international organization — and
I had to describe the compartment
so people would recognize the high-
level planning that went into this
operation.”
Brennan was initially assigned
to trial work and became a homicide
iStockphoto
18 GARGOYLE Summer/Fall 2008
prosecutor at the height of the crack
epidemic. Most of the homicide cases
she tried were drug-related, and she
remembers feeling a great sense of
frustration, wanting to get to the root
of the problem. At Special Narcotics,
which she joined in 1992, “We were
able to pursue the traffickers who
were bringing drugs into the city, and
we were able to successfully prosecute
them. It was extremely rewarding. It
was very satisfying to trace the orga-
nizations you knew were pumping
those drugs out.”
Brennan, who lives in Brooklyn
with her husband and two children,
still has strong ties to Wisconsin.
She keeps up with fellow Wiscon-
sin graduates in New York, and
her mother in Wisconsin and ten
siblings, most in the Midwest, have
all come east to visit her.
“I love the University of Wis-
consin — I love the Law School,”
she volunteers. “When our entering
class of about sixty-five attorneys
from around the country started at
the D.A.’s office, I was proud to see
how the UW and UW Law School
were highly regarded here, and that
the education I received prepared
me well to handle a job in such a
fast-paced, complex environment.”
Luke H. Rettler ’83
Chief, Homicide
Investigation Unit
New York County District
Attorney’s Office
Luke Rettler,
like his classmate
and colleague
Bridget Brennan,
is a Wisconsin
native whose
path to a chal-
lenging career as
a high-level New
York prosecutor began at the UW
Law School.
Rettler has been Chief of the
New York County D.A.’s Office
Homicide Investigation Unit since
2003. Previously, his positions
included Chief of the Asian Gang
Unit and Senior Trial Counsel in
the Homicide Investigation Unit.
In his twenty-five-year career, he has
prosecuted numerous major cases
involving drug-gang murders, rack-
eteering, and narcotics conspiracy.
It is a very different world from
that of Rettler’s youth.
“I grew up on a dairy farm near
Hartford, Wisconsin,” Rettler says.
“Most of my family is still involved
in farming.” He attended UW-Osh-
kosh and, at the advice of a professor
there, he majored in criminal justice
and went on to law school.
Rettler’s goal on entering the
Law School was to be an FBI agent.
is was before he met Professor
Herman Goldstein, the Law School’s
preeminent authority on the police
function, who hired Rettler as his
research assistant. Rettler recalls,
“Herman said, ‘You should be a
prosecutor — and if you want the
real experience, go to New York.’”
Rettler’s first view of New York
was from inside police cars, when
he spent a week “riding with cops”
and writing up a field report for his
Washington, D.C.-based internship
with the Police Executive Research
Forum after his first year of law
school. His next trip there was to
interview for a job with the Manhat-
tan D.A.’s Office.
Rettler was hired directly fol-
lowing his law school graduation,
and has been with the D.A.’s Office
in various capacities for virtually
his entire career as a prosecutor.
e exception is a two-year period
in the mid-1990s when he worked
for the U.S. Attorney’s Office of
the Southern District of New York,
investigating and prosecuting two
major racketeering cases.
“I’ve had an unbelievable career
here,” Rettler says. “I love coming to
work. ere is so much to learn, as a
lawyer and as a person.”
Rettler singles out the lack of
hierarchy in the D.A.’s Office as
one of its great advantages. “ere
is only one D.A., and that’s Robert
Morgenthau. Everyone else is an
Assistant D.A., so there’s no cut-
throat competition.”
Again like Bridget Brennan,
Rettler is at home both in Man-
hattan and in the Midwest. “My
Wisconsin roots are very strong — I
still root for the Packers,” he says.
“My whole family is there, and I go
back to see them.”
He adds that he and his wife
now have a farm in Connecticut,
splitting their time between it and
their home in Brooklyn. “It satisfies
my Wisconsin farm need,” he says.
Looking back on the occasion
of his twenty-five-year milestone,
Rettler comments, “I’ve had a great
career here. I’ve been blessed with
many opportunities, and one of
them was going to the UW Law
School.”
Deborah E. Landis ’83
Senior Litigation Counsel
U.S. Attorney’s Office
Southern District of
New York
is year
Deborah Landis
is marking her
twentieth year
as a prosecutor
with the U.S.
Attorney’s Office
for the Southern
District of New
York. In these two full decades she
has conducted and supervised a
wide range of complex investigations
and prosecuted criminal cases from
narcotics distribution to perjury by
public officials. Since 1992 she has
focused almost exclusively on white-
collar crime.
In the late 1990s Landis led one
particularly high-profile investiga-
tion into a scheme to defraud the
www.law.wisc.edu/alumni GARGOYLE 19
U.S. government of tens of millions
of dollars in grants, loans and sub-
sidies (including education grants,
housing and business loans, and
old-age benefits), which took five
years and involved a task force of
agents from the FBI, HUD, IRS,
Social Security Administration,
Department of Education, Small
Business Administration, and
Postal Inspection Service. It resulted
in convictions of all defendants
following an eleven-week trial,
and brought Landis the Attorney
General’s John Marshall Award for
Trial Litigation, presented to her by
Attorney General Janet Reno.
For six months beginning in
2000, on temporary detail from her
New York position, Landis worked
in Washington as both an Associate
Deputy Attorney General and DOJ
Special Counsel for Health Care
Fraud. “at experience gave me
perspective from the very top of the
Justice Department, which was espe-
cially interesting in an election year,”
she says.
For the past three years, Landis
has been the lead prosecutor in a
widely-publicized case involving tax
shelters sold by the accounting firm
of Ernst & Young.
“Being a prosecutor is a great
job,” Landis comments. “I’m not
accountable to any client other than
the public good. I get paid to use
my judgment to do justice.”
Landis attributes her career path
to her experiences at the UW Law
School, both in the classroom and
in practical learning experiences.
She points to two classes with
Professor Frank Tuerkheimer as
essential to her current work. “I
had Frank Tuerkheimer for Evi-
dence, and because he had been a
prosecutor, he had a very practical
orientation to evidence. I use what I
learned in that class every day.”
Her second class with
Tuerkheimer was Trial Advocacy. “I
was terrified to take Trial Advocacy,”
Landis says. “I was kind of shy; pub-
lic speaking had never come easily to
me. I knew this would be the most
difficult thing for me to overcome.
“But Frank was very encourag-
ing. He taught it in a way that was
very accessible to me and gave me
confidence. I came out of that class
feeling ‘I can do this.’ It was a real
turning point.”
By the time Landis completed
her law degree, she knew she wanted
to become a federal prosecutor. “I
knew that because I had done a
clinical at the U.S. Attorney’s Office,
and I was a student clerk for Judge
Barbara Crabb.”
Landis, who had grown up in
the New York City suburbs, chose
New York as her professional base.
To prepare herself for her goal of
becoming an Assistant U.S. Attorney,
she was a judicial clerk for two years
with U.S. District Judge William
Conner of the Southern District
of New York, and next worked in
white-collar criminal defense at the
rm of Lankler Siert & Wohl,
whose partners were three former
prosecutors. “I told them up front
that I wanted to be an Assistant U.S.
Attorney,” Landis says, “and when we
all agreed that I was ready, they wrote
letters of recommendation for me to
the prosecutors in this very office.”
Landis has come full circle from
the time when she was terrified to
take Trial Advocacy: for the last ten
years she has taught that very course
at Harvard Law School. “One week
every January I teach basic trial
advocacy,” she says. “I love it.”
Late this summer Landis was
offered a voluntary early-retirement
package that was “too good to turn
down,” and thus her twentieth
anniversary at her current job will
mark her last year there. “People in
my position don’t typically stay here
twenty years,” she says. “I stayed
because I loved it so much.”
Landis plans to take some time
off and then set out on the adven-
ture of seeking a new job. “I can’t
imagine that I’ll find anything I will
enjoy as much as I’ve enjoyed this
job,” she says.
Like her classmates and friends
Luke Rettler and Bridget Brennan,
Landis considers herself extremely
fortunate to be a career prosecutor.
“Of all the lawyers I know,” she says,
“the ones who are happiest with
their jobs are prosecutors.” n
Law School alumna Bridget Brennan, Special Narcotics Prosecutor for the City of
New York, inspects a load of more than 1,000 pounds of cocaine seized in a New
Jersey warehouse in 2006. Brennan’s ofce worked with other agencies to close in
on the six individuals responsible for the drug operation, then indicted all six on the
felony charge of Criminal Possession of a Controlled Substance in the rst degree.
PHOTO: DRUG ENFORCEMENT ADMINISTRATION
20 GARGOYLE Summer/Fall 2008
T
his year, Larry Church is
marking his fortieth year on
the UW Law School faculty.
Church is one of the most lauded
professors the school has ever had,
widely acknowledged as a highly effec-
tive and original teacher whose focus
is on developing his students’ capacity
for analysis and logical thought.
Given that Church never
set out to be either a lawyer or a
teacher, the question arises: How
did he get here? And further, what
is distinctive about a teaching style
that keeps Church’s students, in the
words of one colleague, “anchored
to their chairs”?
Learning and sports
Church was born and raised in Mil-
waukee in a family with a tradition
of teaching. His father was a science
teacher in Milwaukee for more than
fifty years, and his father’s father
had been headmaster at St. Albans
School in Washington, D.C. His
mother came from a “political and
lawyerly” family in New Jersey, he
says, noting that the message she
handed down was to be sure to
steer clear of politics. “It was never
a temptation,” he adds, in the
understated manner known to his
more than ten thousand former
law students.
Sports, rather than careers,
were on Church’s mind when he
was ready to go to college. In high
school at the Milwaukee Country
Day School, he had played football,
hockey, and tennis, and his choice of
Amherst College in Massachusetts
Professor Larry Church
Has a Teaching Style All His Own
William Lawrence (Larry) Church, the Law School’s Sherwood R. Volkman-
Bascom Teaching Professor of Law, is a 1963 UW Law School graduate.
After teaching law as a Peace Corps volunteer in Ethiopia and practicing
with Foley, Sammond & Lardner in Milwaukee, he returned to the Law
School in 1968 to begin a forty-year (and counting) teaching career.
Church has been named Teacher of the Year four times by the
Wisconsin Law Alumni Association’s poll of recent graduates, and he
has received numerous additional awards for excellence in teaching. He
carries substantially more than a full-time course load each semester,
has lectured and taught law on five continents, and for some twenty
years taught international lawyers attending the Law School’s summer
program on U.S. Legal Institutions. For one year he served as an adviser
to the Supreme Court of Afghanistan (“in happier times there”). In recent
years, his teaching focus has been on constitutional law and property.
Some of his most innovative teaching takes place in a Supreme Court
seminar he co-teaches each spring with Fredericka Paff, his wife.
Church is the longtime adviser to the Wisconsin Law Review. He is
the author of numerous articles in a wide range of subject areas, and he
writes and edits all his own course texts.
In the next few pages, Church talks about the path that led him
to his career at the Law School, and why he finds his classes to be
so much fun.
HOW I GOT HERE
www.law.wisc.edu/alumni GARGOYLE 21
had a lot to do with the athletic
opportunities it offered. He played
hockey throughout college, and soc-
cer and tennis for a couple of years.
Church graduated cum laude
with a split major in German and
philosophy and a thesis on Friedrich
Nietzsche. He then headed back
to Wisconsin and the UW Law
School. “is was in part because
law seemed to be challenging and
interesting as a subject of study and
in part just to postpone choosing a
permanent career,” he comments.
Law study turned out to be even
more challenging than Church had
anticipated. “Going into law school,
I didn’t appreciate the fact that legal
education is also intellectual educa-
tion: it teaches one how to think
rationally and objectively and how
to express thoughts to others,” he
says. “Law represents the junction of
concrete rules and standards and so-
cial, economic, and political policy,
and law school gave me a whole
new perspective on both theoreti-
cal analysis and practical reality —
especially because of the Wisconsin
Idea approach of this law school and
because of the extraordinary quality
of its teaching faculty.”
On the list of his own outstand-
ing UW law professors, Church
includes Willard Hurst, Stewart
Macaulay, Marygold Melli, Nate
Feinsinger, Richard Effland, Orrin
Helstad, Gordon Baldwin, Frank
Remington, Sam Mermin, John
Conway, Jake Beuscher (who was
instrumental in Church’s joining the
faculty), and Eleanore Jones Roe,
one of the earliest female graduates
of the Law School, who was also the
aunt of Church’s future wife, Freder-
icka Paff.
“My three years of study here
gave me a much better grasp of
how the world actually works than
my previous liberal arts study had
provided,” Church says.
Church graduated from the
Law School summa cum laude in
1963. He was Note Editor of the
Wisconsin Law Review, Order of
the Coif, and a co-recipient of the
Salmon Dalberg Award, which
recognizes an outstanding student in
the graduating class.
Travels with a law degree
e new graduate considered apply-
ing to the Air Force JAG Corps for
a stint in Alaska, but the mandatory
four-year commitment seemed too
long. Instead, he signed on for a
two-year placement with the newly-
created United States Peace Corps,
which at that time had a specific
lawyers’ program involving about
twenty-five young law graduates
placed in several African countries.
e decision was a fateful one.
“I thought carefully about what
country I wanted to go to and
decided on Ethiopia. As it hap-
pened, Peace Corps lawyer volun-
teers in Ethiopia were assigned to
teach in a brand new law school.
is was a time of great optimism,
legal and otherwise. e Ethiopian
students were eager and enthusias-
tic. Teaching there was a lot of fun,
BOB RASHID
22 GARGOYLE Summer/Fall 2008
that subject, but I’d exhausted my
defenses, so I had to do it.”
Church remembers being just
one day ahead of the students in
that course. “But I also taught con-
tracts, criminal law, and property,
which I did know something about,
and I started to really enjoy teaching
pretty quickly.”
e art of teaching
Church uses what he calls a “semi-
Socratic method” in nearly all his
courses. (e exception is when he
is teaching international students,
who overwhelmingly prefer that he
lecture.) “Lecturing is much easier,”
Church comments. “e teacher
controls the whole course. But it’s not
very stimulating. With the Socratic
method, you never know what’s go-
ing to happen. It’s a challenge — a
bit like sports. It’s just fun.”
Church explains the “semi” in
“semi-Socratic” as follows: “I try to
make the students address the policy
issues behind all cases by asking
them to indicate what arguments
they think are persuasive (on both
sides), and why this is so. If they run
out of possibilities, I add some sug-
gestions of my own.”
He adds, “I’m always delighted
when there are questions. I did a lot
of participating when I was a stu-
dent, and I appreciate all manner of
questions now — the more difficult,
the better.”
Church finds teaching first-year
students to be particularly enjoyable.
In earlier days: Larry Church as (top, from
left): a youngster in Milwaukee, No. 23 on the
Milwaukee Country Day School’s undefeated
football team, a young UW law professor. At
right, Church is second from the left in the
back row, pictured with law students and
other faculty in 1965 at the new law school
in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, where he taught as
a Peace Corps volunteer and learned that he
loved to teach.
and because it was so enjoyable and
stimulating, it was one of the reasons
I later came back to teach here.”
When Church returned from
Ethiopia, he accepted a position at
what is now Foley & Lardner in
Milwaukee. “I was much impressed
with the quality of the firm’s lawyers
and enjoyed the rigors and chal-
lenges of law practice,” he says. “But
in the end, the lure of teaching and
the academic life proved irresistible,
and when the opportunity came to
join the Madison faculty, I took it.”
e beginning of Church’s UW
Law School teaching career resem-
bles a first-year teacher’s nightmare.
“e campus was beginning its
descent into turmoil over the Viet
Nam war. Meanwhile, when I got
here to teach in the fall — it was a
more casual era then: I just showed
up and asked what courses I should
prepare in the next couple of weeks
— Dean George Young said I would
be teaching antitrust. I had never
taken economics or antitrust, so I
asked if I could teach something
else. I wonder now if the Dean was
merely setting a trap. He said, ‘Well,
then, you can teach debtor-creditor
law.’ I also knew nothing about
www.law.wisc.edu/alumni GARGOYLE 23
“For quite a few of the students,
it’s a revelation of how to think
and how to argue. e basic thing
I try to teach them is that although
whatever substantive knowledge
they may get from any course is
likely to turn out to be ephemeral,
developing the capacity for rational
analysis and policy debate, all in aid
of thoroughly pragmatic representa-
tion of clients, is truly exciting.”
He finds it interesting that
in the whole period he has been
teaching, he has observed little dif-
ference in the personality or ability
of students at the Law School. “For
forty years they have consistently
been steady, capable, and generally
decent, showing an enthusiasm
and a maturity that makes them a
pleasure to teach.”
Church creates all his own
course materials, preferring to
choose and edit cases himself
for class coverage. “Several years
ago, I co-authored (in part with
Fredericka) a standard law school
cases-and-materials book: Legisla-
tive and Administrative Processes. I
learned that you can’t just make the
book what you would like for your
class, but what many other teach-
ers would like for their classes. You
have to put in every detail, every
case, every note; you can’t leave any
part out, lest you limit the usefulness
of the book to others. But I like to
edit cases down much further than
many other teachers want to, and I
like to concentrate on only a limited
number of cases and issues in class,
usually just one per day, so that some
of the depth of possible argument
can be appreciated. us, commer-
cial casebooks are far too extensive
and detailed for my purposes.”
Creating his own class materials
has other advantages, too, Church
notes. “Constitutional law and
property are fields that are changing
rapidly, and casebooks can’t keep up
with them. In contrast, I can choose
current cases to keep my own class
materials up-to-date. And last, but
not least, I can deliver materials that
A Look Inside Professor
Church’s Classroom
By Kenneth E. McNeil ’81
T
he greatest skill of a trial
lawyer is to be succinct and
to the point.
When I first walked into
Professor Church’s property law
class almost thirty years ago,
it was the last place I thought I
would learn that skill. Nothing
seemed more complex — and
boring — than property law.
I sat mid-way back in the
class with that bracing mindset
of just “enduring” this course.
en the bell rang.
And I began to watch in
awe as the man at the teach-
ing desk started with a crisp,
fast-clipped, almost monotone
style unlike any other in the law
school. With a machine-gun-
like relentlessness, he gave a
laser-sharp analysis of case after
case. ere was not an unneeded
word spoken. In just minutes he
transformed cases as confusing as
mush into clear-as-a-bell balanc-
ing of conflicting legal policies.
No dancing, no antics,
no joking with students. Just
the facts. en the law. en a
balance of competing policies
underlying the decision.
He never varied from that
formula — week after week. I
couldn’t figure out the reason for
this teaching style. It was so dif-
ferent. Why was he doing this?
Here I am, over twenty-
five years later, no longer in the
world of the classroom. I am
juggling cases in a world of large,
complex securities, antitrust,
patent, energy, and accounting
fraud litigation. But from Day
One, the pattern is exactly the
same: either the story is a mess
or it is clear.
Professor Church under-
stood that. He also understood
the world of the courtroom —
flooded with paper, distracting
antics, and deliberate distraction.
In that world, you have only
seconds to get to the essence of
your case.
So his style was to become a
“model lawyer” in his classroom,
focused only on the essential,
completely avoiding distraction.
He knew students cannot learn
this skill from books. ey must
see it in action.
His recipe — first the cryp-
tic facts, then the law, then the
balancing of conflicting policies
— is all about essence. And he
gave us a crystal-clear example of
why today’s legal situations are
not really a morass. e “morass”
is only the perception we have
as lawyers when we have not
figured out the essence of our
own case.
Tell the next first-year
law student entering Professor
Church’s class this secret of his
forty-year teaching style. But
keep reminding the rest of us
to emulate his sterling example
as well.
n
Trial lawyer Ken McNeil ’81,
a twenty-year partner with
Susman Godfrey LLP in Houston,
has played a key role in numerous
nationally-significant commercial
litigation cases throughout his ca-
reer. He has served as Chair of the
Antitrust & Business Litigation
Section of the State Bar of Texas
and President of the Wisconsin
Law Alumni Association.
24 GARGOYLE Summer/Fall 2008
are produced at the Law School at
much less expense than that of com-
mercial casebooks. e total savings
to students over the years may be
approaching a million dollars.”
Church has taught more than
fifteen different courses in his
forty-year career, including legal
methods, legislation, administrative
law, business organizations, agency,
the common law (to Mullahs in
Afghanistan), environmental law,
constitutional environmental law,
law and population, Zambian law,
contracts, criminal law, criminal
procedure, and various seminars.
“I enjoyed them all, but you
can’t teach them all in the same year,”
he says. In recent years he has focused
on teaching the American Legal
System (for foreign students), Prop-
erty, and Constitutional Law, which
encompasses the structure of govern-
ment (Con Law I) and individual
and civil rights (Con Law II).
He enjoys one-on-one work
with students as well. “For a long
time I have supervised the work of
from five to eight foreign graduate
law students every year, which is a
source of great pleasure (and often
very educational for me).”
A distinctive teaching style
Professor Chuck Irish met
Church in 1972 in Zambia, when
Irish arrived in Lusaka to begin
work as a legal advisor to the Zam-
bia Ministry of Finance. Church,
then a lecturer at the University of
Zambia Law School, came to the
airport to welcome the new member
of the expatriate community. ey
have been close ever since, and it
was this connection that brought
Irish to join the Law School faculty
two years later.
Both Irish and Church regularly
taught in the Law School’s summer
U.S. Legal Institutions program for
international lawyers, and Church
has accompanied Irish on several
trips to teach in Asia. (Irish is found-
er and director of the Law School’s
East Asian Legal Studies Center.)
Irish notes, “Larry’s teaching
style establishes that students do
in fact listen. He doesn’t use any
technology in class. He has a very
laid-back demeanor: he’s quiet, he
doesn’t speak very loudly; he sits, he
doesn’t stand or walk around. His
casual style gives the sense that it is a
fireside chat. But this is not the case:
he has prepared very carefully. He
spends a lot of time thinking about
the presentation of the material, and
his preparation is an important com-
ponent in his success as a teacher.”
Irish adds, “He is exceptionally
creative. His ideas are sometimes
wacky, sometimes prescient. Stu-
dents are hanging on his words;
he may say what is going to be the
norm in two weeks or a year.”
Associate Dean Walter Dickey
’71 remembers Church’s teaching
from a different vantage point. “I
was a student of Larry’s in his first
semester of teaching, in contracts,”
Dickey says. “He was a strong
teacher from the start, much liked
by his students. He showed the
promise of the excellent teacher he
would become.”
Dickey particularly mentions
Church’s instrumental role in help-
ing him to get a job in West Africa
through the Ford Foundation after
his third year of law school. “It pro-
foundly affected my life and I very
much appreciate the interest Larry
took in me over thirty years ago,”
Dickey says.
Another graduate who reports
Church’s strong influence on him as
a student is Houston trial attorney
Ken McNeil ’81, who was inspired
by a query on Church’s teaching
style to recreate his first and sub-
sequent impressions of Church for
Gargoyle readers (see page 23).
Chuck Irish, summing up his
friend’s career achievement, notes,
“Over the years I’ve seen Larry in
many different settings
and he is uniformly well
regarded. In his forty years
at the UW Law School he
has consistently been rec-
ognized as the most excel-
lent teacher in the school
— from when he was the
youngest professor to now,
when he is a senior faculty
member. His continued
success makes it clear that
it’s what passes from him
to the students that’s key.
e students feel that they
are getting something very
valuable.” n
For more than twenty years, Larry Church and four close colleagues taught together in the
Law School’s summer program for students from abroad on U.S. Legal Institutions. From
left, professors Zig Zile, Chuck Irish, Larry Church, John Kidwell, and Ken Davis.
www.law.wisc.edu/alumni GARGOYLE 25
Teaming Up
To Teach
Larry Church and
Fredericka Paff are
long-time co-teachers
as well as husband
and wife.
F
or more years than either of
them can remember, Larry
Church and Fredericka Paff, his
wife, have co-taught one class
each semester at the Law School.
In the fall, they teach Constitu-
tional Law I or II (“whichever
one the Law School needs us to
teach”), and in the spring, a semi-
nar on the U.S. Supreme Court.
When they teach what is fa-
miliarly known as “con law,” Paff
and Church lead the discussion
on alternate cases. “Taking turns
doing the cases makes it a lot of
fun for us, and the students seem
to like it too,” Paff says.
e origin of the Supreme
Court seminar can be attributed
to Paff’s personal interest in the
Court: at the beginning of her
career she was a clerk for Chief
Justice William Rehnquist. Before
he was appointed to the Court,
Rehnquist was head of the Office
of Legal Counsel at the U.S. De-
partment of Justice. Paff, who had
recently graduated from Stanford
Law School and clerked on the
Ninth Circuit, joined his staff.
After Rehnquist was named to
the Court, he hired Paff to clerk
for him.
roughout their profes-
sional careers, Paff followed
Rehnquist’s work closely. “He
was on the Court until only three
years ago,” she says. “It made
following the Court much more
interesting.” She adds, “Chief
Justice Rehnquist was an extraor-
dinary person. He was very good
at getting the most out of staff
and making them feel that they
were of considerable value.”
For their Supreme Court
seminar at the Law School,
Church and Paff start by having
students choose partners. Each
team then chooses a case on the
current Court docket. en,
every week during the semester,
a team presents its case, one
student arguing the petitioner’s
side for the same half hour usually
granted advocates before the U.S.
Supreme Court, with the other
student getting a half hour in turn
as respondent.
“Our experience is that the
students do a really good job of
preparing and arguing, playing it
straight, as if they were before the
real Court,” Paff says.
In addition, each student
acts as one of the nine current
Supreme Court Justices through-
out the semester, posing questions
as that Justice might be expected
to do and even predicting how
that Justice will vote in the case
at hand.
“Inevitably, of course, the
students (and the professors)
ask their own questions of the
advocates,” Church notes, “and
each week the class takes its own
vote on which side should prevail
in the case under discussion, often
disagreeing with the anticipated
actual resolution of the case.”
Church and Paff limit the
Supreme Court seminar enroll-
ment to about twenty students.
“If you get more than two
students arguing a case before
the class, or if you have too many
students playing the part of one
Justice at the same time, it gets
a bit unwieldy,” Paff says. “If
multiple Justice Scalias see the
case quite differently from one
another, it can sound as if his alter
egos are having it out.”
Church comments, “For
the students, the seminar offers
a realistic introduction to appel-
late advocacy — which nearly
always makes it both challenging
and enjoyable for them as well
as for us.” n
Larry Church and Fredericka Paff have a longtime tradition of co-teaching one course
each semester. Their yearly seminar on current U.S. Supreme Court cases evolved from
Paff’s personal interest in the Court, where she was a clerk for Chief Justice William
Rehnquist.
BOB RASHID
26 GARGOYLE Summer/Fall 2008
Time to Commence
U
W Law School alumnus Tom Barrett ’80, the fortieth
mayor of the City of Milwaukee, was the keynote
speaker for the Law School’s May 2008 graduation
celebration at Monona Terrace. Professor Howard Erlanger was
elected faculty speaker, with the honor of giving the students
the last lecture they would receive as law students.
Student speakers were Jon Beidelschies, Emily Long, Nan
Wang, and Ifeyinwa “Ify” Offor, all elected by their classmates.
e Law School ceremony was followed by the university’s
graduation for the professional schools at the Kohl Center,
where 259 students received J.D. degrees and 37 received the
graduate degrees of Doctor of Juridical Science (S.J.D.), Master
of Laws (LL.M.) and Master of Legal Institutions (M.L.I.).
COMMENCEMENT 2008
Clockwise from top right: Keynote speaker, Milwaukee Mayor Tom
Barrett ’80; Faculty speaker, Professor Howard Erlanger; graduates
(from left) Rebecca Miller, Nicole Hamilton, and Julie Vaughn; gradu-
ates (from left) Heather Wiggins, Carena Crowell, and Jennifer Clark.
www.law.wisc.edu/alumni GARGOYLE 27
COMMENCEMENT
Student speakers (four photos at left
above clockwise): Jon Beidelschies,
Emily Long, Ifeyinwa “Ify” Offor, and
Nan Wang.
At top right, Dean Ken Davis; at left,
graduates (from left) Valerie Zisman,
James Fash, Julia Kornilova, and
Mark Johnson.
EMPIRE PHOTOGRAPHY (10)
28 GARGOYLE Summer/Fall 2008
American Academy of Matrimonial
Lawyers Award
Amber Hahn
For dedication to Family Law and
exhibiting the qualities that the
American Academy of Matrimonial
Lawyers wishes to promote in the
practice of Family Law
American Academy of Matrimonial
Lawyers Leonard Loeb Award
Rachel Abhold
For excellence in the study of
Family Law and dedication to
community service
Andre Saltoun Prize
Andy Declercq, Noel Spencer, Rebecca
Kennedy Hamrin, Wendy Richards
For scholarship and service to the
Wisconsin Law Review
Association For Women Lawyers
Scholarship
Kelly Anderson, Rachel Abhold
For academic excellence and
outstanding service to the Law
School and general community
Barbara B. Crabb Award
Elisabeth Stockbridge
For promoting the ideals of honesty,
fairness, and equality
Bercovici Prize
Bobak Razavi
For excellence in the study of
jurisprudence and legal philosophy
Bernard Berk Memorial Award
Megan Beaman
For outstanding contributions to
the economically disadvantaged
Bruce F. Beilfuss Memorial Award
Charles Doughty, Christopher
Smithka, Elizabeth Soltis, Gretchen
Cleveland, Jon Beidelschies, Paul
Manrique, Sara Vanden Brook
For outstanding service to the
Law School
Catherine Manning Memorial
Award
Katie Holtz
For outstanding contributions to the
Legal Assistance to Institutionalized
Persons Program
Children’s Justice Project
Fellowship Award
Jenny Zimmermann, Sara Kelton
For outstanding contributions and
commitments to children’s law
Daniel H. Grady Award
Eric J. Weiss
To the top ranking student in the
graduating class
Davis Constitutional Law Award
Joseph Franklin Kirgues
For excellence in the study of
constitutional law
Gordon B. Baldwin Scholarship
Award
Sarah Erlinder
For excellence in the study of
criminal justice
Gwynette E. Smalley Law Review
Prize
Eric Weiss, Gretchen Cleveland
For scholarship and service to the
Wisconsin Law Review
Joseph Davies Award
Brad Kopetsky
For outstanding service to the
Wisconsin Law Review by a second-
year student
Julie Strasser Scholarship
Sarah Erlinder
For demonstrated concern for the
needy and work to benefit society
Katherine Held Memorial Award
Emily Long, Travis Weller
For outstanding contributions to
the Wisconsin Journal of Law, Gender
and Society
HONORS AND AWARDS 2008
A Time for
Recognition
JAY SALVO
O
n the evening of May 15 at
Memorial Union eater,
the Law School’s Honors
and Awards Ceremony recognized
outstanding students for academic
excellence and service to the com-
munity. Family and friends, faculty,
and donors of the awards joined to
celebrate the students’ achievements.
www.law.wisc.edu/alumni GARGOYLE 29
HONORS AND AWARDS 2008
Leon Feingold Memorial Award
Christina Fok
For outstanding contributions to the
economically disadvantaged
Mary Kelly Quackenbush
Memorial Award
Maureen Atwell
For the outstanding student article
in the Wisconsin Journal of Law,
Gender and Society
Mathys Memorial Appellate
Advocacy Award
Brandon Flugaur, Luke Kohtala,
Benjamin Prinsen
To outstanding oralists in Moot
Court competition
Mathys Memorial Award For
Appellate Advocacy: Service to
the Moot Court Board
Eric J. Weiss, Katherine Roberts
For outstanding service to the Moot
Court Board
Melvin J. Friedman Memorial
Scholarship
Andrew Becher
For exemplary work in the Wisconsin
Innocence Project
Mental Health Legal Advocacy
Network 2008 Student Service
Award
Charlie Doughty, Elenora Connors,
Elisabeth Stockbridge, Maria Selsor
In recognition of students who
increased awareness about mental
health issues and their intersection
with law
Pro Bono Partnership Award
Alison Volk, Bryn Heimann,
Emily Gold, Gretchen Cleveland,
Paul Burant, Sara Vanden Brook
For service to the Law School and
community by efforts to establish a
Pro Bono program that will increase
civil legal services to those otherwise
unable to access the justice system
Public Interest Scholar Award
Sarah Erlinder
In recognition of students who
demonstrated academic excellence,
consistent service, and dedication to
a public interest career
Ray and Ethel Brown Award
Paul Burant, Vic Yanz
For character, leadership, and service
by first-or second-year students
Salmon Dalberg Award
Barbara McCarty Conley
To an outstanding member of the
graduating class
Sonnet Schmidt Edmonds Award
Rachel Lauesen
For excellence in energy law
State Bar of Wisconsin
Environmental Essay Award
William Bettenberg
For the best student essay on
environmental law
Wisconsin Association of Workers’
Compensation Scholarship
Andrea Sumpter, Renee Medved
For character, leadership, and service
by first-or second-year students
Wisconsin Law Review Alumni
Association Award
Britta Lindberg, Laura Schwartz
For contributions to the Wisconsin
Law Review
Wisconsin Lawyers Mutual
Insurance Company Award
Scott Jess
To the top-ranking student in
Professional Responsibilities
Wisconsin Public Interest Law
Foundation’s Jackie Macaulay
Award
Megan Beaman
For demonstrating exceptional
commitment to Public Interest Law
Rebecca L. Abelson
Rachel E. Abhold
Jacob J. Abrams
Michael Edward Ahrens
William Nathaniel Barron
Sara Kay Beachy
Brett Paal Belden
Katherine Lynn Bender
Ambrea J. Bigley
Kathryn Boland Botham
Katherine Kos Bruce
Dylan John Cyrus Buffum
Graham Mark Catlin
Kenneth Bo-Chih Chang
Barbara McCarty Conley
Peter Conrad
Kyle Stephen Conway
Adam Erich CrawFord
Jessica P. Culotti
Claire Patrice Dalle Molle
Gabor Danko
Andy Neill DeClercq
Sarah K. Deutsch
Michael Edward Duchek
Robert H. Ellis
Erin R. Fay
Collin Paul Fisher
Sarah Lynn Fowles
Kyle Loren Garl
John David Gentry
Kurt omas Gerlach
Haben Goitom
Eric Goldman
Rachel Anne Graham
Ryan Paul Haas
Joseph John Hable
Jonathan W. Hackbarth
Mia Pring Haessly
Rebecca Kennedy Hamrin
Leanne Louise Holcomb
Kathryn Anne Holtz
Craig Guiles Hubbell
Eric Norman Huston
Annie Jay
Mark T. Johnson
Adam A. Kiel
Joseph Franklin Kirgues
Fern Freedlander Knepp
Julia Kornilova
Richelle Ann Ladwig
Catherine S. Lindemann
Adam James Loomans
Michael H. Margolis
Douglas John Marsch
Brenda Rae Mayrack
Elisabeth Yandell McNeil
Deborah Carol Meiners
Aaron Arthur Mitchell
Caitlin E. Moore
David J. Moore
Michael Ryan O’Callaghan
Chijioke Ekenedilichukwu
Offor
Jonathan D. Parker
Krista R. Pleviak
Holly C. Pomraning
Sarrie Lynn Pozolinski
James M. Reeves
Wendy Rhianne Richards
Julia B. Ruff
Lucas Neal Roe
Jessica Kristine Ring
William J. Roberts
Monica SantaMarie
Somohano
Mark Darren Schuman
Nicholas Jon Schwalbach
Laura Rose Schwartz
Sheila P. Simhan
Kathryn Lily Sims
Kimberly K. Smith
Katherine D. Sorensen
Noel Whitemarsh Spencer
Benjamin Paul Sykes
William James Symes
Christopher R. ompson
Andrea Marie Toldt
Justin Wallace
Eric John Weiss
Travis J. Weller
Aaron David Werner
Amy Elizabeth Wesner
Chad J. Zimmerman
Valerie A. Zisman
Dean’s Academic Achievement Award
30 GARGOYLE Summer/Fall 2008
N
eil Bjorkman ’07 spent the
year after he graduated as
a clerk on the Supreme
Court of India. James Isaac ’08 was
an intern on Germany’s Federal
Constitutional Court in his third
year of law school.
Both Bjorkman and Isaac made
the most of the rare opportunity
to work on the highest court of
another nation. ey recently took
time to give the Gargoyle a glimpse
into their experiences.
inking globally
By the time Neil Bjorkman, a
native of Minnesota, entered the
Law School in fall 2004, he had
two international work experiences
under his belt. He
had taught for a year
in Guatemala, and
worked in an orphan-
age in India.
As a law student,
he set his sights on
finding a judicial clerk-
ship in India. He looks
back in amusement at
his first steps toward
this goal:
“A contact on the
Supreme Court of
India told me to get
in touch with Profes-
sor Galanter, one of
the big names in
Indian legal scholar-
ship. inking that
Professor Galanter
was at some other
school, I went to look
him up. I didn’t think this was much
of lead. It was obvious that I knew
nothing about Indian law. One
Google search later, I was embar-
rassed to see that Professor Galanter
was right upstairs.”
Marc Galanter, the Law School’s
John and Rylla Bosshard Professor
Emeritus of Law and South Asian
Studies, turned out to be an impor-
tant mentor for Bjorkman.
“From Day One, Professor
Galanter was very enthusiastic about
my interest in India,” Bjorkman
says. “He suggested that I apply
for a clerkship with Justice Dalveer
Bhandari of the Supreme Court.”
Galanter knew Bhandari
personally, having taught him in
a summer school course for In-
dian graduate students. Galanter
also hired Bjorkman to work on a
research project involving India’s
Supreme Court.
Bjorkman was accepted for the
clerkship with Bhandari. His year-
long Supreme Court experience in
Delhi began in fall 2007.
A typical day
When asked what a typical day as a
clerk for the Supreme Court of India
might bring, Bjorkman replies with
a vivid picture. “I wake up, have tea,
go for a run and try to make it back
before my Hindi teacher arrives.
Hindi class lasts an hour. en I call
my co-clerk to see if he’s ready. If he
is, then we share an auto-rickshaw.
“We get to work by nine, on a
good day. Once in the office, it’s like
any other clerkship, for the most
part. Read the file, look up the law,
write it up, discuss with Sir [Justice
Bhandari]. If the case I’m work-
ing on is in Court, I’ll attend the
hearing. But for the most part, we
work out of Sir’s residential office.
We usually leave by eight or nine.
Half the time, we eat dinner in the
compound.”
e clerkship has been a lot
more work than Bjorkman had
imagined. “It is usually a seven-
day work week. It’s been difficult
to maintain this schedule, but the
work is consuming so it’s hard not
to come in; plus, this is the last time
I’ll get to work on these issues in
this capacity. e upside to the long
days is that I took three weeks off
In Foreign Supreme Courts
It is rare for Americans to have the opportunity to work as clerks
or interns on the Supreme Courts of other nations, but two
recent UW law graduates did just that, in India and Germany.
Neil Bjorkman ’07 at the Supreme Court of India
www.law.wisc.edu/alumni GARGOYLE 31
over Christmas and a month over
the summer recess. My wife and I
attended a wedding in Nepal, and I
joined her in ailand at the end of
her backpacking trip.”
(Bjorkman married Teresa
Abraham from India when he was a
2L. Abraham completed her Ph.D.
in cellular and molecular biology at
UW-Madison in 2008.)
Clinics were best preparation
One time when Bjorkman was at
the Court, he had a sudden realiza-
tion. “It hit me that this is the
highest court of the world’s largest
democracy. is probably should
have scared me to death. But I never
thought, ‘What am I doing here?’
e best thing I did in law school
was to participate in clinics — the
Neighborhood Law Project and
Consumer Law Clinic. I worked on
real cases where a lot was on the line
for our clients, so when I joined the
Court I wasn’t scared to pick up a
real case and run with it.”
He pinpoints what he has
found to be a greater challenge.
“e hardest part has been learning
how to distinguish what’s legally
sound from what’s both sound and
palatable to Sir and his Brother
Justices. (At the moment there are
no ‘Sister Justices.’) In law school,
I didn’t think about consensus-
building and compromise as things
to consider when you analyze an
issue. Now I ask myself, ‘Okay, is
this idea technically correct?’ If it
is, then the more difficult ques-
tion is whether others would make
their decision on that basis. And if
they wouldn’t go in that direction,
I ask myself if I should still make
the argument — betting on a loser
because in your heart you think it’s
the right conclusion.”
And what does Bjorkman
consider to be the greatest reward of
this difficult, consuming work? “e
most satisfying part of the job is
handing in really tight work. It takes
a long time to get to that point.”
* * * * *
A Wisconsin connection in
Germany
James Isaac, who graduated in May
2008, worked in the fall of 2007 as
an intern with Germany’s highest
court, the Bundesverfassungsgericht,
or Federal Constitutional Court.
Germany has the equivalent
of two supreme courts, Isaac notes:
one specifically devoted to constitu-
tional issues and the second for all
other issues.
Isaac worked for Justice Brun-
Otto Bryde, who has a strong
Wisconsin connection. Bryde was a
visiting professor at the Law School
in 1989 and 1994, and he returned
to Madison in 2005 to deliver
the university’s annual Mildred
Fish-Harnack Human Rights and
Democracy Lecture.
Language skills, legal training
As Bryde’s intern, Isaac focused on
providing the important services of
a translator. Isaac, who majored in
German and international rela-
tions at UW-Madison, is fluent in
German. He studied in Freiburg on
an exchange program as an under-
graduate, and returned to Germany
as a Fulbright Teaching Assistant in
Dresden for three years before enter-
ing law school.
“My main task was to translate
opinions of the court from German
to English,” Isaac says. “Because
there is a significant interest in Ger-
man high court opinions, especially
in the EU, they publish many of
their opinions in different languages.
e Court has an official translator,
but she regularly seeks out help due
to the large amount of work.”
Isaac recalls that sometimes
Bryde would say about a certain
opinion, “James, this is something
the world would be interested in.”
His work brought him great
satisfaction, Isaac says. “It’s always
gratifying to sit down with some-
thing and eventually see it online or
in print. Even though my name is
not on it, a good number of people
will read it and rely on this transla-
tion of a decision of the Federal
Constitutional Court.”
A welcoming community
As Bryde’s intern, Isaac worked
alongside the Justice’s five law clerks
and had a chance to develop friend-
ships with them. “At lunch time I
would get together with our clerks
and other clerks and we would talk
shop. I learned a lot about how the
Court operates during those hours.”
Isaac participated in “inter-
Court” athletic leagues, often play-
ing soccer, basketball, and tennis.
“It was a good opportunity to get
to know people. I still e-mail with
some of them.”
Together with his work for
Bryde, the personal relationships
that grew out of the experience were
quite memorable for Isaac. “I will
remember just how open they were,
how welcoming they were, and how
they were always sure to make me
feel like a part of the family.” n
James Isaac ’08, center, with four law
clerks at the Federal Constitutional
Court of Germany
32 GARGOYLE Summer/Fall 2008
T
hirty members of the law
faculty and administration
joined Dean Ken Davis in
hosting Milwaukee-area alumni
from a wide range of professional
settings at the Law School’s second
annual Milwaukee Law Day on
May 1, 2008.
Approximately 150 people con-
verged at Pier Wisconsin in down-
town Milwaukee for a high-energy
gathering of legal professionals with
the UW Law School in common.
Several alumni commented on
the welcome opportunity to touch
base with faculty — their own
professors from law school days
and other faculty whose substantive
fields are currently coinciding with
their own.
“e setting was lovely, the
food was great, and the energy was
high,” noted one alum. “A lot of
good communicating was going on.”
ALUMNI ACTIVITIES
Milwaukee Law Day 2008
PAT GOETZINGER (9)
Alumni and faculty at Milwaukee Law Day are (clockwise from top left): Lois and Dean Cady; Professor Stewart Macaulay and
George Whyte (who brought a vintage photo of the old Law School building to donate to the School); recent alumnae (from
left) Jini Rabas, Bridget Domaszek, Notesong Srisopark Thompson, Amanda Gibbs, and Eileen Huie; and Emeritus Director of
Alumni Relations Ed Reisner (left) sharing a laugh with Kim Kodousek.
www.law.wisc.edu/alumni GARGOYLE 33
ALUMNI ACTIVITIES
Clockwise from top left: Barb Ulichny (left) and Christy Brooks; Thomas and Bette Drought and daughter Ellen Drought,
who represents the fourth generation of Droughts to graduate from the Law School; (from left) Krista Buchholz, Meredith
Wilkerson, and Joy Graf; (from left) Jeff Altenberg, Joe Ziebert, Mario Gonzales, and Mark Bensen; and Professor Ralph Cagle
(center) with Mary Scholle and Calvin Malone.
34 GARGOYLE Summer/Fall 2008
ALUMNI ACTIVITIES
U
W Law School graduate
Sheldon B. Lubar ’53 and his
wife Marianne Lubar have received
the highest honor conferred by the
Wisconsin Alumni Association, the
Distinguished Alumni Award.
e name of “Lubar” is known
to many law students, present and
past, through his funding of Lubar
Commons, the Law School’s seventh-
floor faculty library and reception
venue overlooking Bascom Hill.
A member of the Law School’s
Benchers Society, Lubar is also a
1951 graduate of UW-Madison’s
School of Commerce, founder of
the Milwaukee investment firm
Lubar & Co., and a former assistant
secretary for the U.S. Department
of Housing and Urban Develop-
ment. He is a past president of the
UW System’s Board of Regents.
Marianne Lubar has held prominent
roles with several Milwaukee public
institutions.
e couple endowed UW-Mil-
waukee’s Lubar School of Business
and UW-Madison’s Lubar Institute
for the Study of Abrahamic Reli-
gions. In 2007, they were contribu-
tors to the $85 million Wisconsin
Naming Partnership at the Wiscon-
sin School of Business.
e Distinguished Alumni
Award celebrates outstanding
UW-Madison graduates for their
professional achievements, contribu-
tions to society, and support of the
university.
e Lubars and five other re-
cipients of the award were honored
at a public gathering in the Wiscon-
sin Union eater in May.
Abby Sanford
Hired as Director
of Development
Abby Sanford, most recently
the Marketing Operations
Manager for the UW-Madison
Department of Executive
Education, has joined the Law
School as Director of Devel-
opment, based at the UW
Foundation.
Sanford earned a bach-
elor of science degree summa
cum laude from e George
Washington University in
Washington, D.C., majoring in
economics. She went on to earn
a master of arts in economics
at the University of Michigan,
and returned to Washington to
work in numerous capacities as
an analyst and consultant.
Sanford began her new
position in April, succeeding Ann
Flynn, who accepted a position
with a private foundation.
“I am truly excited to be
joining the Law School com-
munity,” Sanford told the law
faculty when she was intro-
duced by Dean Davis. “I look
forward to meeting with alumni
who are thinking about giving
back to the school that was the
foundation of their careers.”
BRENT NICASTRO
Sheldon Lubar ’53 and Marianne Lubar
Receive the Distinguished Alumni Award
BOB RASHID
www.law.wisc.edu/alumni GARGOYLE 35
ALUMNI ACTIVITIES
UW Law School alumni in
Seattle and Portland welcomed
Dean Ken Davis and other
representatives of the school to
their cities on two successive
evenings this April.
e Seattle gathering
on April 23 took place at the
Fairmont Olympic Hotel, in the
heart of the city. Ben Porter ’66
of Porter, Kohli & LeMaster in
Seattle, one of the attendees, later
commented, “It was energizing
and wonderful to have the Dean
come out and do the West Coast
swing. It was also fun to get
together with a lot of people I
see around town who are
Wisconsin alumni.”
Porter added, “It’s always fun,
particularly when you live so far
away from Madison, to have some-
one come and talk about what
is happening in Madison, and
particularly at the Law School.”
e Portland reception was
hosted at the Heathman Hotel,
a downtown landmark, on
April 22. One participant,
Wayne Landsverk ’72, of
Newcomb, Savin, Schwartz &
Landsverk LLP in Portland,
commented, “I enjoyed seeing
a lot of old friends and also
some recent grads, and seeing
Ken; it was a very good event.
We had a nice combination of
people: some who have been out
of school a while, like me, and
some younger people.”
Landsverk added, “Whenever
they want to do it again, we’ll
order nice weather for them.”
Seattle and Portland Alumni Welcome
Law School Delegation
“It was energizing and
wonderful to have the
Dean come out and
do the West Coast
swing. It was also fun
to get together with a
lot of people I see
around town who are
Wisconsin alumni.”
— Ben Porter ’66
A
manda Rockman ’05, an
associate trial judge of the
Ho Chunk nation in Black River
Falls, Wisconsin, has been named
a recipient of the “Forward under
Forty” Award by the Wisconsin
Alumni Association (WAA).
e new award was created to
recognize outstanding young gradu-
ates of the University of Wisconsin
— all under the age of forty — who
are making an impact on the world.
Rockman, who was named to the
Ho Chunk judiciary in 2006, is one
of the youngest judges in America. In
addition to presiding over her own
courtroom, she works with Native
judges across Wisconsin and the U.S.
to create intertribal legal networks and
revive American Indian legal systems.
At the UW Law School,
Rockman was active with the
Indigenous Law Students Associa-
tion (ILSA) in addition to balancing
academic work and family obligations.
As a UW-Madison undergraduate,
she completed a triple major in
anthropology, French, and American
Indian studies, and she returned
to campus to attend the UW Law
School, inspired by the university’s
community atmosphere and seeking
to find the most effective way to
assist the Ho Chunk people.
For more information about
Rockman and other winners of the
Forward under 40 Award, see www.
forwardunder40.com.
Amanda Rockman Receives WAA’s
“Forward under Forty” Award
BOB RASHID
36 GARGOYLE Summer/Fall 2008
Madison native
holds court on TNT
By Doug Moe
Wisconsin State Journal
You might call Madison native
David Feige an accidental tourist in
show business.
Feige, 42, whose new TV series,
“Raising the Bar,” premieres Sept.
1 on TNT, had been working as a
public defender in New York City
for several years before he began an
online diary about it for Slate.
Feige’s writing ability and the
gritty subject matter — alternately
harrowing and hilarious — caught
the eye of a rising literary agent,
Tina Bennett, who asked Feige
to lunch.
She didn’t have to ask twice.
“Lunch?” Feige was recalling this
week. “We didn’t really do lunch.”
By “we” Feige was referring to
the staff of the Bronx Defenders, an
office of thirty public defenders in
a New York borough that was not
short on indigent defendants.
Feige, a 1983 Madison Memo-
rial graduate who got his law degree
at UW-Madison, met Bennett,
the agent, at the Four Seasons, a
restaurant not targeted at those on a
public defender’s salary.
Feige looked at the menu and
blanched.
Bennett said, “David, this is
how it works. I’m the agent. Lunch
is on me.”
Feige ordered a $28 lobster
salad sandwich. He recalled, “It re-
mains the most expensive sandwich
I have ever eaten.”
e big-time lunch at the Four
Seasons had an unusual conclusion,
however — especially for someone
who has a new TV series debuting
on Labor Day.
e lunch ended with Feige
saying thanks, but no thanks,
when Bennett — who would help
shepherd Seabiscuit and e Tipping
Point to best-seller land — suggested
he write a book about being a public
defender in the Bronx.
“I don’t think I’m capable,”
Feige said. “Besides, I’m a public
defender.”
Feige wasn’t being coy — he
loved being a public defender.
“Whatever else I do,” he told
me, “I will never again have a job
that great. A job so unbelievably
rewarding, difficult, and righteous.”
Even though he is now a profes-
sor of law at Seton Hall in New
Jersey — as well as a TV writer and
producer — Feige in conversation
sometimes slips and speaks as if he is
still a public defender.
“Our clients become our clients,”
he said, “after every other aspect of
the system has failed them.”
Feige’s father, Ed Feige, is an
emeritus professor of economics at
UW-Madison and still lives in the
house on the West Side that David
grew up in. David got his undergrad
degree at the University of Chicago,
then came back to Madison for
law school. When he returns today,
like everyone who has been away,
he shakes his head at the growth,
especially on the Far West Side.
A few years after that Four Sea-
sons lunch, Feige decided he might
be ready to write a book after all. He
had written well-received magazine
pieces, including one for e New
York Times Magazine titled “How
to Defend Someone You Know Is
Guilty.”
Feige got back in touch with
Bennett, and after an advance that
allowed him to take a year off work,
the result was 2006’s Indefensible:
One Lawyer’s Journey Into the Inferno
of American Justice, published by
Little, Brown.
“Every day was a battle,” Feige
wrote early in Indefensible, and while
CLASS NOTES
For David Feige ’91, Public Defender Work Leads to TV Writing
A public defender in e Bronx
for 15 years, Law School alum
David Feige ’91 is the author
of the widely-praised memoir
Indefensible: One Lawyer’s Journey
Into the Inferno of American
Justice (Little, Brown & Co.,
2006). Feige is currently
Professor of Law and Director
of Advocacy Programs at Seton
Hall Law School. is August
20, 2008, column is reprinted
with permission of the Wiscon-
sin State Journal and columnist
Doug Moe.
www.law.wisc.edu/alumni GARGOYLE 37
CLASS NOTES
the book was well-reviewed, the
court battles didn’t all end with pub-
lication. Feige had named names,
and some in the New York criminal
justice system were not happy.
“I got sued,” Feige said.
“Utterly frivolous lawsuits. All
were dismissed.”
A Hollywood star had expressed
interest in the book, but Feige
thought he knew the one guy in
show business who could get the
story right: Steven Bochco, whose
daunting pedigree includes classic
shows like “Hill Street Blues,”
“L.A. Law” and “NYPD Blue.”
“He’s the only person in Holly-
wood I sent the book to,” Feige said.
Some might compare sending
a book to someone of Bochco’s
stature to putting a note in a bottle
and throwing it into the ocean, but
Feige’s luck held, at least in part.
Bochco liked the book very much;
he just wasn’t sure there was a TV
series in it. ey talked, and then
they talked some more. e pro-
ducer couldn’t help but be impressed
with the younger man’s passion.
In the end, Bochco and Feige
agreed to work together, and came
up with the idea for a series set in
an urban courthouse that focuses on
both public defenders and prosecu-
tors — friends and adversaries bat-
tling inside a flawed system.
Feige wrote the pilot — which
will air Sept. 1 — as well as three
others of the ten episodes that
make up season one. e series stars
Mark-Paul Gosselaar as an idealistic
public defender and UW-Madison
grad Jane Kaczmarek as an imperi-
ous judge.
Feige, back teaching the fall
semester at Seton Hall, will watch
with the rest of the country, and
then he will check the ratings. If
they’re good, maybe he’ll drive into
the city and celebrate with a lobster
salad sandwich. n
Bruce Kerr ’72
William K. Fahey ’77
James D. Babbitt ’79
Ave M. Bie ’90
Jeffrey B. Bartell ’68
1950s
Herbert H. Fisher ’52 of Herbert H.
Fisher Law Office, P.C., in Chicago, this
year celebrated his 57th anniversary
as a practicing lawyer, all but 14 years
as a sole practitioner. His practice has
included bankruptcy, litigation, real
estate, and the creation and represen-
tation of housing cooperatives.
1960s
Jeffrey B. Bartell ’68, a partner with
Quarles & Brady who opened the
firm’s Madison office in 1983, received
the Charles L. Goldberg Distinguished
Service Award at the Wisconsin State
Bar Convention in May 2008.
1970s
Bruce Kerr ’72 has been promoted to
Assistant General Counsel of Sun Mi-
crosystems in Santa Clara, California.
Fran Ulmer ’72 has been named
Chancellor of the University of Alaska-
Anchorage (UAA). She had been
serving as Interim Chancellor for the
past year, and previously was head of
UAA’s Institute of Social and Economic
Research.
Paul Wickham Schmidt ’73, U.S.
Immigration Judge, Arlington, Virginia,
presented the keynote address, “Wel-
come to the Breakfast Club: Immigra-
tion Policy and Its Impact on Education
Policy,” at the Eighth Annual Lan-
guage, Culture, and Education Institute
of the UW-Oshkosh in March 2008.
Jim Seiler ’73, Chief Administrative
Law Judge, Office of Adjudication-So-
cial Security, in Creve Coeur, Missouri,
placed second in the 200-meter and
third in the 100-meter race at the
2007 Masters National Track and Field
Championships.
William K. Fahey ’77 has announced
the new firm of Fahey Schultz Burzych
Rhodes PLC in the mid-Michigan area.
The firm focuses on private and public
sector clientele centered on the use of
green technology.
James D. Babbitt ’79 has been
elected judge of the newly-created
Barron County Circuit Court, Branch 3.
After 27 years as a prosecutor, Babbitt
took the bench August 1.
Claire Ann Resop ’93
Steven J. Kemps ’91
Eric S. Jackson ’93
Julie Short ’93
Timothy F. Nixon ’90
38 GARGOYLE Summer/Fall 2008
Stephanie A. Lyons ’95
Jonathan T. Levy ’95
Peter J. Manghera ’94
Terry Moen ’96
Jonathan Klem ’00
1980s
Kimberlé Crenshaw, LL.M. ’85, is one of
four scholars nationwide (two from the UW
Law School) to receive a 2008 Fletcher
Fellowship, recognizing work to improve
racial equality. Crenshaw is a Professor of
Law at UCLA and Columbia Law Schools.
Scott C. Beightol ’88, a partner in the
Labor and Employment Relations Group
at Michael Best & Friedrich LLP, has been
elected Chair of the firm’s Management
Committee.
Ann Marie Hanrahan ’88, Assistant
General Counsel at 3M in St. Paul, Min-
nesota, has been elected to the American
Law Institute.
Joel P. Leonard ’88 has joined Elliott,
Ostrander & Preston, P.C., in Portland,
Oregon, as a shareholder. Leonard focuses
his practice on health law and business
litigation.
1990s
Ave M. Bie ’90, a partner with the Madi-
son office of Quarles & Brady LLP, has
been appointed to the Wisconsin Attorney
General’s Crime Victims Council.
Timothy F. Nixon ’90, a shareholder and
team leader of the Business Finance and
Restructuring Practice Group at Godfrey &
Kahn, S.C. in Green Bay, has co-authored
The Increase in Prepackaged Chapter 11s
(Aspatore Books, Boston).
Ken Driggs, LL.M. ’91, is the author
of the nonfiction book, Evil Among Us:
The Texas Mormon Missionary Murders.
Driggs has written extensively on Mormon
fundamentalism.
Steven J. Kemps ’91 has been promoted
to Executive Vice President, General
Counsel, and Corporate Secretary of Dean
Foods Company.
Eric S. Jackson ’93 has joined Jenner &
Block as a partner in the firm’s Washing-
ton, D.C., office, with a focus on litigating
intellectual property, commercial, and
employment cases. Jackson is Co-Director
of the Law School’s LEO Enrichment Fund.
Claire Ann Resop ’93 has joined von
Briesen & Roper, S.C. in Milwaukee as a
shareholder. Resop concentrates her prac-
tice on bankruptcy, real estate, and com-
mercial, collection, and claim litigation.
Julie Short ’93, of Cullen Weston Pines &
Bach, was recognized by the State Bar of
Wisconsin for her pro bono service over
the past year.
Ben Weinberger ’93 has been named
Chief Information Officer for Lathrop &
Gage L.C. in Kansas City. His previous
positions include Director of Information
Technology for the Los Angeles City At-
torney’s Office.
Peter J. Manghera ’94 has joined the
Intellectual Property Group at DeWitt Ross
& Stevens in its Madison office. Manghera
holds a bachelor of science degree in
electrical engineering.
Nancy Noet ’94 has been named an As-
sistant Attorney General by the Wisconsin
Department of Justice. For the past six
years Noet has been an Assistant District
Attorney with the Milwaukee County
District Attorney’s Office.
Jonathan T. Levy ’95, a partner with
Rosenthal, Levy & Simon, P.A., in West
Palm Beach, Florida, has been elected
Treasurer of the Board of Directors of the
Palm Beach County Justice Association.
Stephanie A. Lyons ’95 has joined the
Law Department of Northwestern Mutual
Life Insurance Company in Milwaukee
as an Assistant General Counsel and
Assistant Secretary on the Real Estate
Investment Team.
Jennifer Kopps-Wagner ’96 has been
named Senior Vice President and General
Counsel of Milwaukee-based Assurant
Health. Most recently Kopps-Wagner was
the company’s Vice President for the legal
department.
Terry Moen ’96 received the Wisconsin
Safety Council’s Lifetime Achievement
Award in April 2008. Moen is Industrial
Hygiene Supervisor at the Wisconsin State
Laboratory of Hygiene.
Joshua A. Blakely ’98 and Karin J.
Wagner ’98 have formed the Brookfield,
Wisconsin, firm of Blakely & Wagner, S.C.
Wagner and Blakely focus their practice
on estate planning, probate and trust
administration, and corporate law.
David W. Maas ’98, has been named an
Assistant Attorney General by the Wis-
consin Department of Justice. Previously
Maas was a prosecutor with the Milwau-
kee County District Attorney’s Office for
nine years.
Wendy D. Calvert ’99 is President Elect of
the Nonresident Lawyers Division (NRLD)
of the Wisconsin State Bar. She will begin
her term as President of the NRLD in July
2009.
Sheldon L. Wolfe ’99, a member of the
Intellectual Property Practice Group at
Michael Best & Friedrich LLP in Milwau-
kee, has been elected to partnership with
the firm.
2000s
Joseph Ganzer ’00 has been named an
Assistant Attorney General for the State of
Wisconsin, working in the Civil Litigation
unit. Previously he was in private practice
with Hodan, Doster & Ganzer in Milwaukee.
Jonathan Klem ’00 has joined Coun-
try Club Bank as a Vice President and
Financial Center Manager for two bank
locations in Kansas City.
Stacy L. Leeds, LL.M. ’00, is one of four
scholars nationwide (two from the UW
Law School) to receive a 2008 Fletcher
Fellowship, recognizing work to improve
racial equality. Leeds is a Professor at the
University of Kansas School of Law and a
Justice of the Cherokee Nation Supreme
Court.
Steven P. Lipowski ’00 has been
promoted to shareholder at Ruder Ware,
L.L.S.C. in Wausau, Wisconsin. Lipowski
focuses his practice on complex business
transactions.
Edward J. Pardon ’00, M.D., has been
elected to partnership with Michael Best
& Friedrich LLP in Milwaukee. He is a
member of the firm’s Litigation and Health
Care Practice Groups.
Monica Riederer ’01, a member of the
Litigation Practice Group at Michael Best
& Friedrich LLP in Milwaukee, has been
elected a partner of the firm.
CLASS NOTES
www.law.wisc.edu/alumni GARGOYLE 39
CLASS NOTES
John J. Emanuele ’02
Megan A. Senatori ’01
Jordan K. Lamb ’02
Michelle D. (Wehnes)
Johnson ’03
Steven P. Lipowski ’00
Lee M. Seese ’01, a member of the Mi-
chael Best & Friedrich Litigation Practice
Group in Milwaukee, has been elected to
partnership with the firm.
Wendy M. Seffrood ’01 has been elected
a partner of Michael Best & Friedrich LLP
in Milwaukee. She is a member of the
firm’s Intellectual Property Practice Group.
Megan A. Senatori ’01 has been named
a partner at the Madison office of DeWitt
Ross & Stevens, S.C. Senatori concen-
trates her practice on complex civil litiga-
tion and appeals.
Ted A. Wisnefski ’01, a trial lawyer and
member of the Litigation Practice Group
at Michael Best & Friedrich LLP, has been
elected a partner with the firm.
John J. Emanuele ’02 has joined the
Indianapolis-based firm of Bose McKinney
& Evans LLP. Emanuele, who holds a Ph.D.
in biochemistry and biophysics, will be of
counsel with the firm.
Ruben J. Garcia, LL.M. ’02, has been
granted tenure at California Western Law
School by a vote of the law faculty. Garcia
was a William H. Hastie Fellow at the UW
Law School.
Jordan K. Lamb ’02 has been named
a partner at DeWitt Ross & Stevens in
Madison. Lamb concentrates her practice
on government relations, environmental,
and administrative law.
Michelle D. (Wehnes) Johnson ’03 has
been promoted to shareholder at Simpson
& Deardoff, S.C. in Milwaukee. Johnson
specializes in insurance defense litigation.
Gottlieb John Marmet ’04 has joined
von Briesen & Roper, S.C., in Milwaukee,
as a member of the Litigation and Risk
Management Practice Group.
Rachel C. Steiner ’04 has been appointed
law clerk to the Hon. Elaine Bucklo, U.S.
District Judge for the Northern District of
Illinois, in Chicago.
Daniel J. Noonan ’06 has joined von
Briesen & Roper, S.C., in Milwaukee, as a
member of the firm’s Litigation and Risk
Management Practice Group.
Douglas A. Dallmann ’07 has joined
Klarquist Sparkman, LLP, in the firm’s
Portland, Oregon, office. Dallmann holds
bachelors and master’s degrees in electri-
cal engineering.
Amanda E. Prutzman ’07 has joined
Messerli & Kramer P.A. in Minneapolis,
working in the firm’s Collections Group.
Michael E. Ahrens ’08 has joined Ruder
Ware, L.L.S.C., in the firm’s Trusts, Estates
& Family Business Planning Practice Group.
Please stay in touch! Send your news to
Jini Rabas, Director of Alumni Relations,
Douglas A. Dallmann ’07
Daniel J. Noonan ’06
Gottlieb John Marmet ’04 Michael E. Ahrens ’08
Law School Remembers
Professor August Eckhardt
August Gottlieb Eckhardt ’46, an alum who
taught at the Law School from 1954 to 1972, died
in April in Tucson. A native of Sylvan, Wiscon-
sin, Eckhardt returned to Wisconsin after service
in the U.S. Navy in World War II. He practiced
law and taught in Wisconsin for 18 years, then
accepted a position at the University of Arizona
College of Law in Tucson, where he taught until
his retirement in 1989.
Eckhardt was the author of Eckhardt’s Work-
book for Wisconsin Estate Planners in 1961 and A
Model for Continuing Legal Education: Structure,
Methods, and Curriculum in 1980. His passion
in later years was World Peace rough Law, for
which he strived both personally and professionally.
For the last several years, Eckhardt and his
wife of 65 years, Catherine, were residents of
Amber Lights Retirement Community in Tucson.
Preceded in death by his wife, Eckhardt is survived
by children, James and Patricia Eckhardt.
John E. Forester ’36
Joseph R. Pfiffner ’40
Douglas H. Soutar ’44
August G. Eckhardt ’46
Roland B. Day ’47
Robert Jenkins ’49
Allen H. McMurry ’50
Hugh Ross, Sr. ’50
Robert D. Hevey ’51
Robert William Lutz ’51
Roy M. Mersky ’52
Robert M. LaFollette III ’53
Carl Laumann Jr. ’53
Duane P. Schumacher ’61
Robert M. McCormick ’62
Basil C. Anagnos ’63
John Paul Koberstein ’65
Victor Moyer ’69
Ronald E. Laitsch ’70
Eric F. Stutz ’70
James C. Kitelinger ’72
Paul A. Brady ’79
James W. Amos ’80
Mary Alice Coan ’80
Allen L. Spiker ’83
Curt J. Whitenack ’91
In Memoriam
40 GARGOYLE Summer/Fall 2008
Designated Pitcher
At the annual Cane Toss in Fall 1974, law students display their flair for creative
thinking and team problem-solving. Whether all participants in the group effort
won their first case is not known. e photograph was taken for the Wisconsin
State Journal by L. Rodger Turner.
PHOTO FINISH
Use the Alumni Directory at www.uwalumni.com to find
“lost” classmates and make sure they can find you.
Just a few minutes on the Web to update your contact information will ensure that
you keep receiving the Gargoyle and our newsletter, Law in Action.
Remember to include your e-mail address for valuable UW-Madison information
throughout the year.
Law School friendships
— too valuable to lose. Make sure you stay in touch.
EMPIRE PHOTOGRAPHY
Nonprofit Org.
U.S. Postage
PAID
Madison, WI
Permit No. 658
975 Bascom Mall • Madison, WI 53706-1399
WOLFGANG HOFFMANN
n 2008 Kastenmeier Lecture:
“Economic Injustice”
Speaker: The Hon. David Obey
Monday, October 13, 2008
Godfrey & Kahn Hall (Room 2260)
Contact: [email protected]
n 2008 Law Review Symposium:
“The Continuing Evolution of
Securities Class Actions”
Friday, October 17, 2008
Edgewater Hotel, Madison
Contact: [email protected]
n Interdisciplinary Conference:
“The Weimar Moment”
October 24-26, 2008
Pyle Center, UW-Madison
Contact: [email protected]
n Board of Visitors Meeting
November 6-7, 2008
Lubar Commons (Room 7200)
Contact: [email protected]
n Benchers Society
Annual Dinner
Friday, November 7, 2008
Quarles & Brady Reading Room
Contact: [email protected]
Save the Date
