Features 2023 – University of Baltimore School of Law Magazine

PRO BONO LAWYERING: Alumna Michelle McGeogh Shows How It’s Done

Posted on September 27, 2023September 10, 2024 by Juan Soto in Features 2023

By Matthew Liptak

If you ask Michelle McGeogh, J.D. ’07, why she does so much pro bono work, she has a quick answer.

“There are a lot of reasons why I do pro bono work, but to me the harder question is, why would anyone not do pro bono work?,” McGeogh says. “It’s fairly obvious that there’s unequal access to justice in our community, and across the country, and across the world.”

McGeogh is married with two daughters, but the Baltimore lawyer said integrating pro bono work into her 16-year career as an attorney has helped keep her grounded. Her parents are U.S. Army veterans and medical doctors, so service was part of her life from a young age.

Recently she brought her young daughter to court to observe a sentence modification hearing for a pro bono client who had received a life sentence. And pro bono work is often a big part of everyday conversations with her family, she says.

McGeogh was named co-chair this year of Maryland Legal Aid’s Equal Justice Council. That’s just a year after joining the board of directors of the Maryland Volunteer Lawyers Service (MVLS). She is just one of the graduates of UBalt Law who are devoting much of their careers to advancing the cause of equity in our justice system.

“I went to law school to make a difference,” she says, “and it’s really pro bono work that allows me to make an impact.”

McGeogh is a partner at Ballard Spahr, where she focuses on real estate and construction litigation and employment law. She praises the firm for allowing all pro bono work to count toward attorneys’ billable hours budget, with no cap. “In short, pro bono work is treated like billable work at Ballard Spahr,” she says.

“I think there’s a trend toward more firms offering policies like that,” she explains. “Every law student I interview will ask about the pro bono program. I’d like to see other firms follow suit. It’s a recruiting tool.”

As champions of pro bono, McGeogh, along with UBalt Law alumnae Susan Francis, J.D. ’11, and Vicki Schultz, J.D. ’89, recognize the importance of attorneys giving their time and talent to those in need.

Schultz is executive director of Maryland Legal Aid, the largest provider of free legal services in Maryland, with 12 offices around the state.

“It’s very important that people have representation,” she says. “When they don’t, there are often dire consequences. They may lose their home. They may end up homeless. They may not be able to eat. They may lose their jobs. When you step in as a pro bono lawyer, you can help someone meet their most basic needs.”

“If the legal system is only is going to work for those who have money to hire an attorney, then it really goes to the heart of the credibility of our justice system,” says Francis, who is executive director of MVLS. “It diminishes our system of justice, and as attorneys and legal services providers, that’s what we seek: an equitable judicial system.”

According to the Maryland Access to Justice Commission, there are over 10,000 unserved low-income clients in need in our state for every 1½ legal services attorneys, Schultz says. Maryland is listed as one of the better performing states in the nation.

“Pro bono is hugely important,” Schultz says. “There is an incredible need for civil legal aid for people who can’t afford a lawyer.”

The disparity is huge, and, although some pro bono lawyers are giving their time and talent, many other Maryland attorneys volunteer little or not at all. “I think if everyone chipped in a bit more, we would get closer to meeting that need,” McGeogh says.

According to Francis, McGeogh is an example to firm partners and associates about prioritizing pro bono while excelling in your career. “Michelle, despite her very successful and busy career, makes time to do pro bono herself, mentors numerous associates in her firm to do pro bono, and consistently provides her limited time and numerous talents to further the important work of the MVLS board,” Francis says.

Pro bono advocates say that time constraints are one of the reasons attorneys don’t donate more of their time. Pro bono work is included in the code of ethics for Maryland lawyers, but many don’t prioritize it. The Maryland Pro Bono Resource Center, in partnership with the Maryland State Bar Association, has issued a Pro Bono Call to Action, with a simple signup form to encourage lawyers to give their time.

There are plenty of ways for a lawyer to give back. And the benefits of volunteering are also abundant. McGeogh, Schultz and Francis all say heartfelt appreciation from clients is a real motivator for pro bono attorneys to continue volunteering their time.

And the experience one can get is hard to match in the legal field. “I think doing pro bono work makes you a better lawyer,” McGeogh says. “You can take on pro bono matters as a very junior lawyer and get to take the lead on it.”

Francis noted one recent example, where a new associate in a large firm had the opportunity to argue a pro bono case in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit. After the argument, this associate was approached by a partner in the firm, who was seeking advice because the partner hadn’t argued before that court before. “It was great experience for the associate,” says Francis, “and it helped her build recognition within the firm.”

But for McGeogh and her fellow UBalt Law alumni, the best reward remains serving neighbors while contributing to the justice system they are working to improve.

“You’re not necessarily changing the world,” McGeogh says, “but it’s one little step toward making the world a little more fair for someone else.”

Matthew Liptak writes from Severna Park, Md.

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Alumni Authors Write About What They Know

Posted on September 27, 2023September 10, 2024 by Juan Soto in Features 2023

By Adam Stone

There’s a fresh corpse in an office building, and now someone’s got to get rid of it — discreetly. Naturally, hijinks ensue.

“There’s a lot of duct tape and trash bags, stumbling over the office chair and how to avoid getting blood on the clothing,” says Paul Rieger, J.D. ’88, who as J.P Rieger has published the darkly comedic detective novel Clonk!

And he’s not the only one who has leveraged his law school experience to branch out in literary directions. In fiction and non-fiction, UBalt Law alumni are finding success in the publishing world.

‘Survival skills’

With books like Scavenger: A Mystery (Three Rooms Press: 2020) and Standalone (Three Rooms Press: 2022), Christopher Chambers, J.D. ’90, gives us a detective series starring Dickie Cornish, a Washington, D.C., homeless man turned investigator. Cornish is “drugged out and on the street, and he’s using some of those survival skills to do what he has to do to find the truth,” Chambers says.

The idea for the series ignited when Chambers talked to best-selling crime novelist George Pelecanos, also D.C.-based, about the difficulty in telling a gritty story about a capital city that’s increasingly gentrified. “He said: Well, you’re going to have to dig really low. And I said: How low?” Chambers recalls. “So I used the homeless man as a hook, and that’s how I got into the Dickie Cornish novels.”

With tough, realistic language, “Chambers makes the smell and harrowing vibe of the mean streets of the nation’s capital come alive,” according to a Publishers Weekly review.

In addition to serving as vice president and counsel for Student Housing of America, Chambers is also a communications and culture professor at Georgetown University, currently on sabbatical. He said his legal training prepared him well for the rigors of the writing life.

As a lawyer, “you don’t mind other people going over your work and editing it,” he says. “A lot of people really take it personally when somebody takes a red pen to their stuff, but as a lawyer, you’re used to that.”

Amber ambitions

As an active-duty military lawyer, a professor teaching the law of armed conflict at the U.S. Naval War College in Newport, and a serious American-whiskey drinker, John C. Tramazzo, J.D. ’10, noticed a funny thing: Soldiers and whiskey tend to keep close company.

That led him to write Bourbon and Bullets: True Stories of Whiskey, War, and Military Service (Potomac Books: 2018). The book dives into the relationship between military service and some of the nation’s most notable distillers of the amber liquid.

“The most sought-after whiskeys — the most expensive, super-premium, single-barrel American whiskeys — are all either named for a combat veteran, or were developed by men who served in the U.S. military,” Tramazzo says.

“There’s a bourbon named for William LaRue Weller,” who served in the Louisville Brigade in the 1840s, he says. “Those bottles can go for $6,000 to $7,000 — if you can find them.”

At UBalt Law, the professors helped set him up for success, he says. There were several who “gave me a great deal of confidence in my ability to write,” he adds. “They really pushed me to refine my writing and helped launch me into a career in the JAG Corps, where writing is valued.”

A ‘very Baltimore’ book

Rieger worked for years as in-house counsel to a title insurance company and is now in solo practice. His legal background helped bring to life the darkly comical characters and situations that populate his new novel Clonk! (Apprentice House: 2023).

“It’s a very Baltimore-based book,” he says. “A big chunk of the story is based on property flipping that went on in Baltimore in the mid-’90s. Fraudsters came in and bought up property very cheaply, and then induced lenders to lend way more money than these homes were worth, leaving the consumers and banks in the lurch.”

In the book, our protagonist recognizes the lawyers who are representing the crooks. “He’s thinking back to their gleaming white veneers and orange tanning-salon tans, staring back at him from various transit-bus placards,” Rieger says. “So there’s a lot of legal stuff.”

Adam Stone is a writer based in Annapolis.

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Second Acts: Career Changers Demonstrate the Value of a Law Degree

Posted on September 27, 2023September 10, 2024 by Juan Soto in Features 2023

By Christianna McCausland

When F. Scott Fitzgerald said there are no second acts in American lives, he hadn’t bet on the 21st century’s trend toward career fluidity. Nowadays, the average American employee is expected to change careers between three and seven times in their lifetime. Pew research recently showed that more than half of people who quit their job in 2021 changed their occupation. From those looking to repurpose their skills within a legal framework to those who simply want a fresh start, these students and alumni illustrate that it’s never too late to career shift.

From the high seas to the high court

Thomas Pulley, 27, is a long way from the Bering Sea, where his career story begins. Between his junior and senior year of college, a friend set him up with a job on the docks in a little town called Naknek, Alaska, for the salmon season. Pulley says, “The landscape was picturesque, the air was clear, and I had no cellphone service. It was incredibly refreshing to get off the grid.”

In fact, the native of New York state enjoyed it so much, he joined a commercial deep-sea fishing company in Seattle and was sent to work in the legendary Bering Sea. Onboard, his primary responsibility was stacking and sorting fish cases in a 50-foot freezer that could hold up to 850 tons of frozen fish.

“It was an incredible adventure I’ll never forget, but I couldn’t see myself making a career out of it long-term,” Pulley explains.

Instead, Pulley returned to school, where an adjunct professor at Western Connecticut State University and criminal defense attorney sparked his interest in legal studies. When he went looking for a program, “UB stood out to me as a school regarded highly for its public interest work and excellent set of clinics,” he says. “Plus, I love crab.”

Pulley will graduate in May 2025 and hopes to work in the public defender’s office in Maryland. He takes some good-natured ribbing from his former seafaring mates who hope to put his interest in criminal law to good use. “They bust my chops a bit and joke about how I’ll have a slew of clients after graduation.”

The human touch

People who know Eaujee Francisco, J.D. ’21, always had him pegged for law school, but he wanted to jump right into a career where he could put his passion for people to work. Prior to attending University of Baltimore, the 34-year-old worked as the human resources and payroll manager for Greenpeace USA. It was meaningful work, but he wanted to do even more.

“I applied to law school to pursue a career as an employment law attorney,” he explains. “I felt that obtaining legal training would allow me to more significantly advocate for employees and provide employers with more technical, risk-mitigating counsel. Additionally, my passion for people sparked an interest in family law while in law school.”

After graduation, Francisco clerked for The Hon. Shannon Avery in the Circuit Court for Baltimore City. After his clerkship, he worked as an associate at two Baltimore area law firms before founding his own firm, The Law Office of Eaujee Francisco, PLLC, in Cedar Hill, Tex. It is the only law firm in southwestern Dallas County specializing in family and employment law. He believes that coming to law school from a different career provided him with a deeper experience and an opportunity to be more engaged with the coursework than he would have been straight out of undergrad.

“Having work experience and a graduate degree before attending law school allowed me to contextualize my law school coursework much differently than the younger law students I knew,” he says. “Also, I wanted to enjoy my next career more than my previous one. I went into law school with very specific career goals to start my own practice.

“So, I approached every course with two questions in mind: How would this help my clients, and would I enjoy this practice area? … I took control of my law school experience and selected courses that focused on the application and practice of law.”

At law school he also learned the power of developing meaningful relationships, something that informs his daily work improving the lives of his clients each day. Francisco worked as a legal writing fellow at the law school’s Legal Writing Center, serving as head writing fellow in his 2L year. He was a Student Bar Association 1L representative and SBA secretary in his 3L year. He also worked in the law admissions office as a student assistant.

“If it weren’t for those meaningful connections, I would not have secured my judicial clerkship and first associate position,” Francisco says.

From research to advocacy

Joe Canner spent years applying his degree in computer science to medical research for institutions like Johns Hopkins and Yale universities. He’d reached the point in his career when people were asking if he was going to get a PhD in public health, but law school had always been something he’d considered — particularly after he worked for an FDA practice group at a law firm in Washington, D.C., as a regulatory affairs specialist. He’d taken a personal interest in racial justice and prisoner rights, and his own child was also looking at law school.

“I wanted to move from research to advocacy; to move from studying large groups of people in the abstract to impacting the everyday lives of actual people,” says Canner. “I was feeling like my medical research career was not very connected to reality, and there was no way to tell whether my work was making a difference. Civil rights, mass incarceration, prisoner rights—all of these things are significant and tangible problems for the people who experience them. I want to know that I am making a difference.”

When he opted out of the PhD in favor of a J.D., Canner chose UBalt Law because of its diversity and focus on civil rights issues. In a fun twist, his child was also accepted at UBalt Law, and the two are progressing through school together. “Although there is a wide age range of students in the UB evening program, I am still quite a bit older than most students,” says Canner, who is 59. His child introduced him to some of their friends, and he finds their youth and energy contagious.

“I’m really proud of both of us,” he adds, “for persevering to arrive at the finish line together.”

Perseverance is key, as Canner says law school is hard work and not for everyone. Still, he’s found reserves of energy and self-discipline he never knew he had. When he graduates in May 2024, he’ll take that energy to his clerkship for a judge on the Appellate Court of Maryland. Eventually he wants to work in civil rights, and perhaps even achieve his dream of arguing a case before the U.S. Supreme Court.

Cooking up a career change

For Janice Shih, J.D. ’14, law school was not so much a second act as a third. When she applied, she was working as a pastry chef at her own business, Tenzo Artisan, which specialized in gluten-free and allergy-free pastries. Prior to that, she was a physician. It was her work at Tenzo, she says, that inspired her to go to law school.

“I employed individuals who were returning to society from incarceration,” Shih explains. “This was my first introduction to the challenges that many low-income individuals face with the systems that were supposed to be helping them — so I came to law school to better assist them.”

At the time, her husband was supportive of this third act, but her best friend (who had attended law school) thought she was crazy. The step proved fortuitous, as Shih now works at UBalt Law running the Low-Income Taxpayer Clinic, where students work with real clients who have tax issues, work she did in her previous role at the Maryland Volunteer Lawyers Service.

Coming to law school as a more experienced adult, Shih brought her lived experience to her studies: having purchased a home, for example, she had a better take on property law than some of her younger peers. Today, Shih hopes that her diverse previous work experience gives her a broad understanding and the ability to make issues more relatable to her students.

Christianna McCausland is a writer based in Baltimore.

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Jermaine Haughton, JD ’15, Thrives on the Pressure of Plaintiffs’ Litigation

Posted on September 27, 2023September 10, 2024 by Juan Soto in Features 2023

By Hope Keller

It was 2002, the day before elementary school graduation in Clarendon Parish, Jamaica, and the students were excited. Several boys kept throwing water balloons at each other, though the teacher told them to stop. When they didn’t, she approached with an upraised ruler and drew it back to swing – and caught Jermaine in the eye.

“At that time in Jamaica, the teachers were allowed to whip the kids,” says Haughton, J.D. ’15, who remembers graduating first in his class with his left eye swollen shut. “I got to thinking: ‘Man, this is terrible. You know what, what if we sued the school board for allowing teachers to even hit students?’”

He laughs. “I don’t even know where that thought came from,” he says. “I didn’t know about suing anybody. But that got me into thinking more about the legal system and being a lawyer.”

Today, Haughton is a medical malpractice attorney with Wais, Vogelstein, Forman, Koch & Norman in Baltimore, specializing in birth-injury malpractice cases. He has recovered more than $25 million for his clients in the past five years.

Haughton didn’t gravitate to plaintiffs’ law straight out of law school. He first spent several years at Miles & Stockbridge and Nelson Mullins Riley & Scarborough before realizing that he wanted to assume more responsibility for cases.

“It might be a little precocious, but I wanted the pressure of taking a high-stakes deposition, not just doing document reviews, research and outlines,” he says. “I thought at a smaller firm they might have no choice but to put me in the game. And at a smaller firm, there are more opportunities to have hands-on work and to learn more closely from folks who are not under the gun of the big-firm time billing requirements.”

Haughton has handled several birth-injury and other med-mal cases so far, the majority of which settled for multiple millions of dollars.

“This person will never know what it means to have a normal life,” he says of a child born with a birth injury. “That really fuels me to be up at 2 a.m. on Friday and Saturday and Sunday, looking at every word in the medical record. I had a case that had over 30,000 pages of medical records, and I knew that record cold because I was so passionate about what had happened to that baby.”

He emphasizes the high-stakes nature of the job: “You’re a non-doctor, you have no medical training, and you’re taking a deposition from the head of obstetrics at some major hospital. And your job is to tell them that they’re wrong about some key thing. You can’t be fumbling around. You better know your record. If they said Mom’s blood pressure was 140/90, I can’t skip 15,000 pages to find it. I have to be able to say, ‘No, it was 180/101.’”

Haughton says he first fully grasped the importance of developing and trusting his own judgment when he worked in the Saul Ewing Civil Advocacy Clinic, under Venable Professor of Law Michele Gilman and Prof. Dan Hatcher.

“I remember being so frustrated, because every time I went to Michele Gilman and asked her what to do or what to think, she would tell me to go and read the rule and find out what the cases say. I asked her for a meeting and said, ‘You know, Professor Gilman, I love this class, but if this is so important to help these people, why can’t you just tell me what to do?’ She smiled at me. She saw my frustration. She said: ‘Well, you want to be a lawyer, don’t you? If you want to be a lawyer, that requires your own judgment.’”

Haughton’s direct boss, Keith Forman, J.D. ’06, said Haughton has attributes that are rare in younger attorneys.

“He just has a wonderful self-awareness of needing to listen to the other side of the story, to someone else’s point of view, and assimilating it into the decision-making processes at all levels,” Forman says, adding that he wishes he could “pump that into” every young lawyer he works with.

Haughton credits his father, Donnovan Haughton, for giving him the chance to come to the United States at age 15 and to get the education that has seen him to where he is today.

“If it wasn’t for him, none of it would have happened,” says Haughton, who, with his wife, Shahrazad Abdelmeguid Haughton, J.D. ’16, has a 5-year-old son, Jaiden.

Hope Keller is a writer based in Connecticut.

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Pokuaa “PK” Owusu-Acheaw, JD ’15, is Chief of Staff to Md. Lieutenant Governor

Posted on September 27, 2023September 10, 2024 by Juan Soto in Features 2023

By Adam Stone

“P.K.” Owusu-Acheaw, J.D. ’15, with Maryland Lt. Gov. Aruna Miller and Gov. Wes Moore.

Pokuaa “P.K.” Owusu-Acheaw, J.D. ’15, has cut a wide swath through state and local government since earning her UBalt Law degree.

She served as a legislative aide for Maryland Sen. Joanne C. Benson, representing Prince George’s County, and as regional director for U.S. Sen. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md. From there she worked as intergovernmental affairs officer in the Prince George’s County Office of the County Executive, and then as managing director of legislative and political affairs at the Maryland State Education Association.

Now she’s chief of staff to Maryland Lt. Gov. Aruna K. Miller.

The common thread? “I am very much into solutions,” she says. “When I see a problem, I want to know how we can bridge the gaps and get resources — or individuals with expertise — to solve a problem.”

Legal training helps her to meet that mark. “I know how to look at the larger picture, how to ask questions on intricacies that other individuals without legal training might not bring up,” she says. “It has allowed me to think critically, to see things with multiple lenses.”

Those who’ve seen P.K. in action say they understand why she is one of the rising stars on the Maryland political scene.

“I have been blessed to watch her career blossom from our time together at UB Law to now, working together in Annapolis,” says State Del. Caylin Young, J.D. ’16, who represents District 45 in Baltimore city. “P.K. is one of the smartest political minds in Maryland. She is someone you can always count on for personal and professional advice.”

Yaakov “Jake” Weissmann, J.D. ’16, first met P.K. when she worked for Benson and he was deputy chief of staff in the Office of the Senate President. “The Senate is a tough place: It is a work-hard, play-hard place,” says Weissmann, who currently serves as the assistant chief administrative officer for Montgomery County government.

“Managing a senator is not easy,” he says. “You’ve got to be knowledgeable enough on the issues. You got to be knowledgeable enough on the other senators, and at the same time you still need to be aware of what your senator wants and be responsive in that regard. And P.K. did a phenomenal job.”

In her present role, Owusu-Acheaw says the Moore-Miller administration is focused on “increasing opportunity for work, wages and wealth, making sure that Marylanders have an equal opportunity to achieve their full potential.”

And she’s got a personal stake in bringing that to fruition. “I am a first-generation American, the child of Ghanaian parents who sacrificed so much for me to get to where I am. So I am fully invested in the opportunity to achieve the American Dream,” she says.

Opportunity covers a lot of ground. Her work includes the administration’s efforts to end child poverty, as well as projects focused on transportation, behavioral and mental health, social justice and reproductive health. Her work also includes supporting the administration’s efforts to address climate change — “to ensure there is a future, in which we can protect resources and ensure children can breathe air that’s just as clean [as it was for] their grandparents,” she says.

Where is Owusu-Acheaw headed with all this? Perhaps a future career in elective office?

“Right now, I’m just focused on how I can use the present time to address issues that currently exist and any issues that might be developing. There’s no shortage of issues that exist in our state, and I’m just busy and hard at work at trying to solve those right now.” she says. “I’m looking to the future to see how we can make it better, but not looking too far ahead to see what’s next for me.”

Day to day, the job can be challenging, she says. “Government works around the clock to make sure that Marylanders have what they need,” she says. But in the big picture, the rewards more than make up for the effort.

“Even if I’m having a tough day, I can know that the work the team just did is going to make an impact, not only on someone today, but also in the future, someone who doesn’t even exist yet,” she says.

“That’s the kind of thing that gets me up every morning,” she says. “I get the satisfaction out of knowing that 30 years down the line, I will look back to something that we worked on during a tough legislative session and be able to say: We made an impact. That is a feeling that I honestly am very privileged and honored to have.”

Adam Stone is a writer based in Annapolis.

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Tracey Forfa, JD ’91, Distinguishes Herself at FDA’s Center for Veterinary Medicine

Posted on September 27, 2023September 10, 2024 by Juan Soto in Features 2023

By Hope Keller

Tracey Forfa, J.D. ’91, was named the director of the FDA’s Center for Veterinary Medicine in February 2023, becoming the first non-veterinarian to hold the position. The center regulates food, drugs and medical devices for pets, as well as for animals that produce meat, milk and eggs.

She is in good company at the center, which has been hiring lawyers regularly over the past several years, says Forfa, who has been with the FDA since 1993 and at the center since 2002.

“We have inside jokes that for every veterinarian or veterinary technician we hire, we hire another lawyer,” she says. “But all kidding aside, this is a good time to be a lawyer heading the center. There’s a lot going on.”

The law that gave the FDA its regulatory authority – the Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act of 1938 – poses one of the greatest challenges to the agency, says Forfa. Designed to establish quality standards for food, drugs, medical devices and cosmetics made in the United States, the law has been amended over the years, but not often enough, she adds.

“We’re regulating products in 2023 using basically the same fundamental 1938 authorities that we were given by Congress,” Forfa says. “That is one of the reasons that I believe that my law degree is so foundational, to be able to help move the center into 2023 and beyond.”

One of Forfa’s current priorities is working with Congress on legislation to change the way the center reviews feed additives that address fundamental problems such as climate change.

“Under our existing authorities, we would have to regulate (feed additives) as a drug product,” Forfa says, explaining that the process would be lengthy. “We are looking for flexibilities within our existing framework, to be able to bring innovative products to market as quickly as possible, because we see them as the future of animal health and public health.”

‘We have inside jokes that for every veterinarian or veterinary technician we hire, we hire another lawyer.’

Certain feed additives would reduce the amount of methane that cattle produce during digestion. While cow burps might sound innocuous, they in fact contain a significant amount of methane that contributes to global warming.

“(Congress) in no way ever envisioned this type of product to address this type of problem,” Forfa says of the authorities granted the FDA in 1938.

She emphasized the center’s commitment to the FDA’s “One Health” strategy, which focuses on the intersection of human, animal and environmental health.

“Some things we discovered on the animal side impact both human medicine and the environment — certainly the methane reduction is an example of that,” she says.

Another primary concern for Forfa and the Center for Veterinary Medicine is the misuse of xylazine, an animal tranquilizer that is increasingly being mixed with street drugs such as fentanyl. The drug, intended for veterinary use, particularly in large animals, can cause gangrenous wounds in human users.

While the center has mechanisms in place to withdraw an animal drug if safety concerns are raised about its appropriate use, the inappropriate use of xylazine by humans is “an anomaly for us,” says Forfa.

“It remains a really important drug product for veterinarians, particularly veterinarians who work in the large-animal sector,” she says. “Imagine not being able to sedate a 1,000-pound cow who’s trying to kill you as you’re working on it.”

The Center for Veterinary Medicine has joined with the Drug Enforcement Administration and other agencies to help flag and examine imported shipments of the drug.

“It’s an all-government response, from the White House all the way through all of the agencies involved, including local law enforcement,” Forfa says. “We’re all extremely concerned about the horrific effects that happen when xylazine is combined with fentanyl.”

Hope Keller is a writer based in Connecticut.

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WARRIORS FOR CIVIL RIGHTS: Alumni tackle police and prison brutality

Posted on September 27, 2023September 10, 2024 by Juan Soto in Features 2023

By Adam Stone

In January 2020, a Prince George’s County police officer shot and killed William Green. At the time, Green’s hands were cuffed behind his back, and he was sitting in the front seat of a parked police cruiser.

As part of the legal team representing Green’s family, Malcolm Ruff, J.D. ’12, helped win a $20 million settlement for the victim’s mother and two adult children. Ruff says his UBalt Law education “was a foundation that really set me on the path towards fighting for justice and standing in the gap for folks who had been violated by the government.”

He’s one of several UBalt Law alumni who are focused on police brutality and detention-center abuse cases.

Kristen Mack, J.D. ’17, tackles such cases as an associate attorney at Hansel Law, PC. The firm represented Daquan Wallace, a 19-year-old who was beaten and left paraplegic while in pre-trial detention.

As Mack and others have learned, it’s incredibly difficult to hold police and prison officials accountable for mistakes and abuses. “There are a lot of immunities and laws that are designed to protect the state from liability,” she says. That includes various caps on damages.

“You need someone that is extremely knowledgeable of this subject matter so that you can get around these caps, because — let’s be serious — the only way that we’re going to change things is if we make them pay enough money,” says Mack.

Since entering the field, Mack has worked hard to master the nuances. “Every case is very different, and the details matter tremendously in what we do,” she says. “I learn the most when I’m having to oppose motions — motions for summary judgment in particular, because it forces me to sit down and go head-to-head with these issues.”

Larry Greenberg, J.D. ’94, says a detailed understanding of the law helps him to represent those who are “consistently being targeted and then abused by the system.”

The wheels of such justice turn slow: Greenberg spent close to five years trying to win compensation for the family of a man who was run over and killed by a police officer who simply wasn’t paying attention to the road.

“There are immunities that apply. If an officer is driving his or her vehicle and they’re in the course of their employment, one immunity applies. If they’re driving and they’re in the course of duty, but they’re not in an emergency situation, another immunity applies,” he says.

In cases like these, “all of the hoops you have to jump through to potentially get justice exist to benefit the state, not the injured,” says Greenberg. With the odds stacked in favor of law enforcement, “you have to know how to avoid the pitfalls and land mines that go with civil rights cases.”

Lawyers in this field have to keep current. “I always read the new cases that come out, and I don’t limit it just to Maryland. I’m looking at federal courts, I’m looking at the Supreme Court,” he says. At the same time, he works to help shape the legal landscape in favor of plaintiffs. “We’re in Annapolis frequently,” Greenberg says, “working with the legislators to try to make rules that help the citizens, not just the state.”

Such efforts helped lead to adoption of the Maryland Police Accountability Act, a 2021 law requiring all counties to create three police oversight boards: a Police Accountability Board, an Administrative Charging Committee, and a Trial Board. 

“I believe the police play an important part of our system. However, I believe those officers should be well trained,” he says. “Bad hiring, bad training, failure to discipline — all of these things come about, and that’s why people get hurt.”

Shifting landscape

Like others, Greenberg has seen public opinion start to shift in the wake of the George Floyd murder and Black Lives Matter protests. But he worries that the relatively recent uptick in awareness will prove temporary. “As a society, we are reactive,” he says. “It gets into our discussion for a news cycle … and then it’s gone. The news cycle comes and goes.”

Allen Honick, J.D. ’16, says that while increased public awareness has helped, deep institutional changes are needed, and those take time. “There has been progress, one foot in front of the other, but it is very slow,” he says.

Many of Honick’s cases involve matters like wrongful arrest, wrongful incarceration, prison guard misconduct, and related civil right claims. How to win such cases? Stubbornness helps a lot.

“You have to be resolved that you’re not going to get dissuaded by the procedural requirements, the onerous preconditions to suit, the obfuscation and the stonewalling,” Honick says. “You just have to resolve ahead of time that you’re going to put your head down and see this thing through.”

On the plus side, says Ruff, everyone these days has a camera — not just policy body cams, but the cellphones that take every event immediately to social media.

“That is changing the paradigm of how people view accountability for law enforcement,” he says. “For years, officers were able to create what we call silent narratives: They can spin a situation, because they get the benefit of the doubt. That was being abused to a very high degree.”

In the era of social media, that’s changing. “We recently handled a matter against the Baltimore County Police Department, where our client was accused of assaulting an officer and resisting arrest,” Ruff says. The officer claimed justification for violence, “and the video just simply did not show what he said.”

Real-time documentation by itself won’t fix the accountability gap. But it’s one step toward rectifying a system that these lawyers say has for too long been tilted in favor of institutions, rather than individuals.

Adam Stone is a writer based in Annapolis.

Photos by Maximilian Franz.

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People’s Parity Project Seeks to Make The Legal System Offer Justice for All

Posted on September 27, 2023September 10, 2024 by Juan Soto in Features 2023

By Adam Stone

Andrew Loewen sees a fundamental problem with the way the law works.

Simply put, “the legal system is not delivering justice for most real people,” says Loewen, J.D. ’22. “People can’t afford the lawyers they need. They don’t know how the law works. The legal system favors those with the right background, the right connections, and bigger bankrolls for endless litigation.”

To raise awareness, Loewen founded the UBalt Law chapter of the People’s Parity Project (PPP), a national organization that describes itself as seeking to “unrig the legal system and build a justice system that values people over profits.”

What makes justice inaccessible? It’s not just the cost of going to court. “One thing PPP has highlighted is the fact that people are locked out of courts in the first place, because they sign away their rights through contracts that come with arbitration agreements,” says Loewen, who is currently a legal fellow with the Public Rights Project. Consumers and employees alike find, too late, that such contracts work against them.

As incoming president of the UBalt group, Melissa Murphy, J.D. ’24, is in the midst of a two-year PPP fellowship. She’s looking at state courts, “how judges get to the bench, what their professional background is, what their racial background is, their social-economic background,” she says. “Are those decision-makers actually reflecting the population that they’re serving? And if they’re not, how can we make those changes?”

Murphy worked previously as a paralegal in the nonprofit world, supporting survivors of domestic violence and sexual assault who couldn’t navigate the law on their own. Then she went to a private firm, “and I saw firsthand how expensive it is to have somebody with a legal background to guide you through the system,” she says.

“I wanted see how we could bridge the gap, so that that you don’t need a ton of money in order to get access,” she says. And law school seems to her like the right place to have those kinds of conversations.

PPP on campus “is making connections with the different student groups,” Murphy says. Environmental law issues for example have a parity component, as do workforce and housing law. “We trying to make the connections so that we are all working towards similar goals.”

UBalt PPP immediate past president Laura Grant, J.D. ’23, worked for an employment law firm before coming to law school. “I saw how the corporate world tends to take advantage of low wage people through these complicated legal restrictions,” she says. “Employment contracts, nondisclosure agreements, non-compete agreements all had a real effect on people.”

When students are learning the law, “that’s the perfect time to instill the kinds of values that People’s Parity Project has,” she says.

With PPP helping to bring parity to the fore, “students can be thinking about increasing access to justice, while they’re actually studying the law,” she says. “They can talk about these things in class. And when they’ve graduated, they are already thinking: OK, what can I do to make things better?”

Grant said that newly minted lawyers have a special obligation to think about issues of fairness and equity, and that doing so will make them better at their jobs.

“We’re expected to guide our clients through some of the most stressful times in their lives,” she says. “I have that credibility, and it’s important to use for the benefit of people who don’t have it. Recognizing that I’m in this position to help people have access: that makes me a better lawyer.”

Through its PPP chapter, Loewen says, UBalt Law can help the legal profession make incremental progress on these complex issues.

“People don’t necessarily go to law school so they can change the world,” he says. “But we can shine light on the power that people do have, and the impact that they could have.”

Adam Stone is a writer based in Annapolis.

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Elizabeth Strunk, JD ’20, Takes Lawyering To the High Seas She Has Always Loved

Posted on September 27, 2023September 10, 2024 by Juan Soto in Features 2022, Features 2023

By Adam Stone

Some are called to the sea. For Elizabeth Strunk, J.D. ’20, that has meant serving first as a sailor on ocean-going tugboats, and now as a lawyer in the maritime industry.

“I was in high school fiddling with the possibility of marine biology, but I knew that I would be looking at getting a master’s and maybe a doctorate before I could do anything with that kind of degree,” she says. “I just wanted to be out on the water.”

Seeking a more practical education, Strunk attended Massachusetts Maritime Academy, where she earned a B.S. in Marine Transportation. Then she sailed for five years as a deck officer aboard ocean-going tugboats and cargo ships.

Sometimes she’d help to tow decommissioned Navy vessels and submarines back to the yard. Other times she would help to hold the boat at anchor for weeks at a time, while Navy divers trained for deep-sea diving. It was good work, but eventually she wanted a change.

“There were a couple of years where I was out of the country for 10 months out of the year, which is great, but at some point you’ve missed enough birthdays,” she says. “Time kind of goes by, and you feel like having a little more of a balance.”

To that end, she returned to land and earned her J.D. cum laude in 2020 from UBalt Law, where she was editor-in-chief of the Law Review. Today she practices maritime law at Liskow law firm in Houston.

“Generally, maritime law is anything that involves a boat,” she says. That means litigating collisions and spills, for example, and also working with owners’ insurance programs. “On commercial vessels, everything is insured,” Strunk says. “The hull and the machinery have separate insurance, cargo will be insured separately. And then the vessel owners also carry protection and indemnity insurance.”

Most of that P&I coverage comes through mutual insurers, where members bond together to self-insure in groups or clubs. “In every major port, you need a local correspondent, and we do that for a couple of the 12 major clubs in the world,” she says. “If something goes wrong, we get a call.”

Strunk says there are some unique limitations to liability that make maritime law an especially interesting field.

A few years back, for example, the diving boat Conception caught fire and sank off the California coast; over 30 passengers died. “If it had been a bus or something on the road, they could have been liable for millions and millions of dollars,” says Strunk. But commercial owners can limit their liability to the value of the vessel itself at the end of the voyage.

“Technically, at the end of the voyage — once the vessel sank — it really wasn’t worth anything,” she says. That limitation doesn’t sit well with some people, but as Strunk points out, it helps protect the U.S. shipping industry from potential overexposure.

Strunk says her UBalt experience helps her to navigate these sometimes-tricky waters. “There are professors at the school who genuinely value your success, and your ambitions, and your dreams,” she said. “They’ll support you along and help you to get to where you want to go.”

Adam Stone is a writer based in Annapolis.

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Law Alumni Lead Expungement Efforts in MD

Posted on September 27, 2023September 10, 2024 by Juan Soto in Features 2023

By Matthew Liptak

Chris Sweeney, J.D. ’16

When he graduated from UBalt Law, Chris Sweeney, J.D. ’16, knew he wanted to serve the public, but he didn’t know that becoming workforce development manager at Maryland Volunteer Lawyers Service (MVLS) would lead him to a niche of the law that would be so rewarding: expungement.

Expungement is the legal process of removing the public record of someone’s involvement in a criminal matter. The records don’t even have to result in a conviction, they just have to involve law enforcement. Eliminating records may sound like a simple task, but it’s an act that can have far-reaching impacts on the lives of those who are exposed to public scrutiny.

“I didn’t know I was going to get into being an expungement guy, but I very quickly became passionate about this work because I saw how much it means to people,” says Sweeney. “To erase something that has been a stigma to them, and a ghost of something they did in the past – I’ve seen a lot of people get very emotional getting these forms signed, thinking, ‘This is finally gone from my life.’”

Sweeney says at least 80 percent of his work at MVLS involves expungement. He regularly makes presentations at Baltimore job-training sites, educating people on their legal rights. Many of those attending are formerly incarcerated individuals who are working to find a job or better housing. Public criminal records, which come up in background checks, can be a barrier to a better life for them.

He usually spends 10 to 20 minutes in person with his clients. The expungement petition is prepared beforehand, so they only need to confirm some vital information and sign it. Occasionally a prosecutor or judge may have questions or objections to the petition, which is normally taken care of in a court hearing.

“I think expungement is immensely important,” says Angus Derbyshire, J.D. ’14, director for pro bono at Maryland Legal Aid, the largest provider of free legal services in the state. “There’s a whole racial justice component to this, too. We have to be cognizant of the fact that we have overpoliced our Black and brown communities for so long.” Maryland Legal Aid offers regular expungement clinics throughout the state.

Michael Christopher Stone, J.D. ’13, is director of pro bono programs at the Homeless Persons Representation Project. Expungements are a large part of the workload for the roughly 400 attorneys, law students and paralegals who work for the organization. Like many other UBalt Law alumni, Stone is passionate about helping people in need.

“Every time expungement opportunities expand, we’re getting closer and closer as a society to recognizing that you can’t saddle someone with the ‘Scarlet letter’ forever, and still expect them to continue in society,” he says.

New laws make expungements easier

Expungements are expected to increase in Maryland. Thanks to Maryland’s Senate Bill 201 of 2021, many public criminal records will be automatically cleared by October 2024. And Maryland residents with cannabis possession convictions are now eligible to have those records expunged, now that simple possession of cannabis is legal in Maryland.

Stone said SB 201 will lead to much more work for attorneys. Expungement law has become much more complicated in recent years, as opportunities for the expungement process have grown, he says. [View a May 2023 training video on criminal record expungement in Maryland.] But he appreciates the new lease on life SB 201 offers to many Marylanders.

“It’s the only automatic expungement in the law, and it was hard-fought for,” he says.

In addition, as of Oct. 1, 2023, waiting periods shorten for filing a petition to expunge certain conviction records, including those for cannabis-related convictions. Under SB 37, known as the REDEEM Act of 2023, waiting periods for filing expungement petitions for a conviction eligible for expungement under § 10-110 of the Maryland Criminal Procedure Code are halved. This means the new waiting period is five years for a listed misdemeanor in general (formerly 10 years) and seven years for a listed felony in general (formerly 15 years).

To all three of these UBalt Law alumni, the expansion of expungement means the growth of justice in Maryland’s evolving legal system.

“People call it a second sentence, or a ‘street sentence,’” Sweeney says of public criminal records. “We always say people have to pay their debt to society. This person has done that. They’re still living with this record.

“I think that people should not be defined by the worst things that they’ve done, for the most part. Regular folks mess up and they can change. I absolutely believe that. People deserve a chance to succeed, so I think of clearing records as an investment in that person.”

Matthew Liptak writes from Severna Park, Md.