Frances Isbell, a third-year law student, has been named one of 25 Law Students of the Year by National Jurist magazine.
Isbell received the honor because she was one of 16 graduate students of the inaugural class of the Albert Schweitzer Fellows at University of Alabama School of Law. She’s using her fellowship to help and provide resources to those living with a disability in Alabama. She’s doing so big time.
The fellows, all from Alabama colleges and universities, receive $2,500 and spend an academic year learning how to effectively address the social factors that affect health, while developing lifelong leadership skills. As part of her fellowship, Isbell has donated more than 120 volunteer hours, and she will donate at least 80 more volunteer hours by the time her fellowship ends in 2017.
As part of her fellowship, Isbell organized an Alabama chapter of NMD United, a non-profit association composed of adults living with neuromuscular disabilities that provides resources to promote independence. She created a support network for teens and adults with neuromuscular conditions, such as Spinal Muscular Atrophy and Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy. And she created and distributed informational packets for managing personal assistance services.
With the help of the University Center of Excellence on Developmental Disabilities in Birmingham, she produced a 30-minute video about self-advocacy, and it covers such topics as how to gain access to transportation and housing.
“Frances came to law school with a passion for disability rights law, and she has pursued this passion from day one,” said Glory McLaughlin, assistant dean for Public Interest. “Due to her dedication to this area of law, she is uniquely suited to recognize the most pressing needs of people living with disabilities and to create effective programs for meeting those needs.”
Isbell is organizing financial planning workshops for individuals with disabilities in 2017 so that they can learn about the Achieving a Better Life Experience Act, or the ABLE Act. “It’s really going to impact the disability community in the next few years, so I want to do an outreach project because most people haven’t even heard of the accounts,” Isbell said.
Projects like Isbell’s provide a much-needed resource to an underserved community. Individuals with neuromuscular conditions often face challenges in everyday activities, including transportation, voting, finding housing and applying for Social Security.
For more, read “2017 Law Students of the Year.”
The University of Alabama School of Law is ranked 26th among the nation’s top law schools, both public and private, according to U.S. News & World Report’s annual “Best Graduate Schools” rankings for 2018.
The U.S. News rankings of 197 law schools fully accredited by the American Bar Association are based on a weighted average of the 12 measures of quality, including a peer assessment score and an assessment score by lawyers and judges. Data were collected in fall 2016 and early 2017.
Professor William Andreen is quoted in Circle of Blue about President Trump’s call for two federal agencies to review the Clean Water Act.
For more, read “Clean Water Rule Repeal Cannot Come at a Pen Stroke.”
Keith Norman (’81) has excelled at service-oriented leadership.
For 23 years, he has been the Executive Director of the Alabama State Bar, the licensing and regulatory authority for more than 18,000 lawyers. There, he manages 45 employees and administers licensing, admissions, discipline and continuing legal education.
In June, Norman will retire from the position and leave the organization under the leadership of Birmingham lawyer Phillip McCallum, a past president of the state bar.
“Being executive director for as long as I have, it’s always good to not wear out your welcome or stay too long,” Norman said. “You need to have new leadership come in.”
Prior to joining the bar as Director of Programs in 1988, Norman practiced defense litigation, Alabama real estate, commercial arbitration and appellate advocacy at Balch & Bingham LLP in Montgomery.
He was only the third executive director for the state bar in the organization’s 67-year history. Continuity has been a valued feature of the bar’s success, and the lengthy tenure of the executive directors proves the position seeks the person more than the person seeks the position, Norman said.
When he reflects on his time leading the bar, he doesn’t point to any one accomplishment, and he certainly doesn’t take all of the credit as he worked with a staff to ensure Alabama has one of the best bar associations in the country.
“It’s never one person. It’s like Tom Brady and the Patriots,” he said, referring to the 2017 Super Bowl champions. “Tom Brady did a lot to bring that team from behind, but he couldn’t have done it without the offensive line, receivers. Tom Brady may have been the MVP, and perhaps deservedly so, but there were a lot of teammates who contributed to the success of the team.”
Bob McCurley (‘66), who was the Director of the Alabama Law Institute for 36 years, said Norman has contributed to the success of the Alabama bar and the Alabama Law Institute.
“Fifteen years ago, when the very presence of the law institute office was challenged, Keith and the Bar met the challenge,” McCurley said. “As a result, the institute soared to new heights, expanded its facilities and expanded its service. Keith is the epitome of a leader: goal-oriented, with a sense of urgency, and not afraid to fail.”
Norman mastered a multi-faceted position, one that required him to work with state legislators, bar organizations on the national level, as well as run the state bar effectively. During his tenure, he saw growth in the bar when the legal profession changed significantly, said Dave Boyd (‘76), a partner at Balch & Bingham.
“You’ve got to have your eye on the ball all the time to run the organization but at the same time be nimble enough and flexible enough to deal with a new bar president every year,” Boyd said. “Keith has been a master of that.”
Lawyers, Norman said, have a head start when it comes to servant leadership because they serve clients’ needs and have a duty to represent those who may not be able to afford the services of a lawyer.
“This organization, by its very nature and purpose, is a service organization,” he said. “It was only a short stop for me from being a lawyer to heading up the Alabama State Bar.”
As a child, Norman first witnessed servant leadership growing up in Opelika. He saw it in the late Yetta G. Samford, Jr. (‘49) as he helped others solve legal problems. Norman always looked up to Sanford and decided he, too, would pursue a legal career. After a stint a Duke University, he returned to Alabama for law school.
He was in the first class to start and finish in the newly built law center. He didn’t have the pleasure of taking a course in Farrah Hall, but he visited the law school when it was still housed there in the fall of 1977. If there had been any question about returning to Alabama for law school, one individual put an end to it. While visiting the campus, he and a friend went to talk with University of Alabama President David Mathews.
“And lo and behold who should walk through the door but coach Bryant,” said Norman, who had grown up as an Auburn University football fan. “I was amazed at one, how big he was – because you don’t get the full flavor on TV – and two, how big his hands were.”
Coach Paul “Bear” Bryant spoke 10 words Norman will never forget: “You need to come home to the University of Alabama.”
While at UA Law, Norman said he received a stellar education and can’t imagine he could have had better professors than John C. Payne, Harry Cohen, Larry W. Yackle, Dean Nathaniel Hansford and many others.
At the time, some of them seemed ancient to Norman, like they had been around when the laws were written. “They really knew how to make you think like a lawyer,” he said. “That’s one of the reasons the first year of law school is not very fun. It’s because they’re teaching you how to think like a lawyer.”
Professor Montre’ D. Carodine was the featured speaker for Alabama State University’s annual Distinguished Lecture Series on Sunday, March 5.
Carodine addressed the theme, “The Continuing Search for Human and Civil Rights in America: The Law, Race and Justice.”
“These are tough times, so the topic is a timely one,” Carodine said. “These are hostile times for people of color in America, and anyone else who has been ‘othered’ by society. Perhaps it has always been true since this country’s inception, but I think that there is a feeling of heightened hostility as of late.”
For more, read “Distinguished Lecture Series: ‘Human and Civil Rights.'”
Today the Public Interest Institute held its fourth annual Career Fair at the law school. Public interest organizations and government agencies from around the state spent the day talking with students and conducting interviews for summer internships. This year, 30 employers registered and more than 60 students participated in interviews and table talks. Participating organizations included public defenders and prosecutors’ offices, legal services agencies, environmental organizations, civil rights groups, public policy advocacy organizations, and agencies working on behalf of domestic violence victims, people with disabilities, people living with HIV/AIDS, immigrants and low-wage workers.
The Jessup International Law Moot Court team traveled to New Orleans this past weekend to compete in the regional rounds.
David Morton (’17 ), Liesel Carmen-Burks (’17), James Artzer (’17 ), Hannah McGee (’17 ) and Reid Harris (’17) made a strong showing, progressing to the quarterfinal rounds before being eliminated.
They won a top memorial award, and a personal oralist award for Harris. Professor Dan Joyner said he is very proud of the team members and the work they’ve done to achieve this successful result.
Joyner said he appreciated Professor Cameron Fogle for his help this year. Fogle’s assistance in the oralist practice rounds was invaluable, and he also kindly agreed – selflessly and with no thought for the pleasures of the venue – to accompany the team to New Orleans.
Some of the nation’s foremost experts on the intersection of law and literature discussed the moral significance of Harper Lee’s novels Friday, March 3, at The University of Alabama School of Law.
The occasion was a symposium on The Legacy of To Kill a Mockingbird: Advocacy in an Unjust Society. The conference explored the life and legacy of Harper Lee, how literature can influence social change and how lawyers should practice law in an unjust society.
Among the participants was John Grisham, author and two-time winner of the Harper Lee Prize for Legal Fiction. Mr. Grisham spoke about “Enacting Social Change through Literature.”
Grisham has been asked over the years to compare his debut novel to Lee’s work. Grisham’s A Time to Kill tells the story of a white lawyer defending a black man in Mississippi, while Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird is about a white lawyer defending a black man in Alabama. Despite these structural similarities, Grisham said the books are quite different.
“When I wrote A Time to Kill, I was not thinking about To Kill a Mockingbird. I didn’t see a parallel,” Grisham said. “Read the first chapter of A Time to Kill, and you will realize this is a very different book than the first chapter of To Kill a Mockingbird.”
Grisham, the author of more than 35 books, said he plans to continue to write books about legal issues he would like to address, including sentencing disparities, student debt linked to for-profit law schools, Guantanamo Bay, for profit prisons, sexual abuse of women in prisons and cyber crime.
There are “so many stories to tell, so many issues to expose, so much injustice to explore,” he said. “I just turned 62. I just hope I have the time.”
Earlier, Alabama Historian Wayne Flynt provided a glimpse into Lee’s life. He painted a portrait of a woman with a sharp wit, one who knew the lines of King Lear by heart and recited them during a performance at the Alabama Shakespeare Festival, one who owned the complete works of C.S. Lewis, one who had a depth of knowledge about the law and the Bible.
Teachers around the world have been assigning Lee’s book to their students since its publication in 1960 to study ethical and moral matters, he said.
“I’ve long argued that the novel itself, and the movie that resulted from it, made that piece of literature the most unifying, single icon in American popular culture,” Flynt said. “Although Americans disagree about the values of the book and the meaning of book and the nobility of the characters in the book, I have never lectured anywhere where I had to explain the plot of To Kill a Mockingbird.”
Flynt will publish Mockingbird Songs: My Friendship with Harper Lee in May. The book is based on letters he and Lee exchanged for more than 25 years. In those letters, they traded stories and opinions on topics that were both personal and professional. They wrote about their families, books, Alabama history and social values, and health concerns.
“The secret to our relationship is I never treated her like a marble statue,” Flynt said. “She, after all, was a real live human being.”
Presenters at the symposium were:
Robert Atkinson, Florida State University College of Law
Devon Carbado, UCLA School of Law
Jenny Carroll, The University of Alabama School of Law
Judy Cornett, University of Tennessee College of Law
Wayne Flynt, author, historian, and professor emeritus at Auburn University
Richard McAdams, University of Chicago Law School
Anil Mujumdar, partner, Zarzaur, Mujumdar & Debrosse
Moriah S. Smoot (’19) has been selected as the 2017 recipient of the Donald W. Banner Diversity Scholarship for law students.
The scholarship, awarded by national intellectual property firm Banner & Witcoff, Ltd., will provide Smoot with $5,000 for her upcoming fall semester of law school. The scholarship is open to all law students who are members of a minority group, including any group traditionally underrepresented in the field of intellectual property law. Recipients must also be enrolled in an ABA-accredited law school, committed to pursuing a career in intellectual property law, and demonstrate leadership qualities and community involvement.
Smoot, who received a bachelor’s degree, magna cum laude, in materials and metallurgical engineering at The University of Alabama, has always been fascinated with inventions and how things are made. This prestigious scholarship will enable her to further this curiosity.
“The Donald W. Banner Diversity Scholarship will provide me with added financial security as I pursue my goal of becoming a patent attorney,” Smoot said. “Upon completion of my Juris Doctorate degree, I would like to use my knowledge and training in engineering, medicine, and law to directly impact the design of biomaterials, medical devices, and advanced technologies that will be used to improve global health.”
Smoot’s desire to make an impact in this field caused her application to stand out among the rest.
“Banner & Witcoff is thrilled to reward Moriah’s commitment to engineering and the law, and her desire to blend her experience in both of these fields by practicing in intellectual property law,” said Banner & Witcoff President Charles L. Miller. “We wish her continued success in law school and her future career.”
Magda Brown’s family lost their jobs, their homes and their freedom. Then they lost each other.
Brown recounted at the University of Alabama School of Law how she survived the Holocaust and how her parents were sent to the gas chambers.
She had lived a normal life, until the laws in Hungary began to strip away her family’s liberty. They were forced from their home to walk to a brickyard, which was adjacent to a set of railroad tracks. They were told the families would stay together. Brown calls it the “lie of all lies of the 20th century.”
“Think about that,” she said. “We had absolutely nothing else. No materials whatsoever, but we had our family. So, with that we go like the sheep to the gallows without any resistance.”
On June 11, 1944 — her 17th birthday — Brown and her family were crowded onto a railroad box car with 75 to 80 other people and traveled for three days without food, water or any idea about where they were going.
“I stood for three solid days, shifting one inch this way, one inch that way.”
When the box car stopped and the door opened, she was at the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp in Poland, and she never saw her mother and father again.
Brown urged members of the audience to protect their freedom, understand that the crematoria and gas chambers were real and to think about hatred.
“I want you to think very seriously about hatred, because all genocide stems from hatred,” she said. “I am not telling you to hate or not to hate. That is entirely up to your conscience. I am only asking you to think about it.”
Brown’s talk was sponsored by the Jewish Law Students Association and the National Association of Women MBAs.
