Jason Keller – Page 5 – University of Baltimore School of Law Magazine

All in the Family: Generations of Alumni Answer the Question, Why UB?

Posted on October 29, 2020September 10, 2024 by Jason Keller in Features

Retired Judge Richard O. Motsay, J.D. ’52, didn’t know he was starting a dynasty when he graduated from UB Law 68 years ago.

For starters, four of his eight surviving children earned their law degrees at UB. And it didn’t stop there. The latest Motsay to graduate from UB Law is his grandson, Philip Motsay, J.D. ’16.

While the Motsays aren’t alone among multi-generational families of UB Law alumni, they lead the pack at three generations.

How does the judge, now 95, explain it?

“I wanted to be a lawyer since I was in third grade,” says Judge Motsay, who retired from the District Court of Maryland for Baltimore City in 1995 (and continued sitting in senior judge status until 2013). “I guess the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. I took my children to the various jobs I held, and we’d talk about it at dinner while eating spaghetti and meatballs.”

The judge’s oldest daughter was the first to follow in her father’s footsteps.

“When I was in college I helped him in the State’s Attorney’s Office, interviewing women held in pretrial detention,” says Rosemary Motsay Ranier, J.D. ’76.

Like her father, Ranier attended law school at night while working full-time as a law clerk in the Maryland Office of the Public Defender. After passing the bar, she served as an assistant public defender until retiring last year.

James W. Motsay, J.D. ’81, an independent administrative law judge in Baltimore, was the next family member. “I’d say, what choice do I have?” he quips. “I was never pushed by my dad. But he did say to consider it.”

Not that he needed a push. “I had been a deputy clerk in the city courthouse before law school. All the attorneys said to hire a UB graduate as a trial lawyer. And I wanted to do trial work.”

The third generation, Philip Motsay, J.D. ’16, is an assistant state’s attorney in Baltimore County. While growing up, his plans never included following in his father’s and grandfather’s footsteps.

“After graduating from college, I was looking for something that would give me multiple career opportunities and decided on law school,” Philip Motsay says. “I applied to UB first — after all, it’s a family tradition. But before I could send applications to other law schools, I got accepted. So I figured, this is the place to go.”

MEET THE MOTSAYS

The Motsay clan’s devotion to the University of Baltimore goes beyond the law school. Here’s the complete list, including other family members who went to UB and earned different degrees.

Judge Richard Motsay, J.D. ’52
Rosemary Motsay Ranier, J.D. ’76
James Motsay, J.D. ’81
Sharon Tobin, J.D. ’88
Patrick Motsay, J.D. ’89
Philip Motsay, J.D. ’16
Lucy Rutishauser, MBA ’87
Joan Brown, MBA ’91
James P. Motsay, B.A. ’10

Other alumni families shared similar reasons for choosing to carry on the UB Law tradition.

Marilyn Harris-Davis, J.D. ’83, has worked as a Baltimore media and political strategist since earning her law degree. “UB has always been service-oriented,” she says. “It’s where I came to understand the importance of legislation.”

From working on the political campaigns of retired U.S. Sen. Barbara Mikulski and former Baltimore Mayor

(and later Governor) Martin O’Malley, Harris-Davis served in roles as varied as legislative aide, director of Baltimore’s Office of Cable and Communications, and director of the State Office of Cemetery Oversight.

“It’s the nature of service that I learned at UB Law,” Harris-Davis says. “My son Marrio and I both went to Friends School, so we had a service-oriented mentality. But I always told him, you can’t go to law school for me. You need your own reasons.”

Her son, however, had been indoctrinated in politics, starting when he and his older brother were carried on their mother’s hip during political campaigns, Harris-Davis says. Law school was a natural choice. But which one?

“The fact that I’m from Baltimore, live in Baltimore, and my parents are from Baltimore is the reason I chose UB,” Marrio Davis, J.D. ’19, says. “It was also a draw that my mother went there.”

He now works at the Baltimore County state’s attorney’s office while waiting for his bar exam results.

‘A Sense That I Belonged’

Margaret A. Mead, J.D. ’89, was 29, a mother of two and married to an Air Force officer when she began applying to law schools.

“I felt like I fit in better at UB,” Mead says. “There was a sense of camaraderie, not cut-throat competitiveness. I had a sense that I belonged.”

Her law school experience also instilled an awareness of right and wrong, which launched her career as a criminal defense attorney.

“I love the practice of law,” says Mead. “I don’t know that I would have had the success I’ve had if it weren’t for UB — especially Professor Byron Warnken. He helped me get my first clerkship that led to so many other things.”

Her son, Brandon Mead, J.D. ’09, is a partner in his mother’s criminal defense firm.

“Brandon was seven when I started applying to law schools,” Margaret Mead says. “‘Mom, you can do it,’ he told me. I took him to classes a couple of times when I couldn’t get a babysitter.”

UB Law prepares future lawyers for the real practice of law, Brandon Mead adds: “All the supports are there, like mentorships. It’s a challenging place, but ‘good’ challenging if you’re willing to do the work.”

Barry M. Chasen, J.D. ’80, remembers when he first wanted to be a lawyer. “By about age 12, I had read 40 Perry Mason novels,” he recalls.

Yet his parents’ modest background — his father had an eighth-grade education and drove a cab — meant there was no money for college. “I started working full-time and went to school at night,” Chasen says. “Then I got admitted to UB Law. It was a great experience.”

He was nearly 33 when he started practicing law. Almost 40 years later, the firm he founded employs 26 lawyers.

“I realized if I take care of the clients, money takes care of itself,” Chasen says. “It’s one of the firm’s core values. My opportunities at UB Law changed my life and gave me the opportunity to do something I like.”

Chasen’s success allows him to give back and to help others from modest backgrounds. His philanthropies include the World Central Kitchen, So Others May Eat and UB Law’s clinical program, to which he and his wife Lyn recently made a very generous gift. “We support these causes because there’s a lot of injustice in the world,” he says.

His son, Ben Chasen, J.D. ’14, remembers wanting to be a superhero as a kid.

“As I got older and started understanding what my dad did for a living, I saw that he was helping people, which is what a superhero does,” he says. “But I distinctly remember my dad not pushing me toward law.”

The realization in college that doctors and lawyers are the most powerful people in society made Ben Chasen think about law school. “I wanted to practice locally, so UB Law was the way to go,” he says.

As a practicing lawyer, he keeps in mind his father’s sayings about the profession. “Especially, ‘It’s not the perfect of law, it’s the practice of law,’ he says. “It keeps me focused.”

Joe Surkiewicz is a writer based in Baltimore.

Smart Law for Intelligent Machines

Posted on October 29, 2020September 10, 2024 by Jason Keller in Features

Artificial intelligence is changing how we live and work — and it’s changing the practice of law.

“It is being applied so broadly. It is removing decisions from humans and putting them into the software. We don’t understand much of the legal implications around it just yet,” says Henry Greenidge, J.D. ’10, until recently an executive in the autonomous vehicle industry.

We do know some things already. Privacy issues come to the fore in a data-driven world. Liability law changes when robots make decisions. Automation impacts labor law. The legal profession is changing, too, as AI algorithms replace human labor in the vetting of contracts and other labor-intensive tasks.

In order to be effective advocates, tomorrow’s lawyers will need to have some understanding of the way these emerging technologies operate. How do machines make decisions? How does bias creep into the system? “We have an ethical obligation under our rules of professional conduct to be familiar with the tools that we are using,” says James Denvil, J.D. ’12.

The point is more than merely theoretical. Though still in its infancy, AI already is raising real-world questions that are not covered under existing jurisprudence.

AI in Action

UB Venable Professor of Law Michele Gilman has witnessed this phenomenon firsthand. As director of the Saul Ewing Civil Advocacy Clinic, she saw an elderly client’s medical benefits get cut when the state began using an AI algorithm to evaluate eligibility.

“When we got before a judge, the witness for the state could not explain what factors went into the algorithm, how they are weighed, what outcomes the algorithm was programmed to find,” she says.

Greenidge has seen it, too. As a former public affairs director for autonomous-driving company Cruise Automation, he rode through New York in a prototype driverless car and came upon a construction site, where a flagman was directing cars to cross the double-yellow in order to avoid the workers. What’s an AI-driven car to do?

“The cars have to assess that situation and they may have to break the law — to go through a red light, to cross a double yellow line,” Greenidge says. “We as drivers do that all the time, but it’s different when you are asking the car to make those decisions.”

These examples help to demonstrate the breadth and complexity of the legal issues that may arise as new technologies come into play.

Privacy, for example, will be a front-line battleground in the coming years. Data lies at the heart of most emerging technologies, and yet the law is often far from clear on how that data may be collected and utilized.

“We are seeing increasing regulation and legislation around personal data. That’s a trend that will continue,” Gilman says. “Personal data has been the Wild West for a long time, in terms of how it is collected and used by corporations and government, without individuals consenting to the use of that data. Now that tide is starting to shift.”

Consider again the driverless car, in many ways the epitome of the emerging AI vision. It needs sensors and cameras in order to navigate safely.

“Now suppose the car sees a child and uses facial recognition to identify that child as someone on a missing-persons list,” says Denvil, a senior associate in the privacy and cybersecurity group at Hogan Lovells. A human in this situation would call the police, but what should a car do? “Do we want these tools to become government-surveillance devices? Now all those ‘slippery-slope’ arguments you heard in a moral philosophy class are not just theoretical,” he says.

Then there are issues of liability. Fundamentally, who is at fault when AI is in charge?

“If I am in my autonomous vehicle and an accident happens, new issues arise,” Denvil says. “Who is responsible for that at the end of the day, and how do we allocate responsibility when an autonomous system crashes? Is it the owner, the manufacturer, the person who developed the code?”

The very uncertainty inherent in those questions suggests a massive shift may be pending. “One of the ways we manage risk is by allocating liability and having some certainty around that,” Denvil says. Today that certainty is lacking.

While privacy and liability rank high, emerging machine-driven technologies raise a host of other legal concerns that are no less pressing.

Gilman points to the disproportionate impact these tools may have on minority communities, and the consequences for poverty law. “People are being digitally profiled, then sold to marketers and insurers and other industries,” she says. “The consequences of that can be more harsh for low-income people. These profiles are the digital gatekeepers for whether you get a job, whether you get into college, whether you can buy a car. That can be self-reinforcing, trapping people in a digital loop of hardship.”

Criminal law already is seeing the impacts. “There is a lot of algorithmic decision-making around whether someone is likely to reoffend, whether someone should be granted bail,” says UB Law Professor Colin Starger, who is associate director of the Center for the Law of Intellectual Property and Technology (CLIPT). “There are a lot of discussions about whether these algorithms have biases baked in that will just exacerbate inequalities.”

Legal Practice

Even as machine-thinking promises to reshape our understanding of the law, the same digital tools are reshaping legal practice.

In the most immediate sense, AI promises to lessen the grunt work, automating a range of routine tasks and freeing human labor for higher and better pursuits. “A lot of the commodified tasks that lawyers have done — basic contracts, simple wills, anything that is fairly standard — those can be automated,” Denvil says.

But that same evolution comes with a caveat. “I have an ethical obligation to know how this tool is being used,” he continues. “Can unauthorized people steal the information I am processing? If I am using a contract-drafting tool, does it impose biases that I don’t want in my work product?”

While some are eager to see the ways in which automation might improve the workflow in law offices, they nonetheless raise questions about the practical details.

Starger, for instance, looks at computer-assisted lawyering as analogous to computer-aided design, or CAD, in the architectural world: Machines can do some things faster and more efficiently. The details get tricky, though. A lawyer may know something as fact: We have so many days to file something. But there’s judgment implied. What was the true start date?

His point is that not everything in the law can be reduced to a formula.

From a bottom-line point of view, automation in legal practice could raise profound questions for those who make their living doing relatively routine work. There’s a very real possibility that demand for such services may diminish. “The challenge becomes: Where can I as an attorney add value? I need to leverage these automated tools, without driving myself out of business,” Denvil says.

There also are some specific questions swirling around patent law. What happens when a company uses AI to help develop a new process or a piece of software?

“A person didn’t quite ‘invent’ what the AI came up with, but a person came up with the algorithm that the AI used,” says Nick Mattingly, J.D. ’12, a patent attorney at Mattingly & Malur. “Who is the true inventor? Is it the person who came up with the algorithm, or the person who came up with the data to train the algorithm, or the person who applied the algorithm?”

AI already is being leveraged to make patent searches easier and cheaper, but even here, the picture is hardly clear. “In principle, you just put in some keywords and the algorithm spits it out, and because it’s AI it gets better and better every time,” Mattingly says. That’s the theory, at least. In practice, we’re not quite there. “A human is still so much better,” he says. “The technology is not yet meeting the level of what a seasoned patent searcher can do.”

JAMES DENVIL, J.D. ’12
Senior associate, privacy and cybersecurity group, Hogan Lovells
How did you get interested in AI?
“First, I had developed a general interest in artificial intelligence, partly through science fiction. Then, in the late 1990s, I was at the University of Arizona studying for an advanced degree in philosophy. I became interested in the work of one philosopher there who was trying to develop an artificial intelligence in order to develop insights into how humans think. That was my initial introduction.”
What makes it interesting?
“The core of the challenge — culturally, legally, philosophically — is that we are building things that are both extraordinarily familiar and absolutely strange and unknown. Every company has an HR department trying to find the right resources, trying to support people in doing certain tasks and making corrections when things go wrong. How do we import the controls that we’ve developed over how we manage people, and apply them to machines?
“How do I know that this AI is good for the job? How can I help it to do the job better and address it when things go wrong? It’s the same questions we’ve asked about people, just on a larger scale and in a different language.”
Advice for others?
“I would encourage people who want to get involved in the legal issues surrounding AI to read as much as they can on the technological side, as much as they can dig into. Really get familiar with what the technology is doing, and also read all the material from the AI skeptics, the people who have grave concerns about all of this. This is a really unfamiliar landscape, and you need a broad set of knowledge and some critical-thinking tools if you are going to help others to manage the risk.”

Facing the Future

UB Law is taking steps to ensure the next generation of lawyers is ready to face the complexities of this rapidly changing landscape. Faculty are tackling the tough questions, and adapting course materials to meet the challenges. Earlier this year, for example, Starger launched a new clinic, Legal Data & Design, to train students in how to use data in the practice of law.

“This is an area of the curriculum where we need to provide students with solid grounding. There are a lot of professional opportunities, and it’s going to be a growing area in the private bar. It’s good that UB Law is ahead of the curve,” Gilman says, noting course offerings such as Cyberspace Law and a seminar in Privacy and the Law.

She points to efforts aimed at helping students to establish not just a firm legal foundation, but also a solid technological understanding.

“There are ‘value’ questions that computer programmers shouldn’t be resolving on their own,” she says. “We need attorneys who understand how data sets are cleaned and trained. We are seeing more classes in the law school where students use computer applications and data tools to benefit clients from a legal perspective. And we will see more of that, as the technical and legal sides work together to drive improvements.”

In fact, tomorrow’s lawyers will have not just a professional duty, but also an ethical obligation, to have at least a basic fluency in the emerging technologies.

“Technological literacy is a requirement,” Starger says. “You don’t have to be the first adopter, but you do have to recognize that this is happening, and you have to be involved with people who understand it and can talk about it.”

Ultimately, attorneys need to embrace the emerging technologies as a means to an end. Despite the challenges and potential pitfalls, automation and machine-driven intelligence can help lawyers to deliver a better end result for their clients and for society as a whole.

“Maybe you are passionate about making the tax code better, or you’re passionate about making family law better,” Denvil says. “We’re not just there to manage tasks. We are part of the government in certain ways. As officers of the court it is our job not just to enforce the law, but to guide it and make it better. We’re never going to automate that.”

HENRY GREENIDGE, J.D. ’10
Fellow-In-Residence at NYU McSilver Institute for Poverty Policy and Research; former regional director for public affairs at Cruise Automation, a division of General Motors
How did you get interested in AI?
“UB Law was instrumental in getting me to the FCC, where we dealt with new technology, talking about broadband and access issues. It was all about the next generation of technology. Then I left the FCC and went to the Department of Transportation, where I also focused on new technology.
“While I was there, the Google self-driving car project brought in one of their cars. It was really impressive to see what they were able to do. It looked like the future to me. When Cruise Automation launched a driverless pilot program in New York, they hired me, and I’ve been involved with this ever since.”
What makes it interesting?
“This will fundamentally change the way we live and work. This is going to change life as we know it. There are so many benefits to the technology, but there are also costs. I want to be at the table as we talk about how this could be difficult for some people.
“We have to talk about what it will do to jobs and the workforce. As a person of color, I am interested in how this impacts people of color, who could be disproportionately impacted by this technology. We have to talk about things like equity and access.”
Advice for others?
“In law school you need to cover privacy, intellectual property, cybersecurity — anything you can cover while in school. Then you have to recognize that this is an ever-evolving field. You’ll never know everything, just because it is changing so rapidly. You have to be able to look at a problem and figure out ways to solve it.
“In many cases, you will be covering new ground. There isn’t a lot of case law to help you with that. But that’s really the essence of being a lawyer.”

Adam Stone is a writer based in Baltimore.

Professor Jane Murphy Retires: Founder of Modern Clinical Law Program Plans to Keep Fighting for Justice

Posted on October 29, 2020September 10, 2024 by Jason Keller in Features

Jane Murphy cautions young people not to get discouraged if their first job isn’t the right fit. Murphy, professor of law emerita, retired from UB Law last spring after a remarkable 30-plus-year career that included roles as co-director of the Mediation Clinic for Families and director of the Juvenile Justice Project.

She is lauded as one of the founders of UB’s highly ranked clinical program. Yet she began her career as a litigator for the federal government, practicing environmental law.

“It was wonderful litigation experience, but not what I saw myself doing long term,” Murphy recalls.

“I went to a neighborhood legal services office where we had many student externs. That’s where I started doing family law, and once I got there, I felt at home representing low-income families in a variety of disputes and also working with students,” she continues. “The clinic has always been my home and where I feel myself.”

Creating a Clinical Program

Murphy was teaching at Georgetown University Law Center when a colleague mentioned that UB Law had received funding for a formal clinical program. Clinical education was nascent at that time, both at UB and at law schools broadly. It was a call that spoke to Murphy’s passion for social justice and her beliefs that clinical work is an essential part of legal education that creates socially aware and engaged lawyers while providing a vital service to the community.

“I don’t think students learn something until they apply it,” says Murphy. “And it has more meaning and importance when a real client’s life is involved. I’ve seen students who are somewhat disengaged really blossom and develop as lawyers in this setting.”

Murphy joined UB and created the first of what would become its modern clinics: the family law clinic under her leadership and the housing clinic under the leadership of Jane Schukoske. The program was designed with a rigorous pedagogy taught by tenured faculty. Funding support secured by U.S. Sen. Benjamin Cardin, then chairman of the Maryland Legal Services Corp., enabled the addition of a fellowship program that is now respected as a national model.

“Jane Murphy changed the nature of our clinic and how people look at clinicians,” explains Steven Grossman, Dean Julius Isaacson Professor of Law at UB.

“Jane is both an academic and a lawyer,” he says. “There was a view that ‘real’ lawyers weren’t true academics. Jane destroyed that ridiculous belief.”

When the clinic began, it was literally and academically on the outskirts, located in a rowhouse on Calvert Street. At her retirement, Murphy had a corner office in the glass-enclosed Angelos Law Center. The office is more than just a pleasant place. It’s a symbol.

“The classic mistake of a clinical program is to get marginalized somewhere away from our doctrinal peers,” she says. “When we built this building and gave the clinic this central, large space, for me that was both a symbolic and actual achievement for the program. It sends a message to faculty and students that this is a capstone of their legal education.”

Committed to Service

Murphy maintains a remarkably engaged life outside academia as well. Claire Smearman, a judicial education attorney at the Federal Judicial Center, met Murphy in the early days of the Women’s Law Center (WLC), where Smearman was president. Smearman says Murphy participated in developing many of WLC’s signature programs.

“Jane is a coalition builder, and her strength of purpose and loyalty are a key reason she has been an anchor and powerful force as a clinical law professor, doctrinal professor and associate dean at UB,” she states. “She’s also a powerhouse of intelligence.”

Jana Singer, professor emeritus at the University of Maryland Carey School of Law, co-authored several books with Murphy, including Divorced from Reality: Rethinking Family Dispute Resolution. While both women brought a feminist perspective to family law, Singer says their views were just different enough to keep their scholarship interesting.

“Jane is unique because she combines incredibly thoughtful, creative scholarship with her practice,” Singer says, “which gives her a window into how academic ideas and reforms play out on the ground.”

A Life of Mentorship

Murphy’s list of accolades and leadership positions is extensive: vice president of the Women’s Law Center; multiple appointments at the Association of American Law Schools; editorial board member at Family Court Review. She received the University System of Maryland’s Award for Faculty Excellence and was the first recipient of the University of Baltimore’s Presidential Faculty Award. Yet she’s humble about accolades.

“It’s things like the student who writes a note a year out of law school to say how the clinic impacted their career that I find meaningful,” she says. “I think I have also provided a model of how to have a rich and rewarding family life and a rich and rewarding career.”

Jill Green, J.D. ’94, associate dean for admissions and student experience at the Johns Hopkins Carey Business School, still remembers what it was like to be in Murphy’s “Gender and the Law” class. Murphy was visibly pregnant with one of her four children, directing the clinical program and, at the time, actively working on legislation in the Maryland General Assembly on behalf of victims of domestic violence.

“I was introduced to the picture of what a lawyer should be: a person fully engaged in her own life, balancing a family and working, writing and publishing, engaged in the legal community and mentoring and teaching students,” says Green. “Especially in 1994, I had few role models like that. I wanted to be her when I grew up!”

The class was life-changing. Green went on to have three children, became a clinical faculty member in Maine, and eventually returned to UB Law as one of Murphy’s colleagues.

“Jane gave me the confidence to know what was doable,” says Green. “She said everyone should know your first priority is your family, and work works out.”

While colleagues underscore Murphy’s intellect and commitment to serving low-income and disenfranchised individuals, they are also quick to note her thoughtfulness and warmth.

“Jane is incredibly generous,” says Smearman, recalling when, in 1993, Murphy passed on the opportunity to apply for a Fulbright Scholars Award at the University of Iceland to teach feminist legal theory, due to the impending birth of her fourth child. Murphy encouraged Smearman to apply instead.

“Despite my hesitation, with her strong encouragement and mentorship, I became the recipient of the Fulbright award,” Smearman recalls. “That was transformational for my entire family and would not have happened without Jane’s generosity and support.”

A New Chapter

Murphy’s UB colleague, Robert Rubinson, professor of law, says it’s no exaggeration that Murphy is a leader in the national clinical movement. What’s unique is that she is so much more.

“She’s a leader in so many ways: She’s a fantastic teacher, a leader serving the law school, a prominent scholar, and she’s committed to helping others,” he says. “She’s also open to trying new things. If she sees something she thinks is important, she’s going to do it.”

Murphy’s inherent passion for social justice was piqued in 2016, when she became engaged in the cause of juvenile offenders serving life sentences without parole. A series of Supreme Court decisions citing the developing mind of juveniles deemed life sentences without parole unconstitutional, and that opened the door for many who grew up in prison to seek release.

Murphy created the Juvenile Justice Project to connect student attorneys with clients serving life sentences.

“Over several years, the juvenile justice clinic provided outstanding representation to people wrongfully denied a meaningful opportunity for release,” says Sonia Kumar, senior staff attorney at the ACLU of Maryland. “Yet in some ways I’m most impressed by Jane’s extraordinary ability to act as a connector and persuader. Jane has helped change what is possible through her gentle, informal advocacy with her peers.”

Murphy describes the opportunity to build the clinic, which shut down, as planned, in 2019, as “a gift.”

“I’m so grateful to have had the opportunity to open the eyes of our students to this very forgotten population,” she says.

The clinic speaks to Murphy’s agile mind as well as her commitment to service.

“The Juvenile Justice Project was totally Jane’s animal,” says Grossman. “She developed it, she designed the model, she learned a whole area of law outside her field and created this entity that performs work that results in people who deserve to be out of prison getting out.”

Innocence work, immigration work — the list of things that interest Murphy goes on. Whether she’s representing pro bono clients or helping to stock better prison libraries, retirement will not mean slowing down for Murphy.

“I wish I could have another law career,” says Murphy with a smile. “I could think of at least four things I would do if I could do it all again.”

Christianna McCausland is a writer based in Baltimore.

Seeds of Change: UB’s Clinical Program is Fertile Ground for Legal Changemakers

Posted on October 29, 2020September 10, 2024 by Jason Keller in Features

The 1970s were a pivotal time in America. Grassroots movements from civil rights and gender equity to environmentalism galvanized into culture and policy change. Conventional ways of doing things were questioned, and law school was not immune.

“There was a recognition that using the Langdellian casebook method was not sufficient to help students learn and understand law and law practice,” explains Margaret Johnson, professor of law and associate dean for experiential learning at UB Law.

Just as medical students undertake residencies, there was a push for law students to work with clients on actual casework to breathe life into the concepts taught in lecture. Not only would students gain experience, but the low-income communities they would serve would have legal representation they might otherwise lack. The idea of clinical education began to form.

In its infancy, students were generally placed in a legal services office to get hands-on experience.

“As the clinical movement developed, it was realized that a pedagogy needed to be developed. “We couldn’t just thrust students into a high-volume setting to try to extract learning,” says Johnson.

UB was an early adopter of experiential education under the leadership of Barbara Mello, Ann Pecora, Natalie Rees and Byron Warnken. Yet it was not until the late 1980s that the modern clinical program developed. U.S. Sen. Benjamin Cardin, then chairman of the Maryland Legal Services Corp., secured funding for UB to expand its clinical program. Those funds brought two young faculty members, Jane Murphy and Jane Schukoske, from Georgetown University. Their arrival signaled a new era of clinical programming taught by tenure-track faculty committed to both pedagogy and scholarship.

“That was critical to ensure the program was a rigorous part of the curriculum, not just a pro bono legal services office where students could do good work,” says Johnson.

“The principles of excellence Jane Murphy and her colleagues brought created such a strong foundation,” says Michele Gilman, a former UB teaching fellow, former director of the clinical law program, current Venable professor of law and director of the Saul Ewing Civil Advocacy Clinic. She explains that the commitment UB demonstrated to the clinical program and to its faculty is unique and contributes to the program’s consistent ranking as one of the best of its kind in the U.S.

“We are not just known for our clinical work but for our scholarship,” Gilman continues. “The faculty have national stature as teachers and scholars, and many of us have had leadership positions in clinical legal education organizations.”

She adds, “Our program is a cut above many, but it’s the day-to-day work with students and clients that makes this program special.”

The clinical program began 30 years ago with three clinics. There are now 12, which represent approximately 450 clients each year. A clinic or an externship is now required for graduation. Clinicians have changed the lives of countless Marylanders and advanced systemic change through legislative and community action. Clinic students and teaching fellows go on to become change makers: community-based lawyers, organizational leaders, professors.

“The foundation for a clinic is to serve the community, and then reflect that up, through scholarship and service work, into a larger dialogue,” says Schukoske, now retired. “I think UB has been an excellent example of what can be done, both to connect grassroots community organizations with legal resources and to create a national discussion of issues impacting low-income communities.”

Rooted in Family

Throughout the program’s history, existing clinics evolved and new programs began, always reflecting social justice needs. The Bob Parsons Veterans Advocacy Clinic was launched to address the needs of large numbers of returning service members. The creation of the Mediation Clinic for Families in 2004 reflected the movement of dispute resolution from the courtroom to the conference room, while the Human Trafficking Prevention Project began in 2015 as awareness grew of that pressing issue.

The first and longest-running program remains the Family Law Clinic, begun in 1989 under the leadership of Murphy.

“We’ve identified it as a huge area of unmet need — the number of family law cases in the courts is one of the biggest areas of civil caseload,” says Murphy. “As it’s grown in importance as a practice area, it has grown as a subject area in law school.”

Renée Bronfein Ades, J.D. ’00, took the Family Law Clinic in 1999–2000. Bronfein Ades was a career-changing adult student with high school-aged children. She expected to go into healthcare or tax law. “When I first took the clinic I did it to take advantage of an opportunity, as I would have encouraged my children to seize an opportunity in their own education,” she explains. “But it changed the trajectory of my career.”

In her first semester, Bronfein Ades represented a grandmother in a child-custody case that went to trial. She took depositions, secured and called expert witnesses, and conducted cross-examination.

“I ran a whole case — in law school — which was a very empowering experience,” she recalls. “I never thought this was the type of law I would do, but it was such a wonderful teaching tool. Nothing can substitute for doing the research, the writing — the work — with the guidance of extraordinary teaching professionals.”

Bronfein Ades spent the next semester writing an amicus brief related to issues from that case. She was recognized for her work in 2001 with UB’s Excellence in Clinical Education Award. She’s now a partner at Wright, Constable & Skeen practicing family law. She has held numerous leadership positions, including a yearlong commitment to the Governor’s Commission on Child Custody Decision-Making that culminated in a comprehensive report to the governor.

In 2006, the Family Law Clinic was renamed in honor of Renee’s parents, Arthur and Ina Bronfein, as a result of a gift from Renee honoring her experiences as a clinic student.

Community-Based Lawyering

While not everyone in clinic will go on to a career like Bronfein Ades, all students receive hands-on experience that exposes them to social justice issues of which they might be unaware. Working with low-income clients informs students’ future lawyering with a new dimension of understanding.

The Community Development Clinic (CDC) began in 1996 under Schukoske’s direction. The clinic represents groups, not individuals, and Schukoske notes that a hallmark of the UB program was that the student lawyers learned to work collaboratively with communities to ameliorate their legal challenges. “These were not projects where a lawyer could just come in and fix it; this was community-based lawyering,” she recalls.

The community gardens program was one such program, wherein students supported neighbors in their efforts to transform vacant lots from open-air drug markets into gardens.

“The students would see the land and talk to the gardeners, who were often older people who had migrated from the South,” says Schukoske. “It was a really inspiring cross-cultural endeavor.”

As a clinician in CDC, Darryl Wright, J.D. ’15 worked mostly with “mom and pop organizations,” helping them with employment issues and licensing. One memorable project on which he worked was assisting a group of multilingual daycare workers in forming an association, so they could present like a union to the community.

Wright is now a staff attorney with the Maryland Center for Legal Assistance, where he offers guidance to self-represented litigants in civil court. “My experience at the clinic was invaluable to my career success,” he says.

Fellows Further Education

Within a few years of the original Cardin funding, the senator championed more capital to create the Clinical Teaching Fellows, a program where attorneys with several years of experience teach in clinic and learn to become teachers themselves. Fellows have gone on to myriad positions in academia at schools such as Case Western, Hofstra, Georgetown and University of Maryland. Many stayed on to enrich UB Law.

Ngai Pindell was the first fellow at CDC in 1997. While he had participated in a community development clinic at Harvard and liked its combination of transactional law and community activism, he had not thought much about the career implications of the fellowship. Through the UB program, he began to see the possibilities.

“[The fellowship] showed me how to blend academic research with real-world impact,” says Pindell, who is today a professor of law at the William S. Boyd School of Law, University of Nevada, Las Vegas. He says his favorite memories from that time are of attending meetings with community leaders in basements and kitchens, listening to residents, and outlining what was possible.

“The clinicians at UB were nationally known for their research and known in the city and state for their impact in the community,” he says. “Bringing that together is something I try to do myself in my academic work at UNLV.”

Similarly, Renée Hatcher did not aspire to a career in academia when she became a CDC fellow in 2015. But in the wake of uprisings following the deaths of Michael Ferguson and Freddie Gray, she wanted to take her lawyering to a new level.

Hatcher is currently associate professor of law at University of Illinois, Chicago’s John Marshall School of Law, and director of its Community Enterprise and Solidarity Economy Clinic. She says the decision to become a fellow was the single best decision she’s ever made.

“The clinicians at UB taught me everything I know about clinical pedagogy, and what made it so wonderful is it was the most supportive and productive work environment I’d been in,” she says. “I think it enabled me to navigate the legal academia job market and obtain a tenure-track position. More importantly, they taught me how to think like a clinician, and as I’ve built out my own clinic I constantly reach back to things I learned as a fellow.”

Recent fellow Nicole K. McConlogue says the program changed her life, providing her intensive training in pedagogy and support for her own scholarship. “This program is about getting you to your next job,” she states. “[UB is] very intentional and actively advocates for your job search. The attention to [fellows’] development is on par with the generous support we give our students.”

McConlogue joined the faculty at West Virginia University School of Law this fall.

Breadth of Experience

Perhaps the clinic with the broadest reach is the Saul Ewing Civil Advocacy Clinic (CAC), which represents low-income clients in general practice cases such as housing, education and public benefits. It also conducts legislative work and community education towards larger systemic reform.

“Since we don’t specialize, we can provide holistic representation to our clients,” says Gilman. “We work with varied populations — the elderly, children, the working poor — so we’re always able to see access-to-justice issues affecting many groups in Baltimore. We often work with other coalitions in Baltimore to effect change to benefit our clients.”

Former CAC fellow Yoanna Moisides, for example, joined the Maryland State Bar Association Delivery of Legal Services Committee during her fellowship. There, she participated in the revision of the statewide guardianship handbook.

Yet Moisides, who worked at the Legal Aid Bureau before becoming chief of staff for finance for the City of Baltimore, says interactions with students were the highlight of her experience.

“Through the casework, you take a deep dive and work as a colleague with students, looking at context, challenging students to consider different approaches in a way that’s hands-on and practical,” she says. “Teaching students, parsing out an ethical dilemma and looking at their different approaches, really helped me to become a better lawyer as well.”

Evolving for the Future

Moisides was also struck by the nimbleness of the clinical program. While she was at CAC, it became an incubator for new clinics, like the Immigrant Rights Clinic that began in 2005.

One of the newest programs is the Legal Data & Design Clinic (LDDC), which launched this spring. Colin Starger, professor and director of the clinic, explains that in a big-data world, it is important for students to learn how to use technology to serve the public good and to use data to advance their legal work.

“While we don’t expect our students to become technologists, it’s our very strong belief that as we go forward in this world, a deep literacy of technology and data science is absolutely essential in the legal world,” says Starger.

Data holds power for lawyers. Recently LDDC represented the Office of the Attorney General in support of its bill to end Maryland’s practice of suspending drivers’ licenses for failure to pay traffic fees. “They wanted to marshal data to show that this was a real problem in Maryland,” says Starger. Not only did the clinic provide the data, analysis and reporting, but students testified in Annapolis.

Thirty years ago, clinical programming was just emerging in the legal academy. UB’s commitment to hiring the finest faculty, providing the richest student experience, and advancing the clinical profession by training new faculty has helped move clinical pedagogy from a novel approach in legal education to a respected and essential part of the law school experience. Along the way, it has advanced important systemic change for under-represented populations, from pressing for housing reform and domestic violence protections to addressing the constitutionality of life without parole for juvenile offenders.

“Clinic growth in the past has been informed by bubbling up issues that needed attention,” says Johnson.

“We are engaged in strategic planning, to identify how will we grow in the future, because we will grow,” she continues. “We’re always looking at emerging social-justice issues where there’s an unmet need.”

TIMELINE OF UB CLINICAL LAW PROGRAM
1988-89: UB Law receives Cardin funding to hire new clinical faculty, including Jane Murphy and Jane Schukoske.
1989: Family Law Clinic begins. Barbara Babb, Odeana Neal, Marla Hollandsworth and Jean Tullias join the clinical faculty. Don Stone joins as clinic director.
1996: Community Development Clinic begins.
1998: Mental Health Law Clinic (formerly Disability Law Clinic) begins.
2000: Low-Income Taxpayer Clinic begins.
2004: Mediation for Families Clinic begins.
2005: Immigrant Rights Clinic begins.
2008: Innocence Project Clinic begins.
2014: The Bob Parsons Veterans Advocacy Clinic begins.
2015: Human Trafficking Prevention Project begins.
2016: Pre-Trial Justice Project Clinic and Juvenile Justice Project begin three-year existence.
2020: Legal Data & Design Clinic begins.

Christianna McCausland is a writer based in Baltimore.

An Appreciation of Elizabeth Samuels

Posted on October 27, 2020September 10, 2024 by Jason Keller in Features

After more than 25 years, I’ve forgotten the details. But my earliest encounters with Elizabeth Samuels, who was reviewing the memo problems I had drafted for 1L legal writing students, went something like this:

Elizabeth: This looks wonderful.

Eric: Thanks. Good.

Elizabeth: You might want to change this word.

Eric: OK.

Elizabeth: And maybe move this to here.

Eric: Yes. Fine.

Elizabeth: Don’t you think this word is better? There, that’s perfect. Except you probably don’t need this. And this would be clearer to the students. Oh, and, let’s say this instead of that. You’ve done a great job here. We can just fix this, and this, and this. There. How’s that?

Eric: Uh, great. Thanks.

Having been an editor myself for some 20 years before Elizabeth hired me as an adjunct, I thought I had a handle on such things. But I had to admit, she was the best editor I’d ever seen in action. Not only that, she always offered just enough praise to make the medicine go down easily. I’m still in awe.

Elizabeth was hired by Dean Larry Katz in 1987, the year UB achieved membership in the American Association of Law Schools following ABA accreditation. When Dean Katz stepped down, she served on the next two dean search committees and then chaired the third. She also recruited two of our best, also retiring this year, Professors Jane Murphy and Garrett Epps. And she chaired hiring committees that brought us terrific young colleagues: Professors Nienke Grossman, Will Hubbard, David Jaros, Colin Starger, Matthew Lindsey and Kim Wehle.

Perhaps Elizabeth’s greatest contribution to the law school was her leadership of the Legal Analysis, Research and Writing, and Moot Court courses. Elizabeth was hired to fill in for Professor Barbara Britzke, who was going on leave and who, the previous year, had founded the program with Professor Byron Warnken. “After I partnered with Byron for a year,” Elizabeth recalls, “I went on to direct and refine the program during the following six years.” Elizabeth calls the experience “exhilarating and exhausting,” crediting Administrator Leslie Metzger (now retired), dozens of adjunct faculty and countless student teaching assistants for making the program work.

But make no mistake, this was Elizabeth’s program. She developed a brilliant introduction to legal analysis, based in part on An Introduction to Legal Reasoning, written by one of her mentors, Edward H. Levi. Levi’s slim book is far too dense for most 1Ls, but Elizabeth captured the essentials of common law, constitutional and statutory analysis and presented it in a way every student could access. And she delivered the large-group analysis lectures (three 120-student sections) twice weekly for the students’ first few weeks of law school.

She also hired the adjunct professors who taught the fundamentals of legal writing to small sections of about 12 students every week. “With an adjunct faculty of dedicated alumni and other lawyers, the turnover rate got down to five or six a year,” she says, “allowing me to select from applicant pools of 50 to 60 lawyers.” Some of those adjuncts are still teaching at UB, including now-Professor José Anderson and lawyer Norman Smith, even as the legal writing program transitioned to a full-time faculty model.

Elizabeth also selected all of the teaching assistants, as many as 30 every year. She wrote the closed (research provided) memo problems that got the students started in case analysis and writing, she conducted programs for the adjuncts and TAs during the summer, and, as noted earlier, collaborated with the adjuncts on the construction of the open (research required) memo problems that completed that first semester, while also conducting performance reviews of everyone in the program. Amazing!

At the same time, Elizabeth taught Child and the Family and spent many years researching and writing about the history and current status of adoption law. In particular, she studied the sealing of adoption records even against the rights of adult adoptees seeking to learn their origins. Her scholarship — as well as her legislative testimony, consultation and lectures — has led 10 states to open their adoption records to adult adoptees without restrictions, and another eight to provide access to most adult adoptees. And, she says, “The efforts continue.”

Elizabeth Samuels’ retirement this year brings to an end what might be called the formative years of the modern, post-accreditation UB School of Law. Those teachers and scholars who will carry the law school forward from here are fortunate to be able to build on the strong foundation she helped to establish.

ABOUT ELIZABETH SAMUELS

J.D., University of Chicago

A.B., cum laude, Harvard College

Elizabeth Samuels joined the permanent faculty in 1989 and taught Child and Family Law, Constitutional Law and Professional Responsibility. She has published numerous journal articles and other essays.

Eric B. Easton is a professor emeritus at UB School of Law.

The Paradox That Is Garrett Epps

Posted on October 27, 2020October 29, 2020 by Jason Keller in Features

Walking down Charles Street, one may encounter a large man who presents, immediately, a paradox. He is very well dressed, but then there is the necktie. It is loud, even boisterous, and the thought comes to mind that a haberdashery that sells ties like that perhaps should be closed as a public nuisance.

When one gets to know that gentleman, Prof. Garrett Epps, it becomes apparent that the ties are a statement perfectly in keeping with his persona. He is brash, even in-your-face brash, and he intends to be, especially toward any public figure absorbed with self-importance. In that sense, he is this generation’s H.L. Mencken, whose acerbic wit delighted Baltimore for years.

One example of Epps-as-Mencken: After Florida Sen. Marco Rubio posted on Twitter a Biblical verse from Ezekiel about casting away all of one’s crimes, the senator was greeted by Garrett this way: “Good advice; take it and stop bothering the rest of us with your hypocritical display of piety.” And when the senator at another time protested “a partisan impeachment” of the president, the professor’s Twitter dismissal was quick and scorching: “God, you are such a whiny little jerk.”

Public institutions are not spared, either. Let the Supreme Court go out of sight for a bit, while it decides how to conduct its work during the coronavirus threat, and the esteemed professor judges the Court harshly as it “cowers in the dark while hurling thunderbolts at our democracy.” Wearing his liberal heart on the sleeves of his handsome suits, he has a large assembly of his favorite targets.

One example: As the crisis over the spreading virus became a profound menace to America’s public health, Garrett was ready to identify some of the villains, tweeting: “Wishing a great Easter Weekend to all the prominent and wealthy lawyers who spent weekends and nights billing hours for brilliant services designed to ensure that millions of Americans continue to lack health insurance. You are an inspiration.” Notice how the dagger is so well concealed, until it is suddenly and fatally deployed.

Those examples, however, are only from the naughty, irreverent side of Garrett Epps. He has one of the sweetest personalities, up close, that one can ever encounter. He makes friends easily and cherishes them. He is probably the most gifted writer among journalists of today. George Will’s clever touch is not even close.

Baltimore’s professor is widely read, in a truly spectacular way, so that learned and delightful allusions flow seamlessly into the stream of his elegant prose. The Atlantic magazine’s online pages sparkle with his wit and rumble with his depth.

In the classroom, he is a caring, even while demanding, teacher, and seems definitely to be loved by those who learn from him. Sharing a public stage with him is a genuine collaboration, made even livelier by the large deposit in his memory of delectable stories (many from baseball) and vivid teaching moments. (Indeed, after a brief time with him on stage, his collaborator is able even to overlook those neckties.)

His scholarship is enormous in scope, and his books are eminently readable, penetrating and convincing. If one has to pick a favorite off the shelf of his work, it probably would be his 2013 book, American Epic: Reading the U.S. Constitution. It is truly a gem, telling the meaning of our basic charter of government from the perspectives of the theater, of religion, of the world of literature — only secondarily from the realm of law. The published scholarship on the Constitution is so vast that it can fill any library to overflowing, yet there almost certainly is not one volume there quite as satisfying — or even as entertaining — as American Epic.

Garrett almost certainly would be offended if he were thought of as a specialized scholar. But there are some fields in which he does stand out. He is perhaps the country’s leading expert on the founding history of the Fourteenth Amendment, that post-Civil War amendment that became the fount of much of the modern civil rights revolution.

He is also the unmatched scholar on the contemporary controversy over “birthright citizenship” — that truly generous clause in the Fourteenth Amendment that automatically bestows the wonder of American citizenship upon any child born on this nation’s soil. He also has few competitors in the range of his knowledge about the First Amendment, its Free Speech, Free Press and Religion Clauses.

He retains the instinctive sense of public good and public evil that he observed while doing newspaper writing and editing. He also has the intellectual discipline of a sound, practicing attorney. If much of his writing is conspicuously identifiable with the aspirations and hopes of cultural and political liberalism, there is still a grandness to it all that makes him a modern Renaissance man, even with unfortunate neckwear included.

He has now chosen to move on, to the Pacific Northwest. The intellectual weight of that part of the country will rise instantly, exactly in the amount it will decline on the East Coast.

ABOUT GARRETT EPPS

LL.M. (Comparative and International Law), Duke University

J.D., Duke University

M.A., Hollins College

B.A., Harvard College

Epps joined the faculty in 2008 and taught Constitutional Law, First Amendment, and Fiction and Non-Fiction Writing for Law Students. He has published five non-fiction books, two novels and countless articles and essays.

Lyle Denniston is the unofficial dean emeritus of the Supreme Court press corps. In 2018, he developed an online course, “The Supreme Court and American Politics,” for UB in partnership with edX.

A Holistic and Therapeutic Approach to Family Law: CFCC Celebrates 20 Years of Advocacy

Posted on October 20, 2020October 29, 2020 by Jason Keller in Features

In 2020, UB Law’s Sayra and Neil Meyerhoff Center for Families, Children and the Courts (CFCC) celebrates two important milestones: the 20th anniversary of the founding of the center and the 15th anniversary of its largest community-based project, the Truancy Court Program.

For 20 years, CFCC’s founder and director, Prof. Barbara Babb, and CFCC staff have worked to improve the practice of family law and to reform the family justice system. CFCC advocates for and applies two key interdisciplinary theories to all of its initiatives: therapeutic jurisprudence, from the law, and the ecology of human development, from the social sciences. These approaches emphasize a goal of achieving positive outcomes for families and children, as well as a holistic focus to understand and resolve family legal matters.

BABB NAMED TO FAMILY JUSTICE COURTS’ ADVISORY COUNCIL IN SINGAPORE
Barbara Babb
Prof. Barbara Babb has received a two-year appointment to the Singapore Family Justice Courts’ Advisory and Research Council on Therapeutic Justice (ARC), created in June 2020.
The ARC was established to bring together some of the leading thinkers in the field of therapeutic jurisprudence (TJ) and family justice, to discuss and share perspectives on the latest developments in TJ in the context of family law practice and family justice, including law, policy, and justice reforms.
The ARC will work with the Singapore Family Justice Courts (FJC) to incorporate TJ as the overarching framework of the Singapore family justice system, a concept Babb originally applied to family court reform and about which she has written and spoken for decades. Babb says the ARC’s work will include examining court processes through a TJ lens and, where appropriate, improving those processes.
Using an ecological framework — another of Babb’s contributions to family court and family-justice-system reform work — the courts hope to establish better coordination between the community and social support services. In addition, the ARC will design and offer training on TJ methods to Singapore’s FJC judicial officers, court staff, attorneys, and services providers. All of the ongoing work of the ARC is intended to enhance the well-being of court participants.
Babb visited Singapore in October 2019, at the invitation of the FJC, to give presentations at two different events on the application within the family-justice system of therapeutic jurisprudence, an ecological approach, and an ethic of care.
“The ARC appointment is quite a privilege, and it is extremely exciting for me,” says Babb, “as it encompasses all of my advocacy and scholarship since I joined the UB faculty in 1989. I am extremely honored to work with the Singapore FJC community and the other ARC members.”

How CFCC Started

CFCC’s origin is a classic story of what happens when one person’s passion and fortuitous opportunities meet. Babb’s longstanding interest in blending social science theory and systems with law is the thread that has tied CFCC’s work together.

“I had the tremendous privilege to work with Dr. Urie Bronfenbrenner as a graduate student at Cornell University, prior to attending Cornell Law School,” says Babb. “He opened my eyes to the power that the social sciences have to influence public policy in ways that improve people’s lives.” Bronfenbrenner co-founded the national Head Start program, and his seminal book, The Ecology of Human Development, defined the domain he called the ecology of human development, a theory rooted in the need to examine how families and children function from a holistic or systems perspective.

During the 1990s, when interest in family court reform was sky high, Babb embraced the concept of unified family courts as a “best fit” with her passion for the need to take a holistic view of family law issues. With comprehensive subject-matter jurisdiction over all family law matters, unified family courts equip the justice system to approach the full range of problems that bring families into court, including both legal and related non-legal issues.

Babb quickly became a leader in advancing unified family courts in Maryland and nationally. She was co-chair of the American Bar Association (ABA) Section of Family Law’s Committee on Unified Family Courts, and she consulted on “Communities, Families, and the Justice System,” a two-year ABA project to establish unified family-court pilot programs in six jurisdictions: Atlanta, GA; Baltimore, MD; Markham, IL; Seattle, WA; Puerto Rico; and Washington, D.C. “The Baltimore project was very successful and served as a model for the creation of Maryland’s Family Divisions in 1998,” Babb says.

Contemporaneously with this intense focus on family court reform, the field of therapeutic jurisprudence (TJ) was emerging. TJ addresses the impact of substantive law, legal rules and procedures, and the roles of judges, attorneys and other legal actors, in shaping outcomes for individuals involved in the legal process.

Babb attended the first conference of what is now the International Society for Therapeutic Jurisprudence (ISTJ) in 1998 and has been a leading proponent of TJ since. She serves on ISTJ’s Global Advisory Council. “Therapeutic jurisprudence embodies how I believe one should approach family law practice — by asking the question: ‘Will the outcomes of our actions make lives better (therapeutic) or worse (anti-therapeutic) for the families and children we are serving?’”

With the support of then-Dean John Sebert to create a UB Law entity focused on family-justice-system reform and legal policy work, CFCC was launched in August 2000.

ADVANCING THE CAUSE

In the 20 years since CFCC opened its doors, family justice reform and unified family courts have remained a primary focus. CFCC also has expanded its portfolio to add projects and interest areas that complement or enhance this central focus.

Unified Family Courts. CFCC’s ongoing work with the Maryland Judiciary is a cornerstone of CFCC’s expertise, a true partnership and a real point of pride. In CFCC’s first two years, its staff served as strategic planning consultants to the Maryland Judiciary’s Ad Hoc Committee on the Implementation of the Family Divisions. The committee’s work on formulating a mission statement, system values and outcome evaluation measures for Maryland’s new Family Divisions resulted in a tool to assess the effectiveness of the courts, Performance Standards and Measures for Maryland’s Family Divisions. Over the years, CFCC has consulted with the Maryland Administrative Office of the Courts on parent education programs, child custody evaluations, supervised visitation and monitored exchange, and collaborative law, among other subjects.

CFCC also has consulted on the creation of unified family courts across the U.S. and internationally, including working with court systems in California, Florida, Michigan, Indiana, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Toronto and Nebraska, among others. CFCC’s twice-yearly newsletter, Unified Family Court Connection, is an influential publication on family court reform that reaches nearly 4,000 judges, attorneys and other legal practitioners.

Family Justice System Reform. CFCC has convened leaders from around the world to address issues related to family justice reform. CFCC has partnered with the ABA Section of Family Law to host an interdisciplinary group of family law experts for the “Families Matter Symposium,” focused on developing solutions to improve the practice of family law and resulting in the publication, Families Matter: Recommendations to Improve Outcomes for Children and Families in Court. Since 2009, CFCC has held an annual “Urban Child Symposium,” a cross-disciplinary conference addressing significant challenges facing urban children. Since 2003, CFCC also has partnered with the Association of Family and Conciliation Courts to sponsor two annual trainings regarding important issues facing family law practitioners.

Truancy Court Program. Since 2005, CFCC has operated its Truancy Court Program (TCP). CFCC’s truancy prevention work is a national model, recognized as an innovative “Bright Idea” program in 2012 by the Ash Center for Democratic Governance at the John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. CFCC has created its Truancy Court Program Toolkit so other jurisdictions can structure truancy prevention programs to fit their populations’ unique needs.

Elevating Family Law Education. CFCC’s Student Fellows Program, a two-semester law school course, focuses on educating law students about family law and family-justice-system reform. It also guides them to consider how TJ and the ecology of human development can apply to any area of law they pursue. CFCC Student Fellows have worked on many of CFCC’s projects, including the TCP. Through this experiential course, students learn to apply theory to practice. In addition, CFCC has brought all of its unique experience and information together to launch in 2017 the nation’s first and only post-J.D. Certificate in Family Law. The certificate program, now offered entirely online, is designed for both new attorneys beginning to practice family law and experienced attorneys seeking to add family law expertise to their areas of practice.

CFCC’s Truancy Court Program Tackles School Attendance and Much More

The Truancy Court Program (TCP), a project of UB Law’s Meyerhoff Center for Children, Families and the Courts (CFCC), was launched in spring 2005 with seed funding from The Charles Crane Family Foundation. Conceived as a voluntary, non-punitive, data-driven program to identify and address the root causes of each child’s truancy, the program celebrates its 15th anniversary this year.

As an example of the need for these intensive resources, let’s look at Amelia’s* experience. Amelia was a fourth-grader who had nine absences in the two quarters preceding her participation in TCP. Amelia’s mother was in prison, and her father was the custodial parent of record. Amelia lived with her maternal great-grandmother during the week in order to make getting to school easier. On weekends, she stayed with her father, who was unemployed and living with his brother. (* Name has been changed for privacy.)

Amelia’s father reported feeling depressed and hopeless about his financial and housing situations. He was on the waiting list for Baltimore City Public Housing and Section 8 vouchers, but he was not optimistic about getting housing. The TCP social worker helped Amelia and her dad obtain outpatient psychotherapy. When the family’s housing situation worsened, the social worker arranged for the family to receive homeless services, which included transportation to and from school for Amelia.

Despite all of the family’s challenges, Amelia was doing well academically and graduated from the TCP, improving her attendance by over 65%. Sadly, a great number of Baltimore City children face similarly difficult circumstances, and many do not fare as well.

Showing Up for Baltimore’s Kids

To date, TCP has served over 2,500 public school students and their families in 49 schools, 39 of which are in Baltimore City. Over 20 Maryland judges and magistrates have volunteered their time to serve as TCP judges in participating schools.

Four principles guide TCP’s operation:

A therapeutic, holistic approach — a non-adversarial, trauma-informed model
Early intervention — a voluntary program serving students with five-30 unexcused absences or tardies in the prior two marking periods
A focus on prevention, family involvement and empowerment — a multi-disciplinary team connecting families with available social and legalservices and supports
Rewarding progress — incentives for TCP students meeting short-term attendance, academic and behavioral goals, as well as graduation gifts upon successful completion of the program

All TCP students receive mentoring, one-on-one weekly conversations with a judge, parent outreach, case management services and resource referrals, as needed. The TCP attorney reaches out to families to provide much-needed legal advice, resources and referrals to address problems such as homelessness, eviction, special education needs, public assistance benefits and energy assistance. Similarly, the TCP social worker provides counseling to students, as well as resources and referrals to help families obtain food stamps, mental health services and substance use services, among others. The TCP team also regularly invites speakers to high schools to talk about pathways to college, finding employment, financial literacy, and planning for the future.

Each year, approximately 75% of TCP participants graduate from the program. Students graduate when they demonstrate a 65% improvement in absences and/or tardies, or at the discretion of the TCP judge.

Changing the Trajectory

Researchers who have studied the causes and correlates of delinquency have identified truancy as a key step in the school-to-prison pipeline. TCP effectively diverts youth from the juvenile justice system and reduces recidivism. For the past three years, TCP has tracked juvenile arrest data for approximately 439 students. Many of these students had multiple arrests prior to participating in the TCP. From these data, CFCC has observed the following:

Forty-seven TCP students had some Department of Juvenile Services involvement, totaling 108 arrests.
Only three students out of 439 were arrested while participating in the TCP.
Thirty-four students were arrested before participating in the TCP, with a total of 72 arrests. Only seven of the 34 students were re-arrested after participating in the TCP, and one was re-arrested while participating in the TCP.
Less than 5% of the 439 students tracked were arrested or re-arrested after participating in the TCP.

Over the years, the TCP team began to see higher rates of trauma among the students, including gun violence, addiction, homelessness, bullying, and incarcerated parents. In 2016, the Baltimore City Board of School Commissioners and the Chief Executive Officer of Baltimore City Schools pledged to make Baltimore City Schools a restorative-practices district as one response to trauma. Restorative practices is an approach that promotes inclusiveness, relationship-building and problem-solving, through such restorative methods as circles for teaching and conflict resolution, and conferences that bring victims, offenders and their supporters together to address wrongdoing.

As a result, the TCP team began implementing restorative practices at all of the TCP schools. The TCP mentor teaches restorative-practices principles and facilitates weekly restorative circles with TCP students. The group discusses various ways to de-escalate conflict, and the circle exercises provide students important skills to address situations that arise at home or in the community.

Over the past 15 years, CFCC has refined TCP to respond to the complicated needs of Baltimore City’s children and intends to keep showing up for these children.

26th Annual Auction Supported Paid Summer Public Interest Fellowships

Posted on October 20, 2020October 29, 2020 by Jason Keller in Baltimore Briefs

The Feb. 28 UB Students for Public Interest (UBSPI) auction was a great success. With additional support from the law school, Maryland Legal Services Corporation and the Maryland Hispanic Bar Association, 14 students were able to enjoy paid summer public-interest fellowships this year. These fellowships provide critical work experience for law students at nonprofit and government agencies.

UBSPI is a student group that informs students about the breadth of opportunities in public interest law and works to connect students to opportunities in this area of the law.

The grants supported students working at St. Ambrose Housing Aid Center, Senior Legal Services, The Esperanza Center, Maryland Volunteer Lawyers Service, FreeState Justice, Baltimore City Office of the Public Defender, Disability Rights Maryland, and other organizations.

“I came to law school knowing I would do public interest work,” says Shannon K. Thomas, a member of the Class of 2021 who completed her summer fellowship at FreeState Justice. ”I come from a difficult background and was always someone who was underestimated because of that.

“I knew that I had to do something to improve real people’s daily lives, or nothing I did would matter inside my heart.”

Thank you to everyone who supported the auction and UBSPI, including our generous in-kind sponsors, volunteers, attendees and everyone who bid on auction items. We couldn’t have done it without you!

26th Annual Awards Ceremony: UB Law Held Its Virtual Awards Ceremony on May 12

Posted on October 20, 2020October 29, 2020 by Jason Keller in Baltimore Briefs

For the Class of 2020, Rebekah Nickerson was valedictorian, and Raquel Flynn was salutatorian. Tia Holmes won the 2020 Pro Bono Challenge Award.

The Law Faculty Award winners were Sumbul Alam, day student, and Joshua Perry, evening student.

Ryan Bixler received the 2018–19 J. Ronald Shiff Award for Academic Excellence in Tax. The Clinical Legal Education Association (CLEA) Outstanding Student Award went to Lisa Whiteleather, for her work in The Bob Parsons Advocacy Clinic. Naseam Jabberi received the Center for International and Comparative Law Director’s Award for 2019–20.

Clinical Excellence Awards went to Christina Araviakis, for her work in the Human Trafficking Prevention Project, and Ryan Fish, for his work in the Innocence Project Clinic.

The award for Outstanding Teaching by a Full-Time Faculty Member went to Prof. David Jaros, and Arturo Estrada received the award for Outstanding Teaching by an Adjunct Faculty Member. The Saul Ewing Award for Outstanding Teaching in Transactional Law went to Prof. Cassandra Jones Havard.

Prof. Margaret E. Johnson received the Faculty Scholarship Award for Traditional Research, and Prof. Michele E. Gilman was given the Faculty Scholarship Award for Public Discourse.

The Law Faculty Service Award went to Prof. Jaime Lee, and the Rose McMunn Distinguished Staff Award went to Laurie Schnitzer.

Movement Lawyering Is Focus of Non-Credit Reading Series for Students

Posted on October 20, 2020November 5, 2020 by Jason Keller in Baltimore Briefs

In the wake of the May 25, 2020 killing of George Floyd, and the sustained, massive social movement for racial justice that followed it, UB Law this fall launched a reading series for students on movement lawyering and organizing for social change.

Led by Prof. Elizabeth Keyes, director of the Immigrant Rights Clinic, and Veryl Pow, clinical teaching fellow in the Community Development Clinic, the weekly lunchtime series features selected readings and virtual visits from leaders in the movement for social change.

“Already, in its short time, the movement has resulted in tangible policy changes across jurisdictions nationwide,” says Pow. “These events confirm that structural social change in this country follows waves of protest, movement activity and grassroots organizing.”

For lawyers, says Keyes, this surge of organizing and movement activity on the streets has brought to the surface the question of how we should relate to and enhance the platform of organizers and protesters. And the non-credit series was designed to help answer that question.

The reading group is part of several efforts to enhance diversity, equity and inclusion at the law school. It will feature discussions with organizers and community lawyers from Baltimore and beyond, organizing on critical issues such as anti-racism, urban equity, education, sexual violence, domestic worker rights, international labor solidarity, and more.

The reading group will cover nine themes designed to introduce students to various models and philosophies of law and organizing — ranging from “movement lawyering” to “rebellious lawyering” — and then address more nuanced issues in today’s organizing environment.

These themes include:

Models of Social Justice Lawyering
Critique of Law/Rights: Role of Law in Creating and Reproducing Subordination
Critique of Traditional Public Interest Lawyering Models
Movement Lawyering in Praxis
BLM and Law 4 Black Lives
Intersectional Resistance
Rebellious Lawyering: Direct Collaboration in Organizing
Popular Resistance and Mass Movements: 2020 George Floyd Rebellion, and
To Work Within or Without: Reform v. Abolition

“As future lawyers, students need to have the skills and analysis to work alongside organizers to be effective advocates for change, and through these weekly sessions, they will begin learning from the rich scholarship and experiences of people who do this work, day in and day out,” says Keyes.