Features – Page 2 – University of Baltimore School of Law Magazine

Dionne Koller and Sports Law: A Perfect Fit

Posted on September 3, 2024September 10, 2024 by Juan Soto in Features 2024

By Adam Stone

A gymnast in her youth, Dionne Koller knew intuitively what her career in the legal-academic world would look like.

“Sports was a very important part of my life experience. When I got into academia, that led me to have an interest in sports law, to see what sports law was all about,” she says.

But is there even such a thing as “sports law”? When Koller joined the UBalt Law faculty in 2006, the answer was a definite maybe. Since then, she has helped to put sports law on the map, and earned a reputation as one of the leading scholars in the field.

An emerging discipline

In the early 2000s, sports law wasn’t fully recognized within the legal academy as a separate academic discipline. “People would say: Certainly, there’s a lot of law that applies to sports — antitrust law, labor law, contract law. We apply a lot of law to sports, but there’s not a lot of law about sports,” Koller says.

Others took a different view. There were legal scholars who felt there was important work to be done to make sports law a field. Koller saw a professional window open up in that transitional moment. “My personal love for sports intersected with an opportunity to really take on important issues,” she says.

“When the University of Baltimore hired me, I made clear that I would want to go up for tenure with a sports law portfolio, that my scholarly record would be built on sports law and not some other recognized area,” she says.

She’s gone on to do just that, addressing urgent issues, especially around youth participation in sports. She was quoted widely when Larry Nassar, the former U.S. Women’s Gymnastics team doctor, was convicted of abusing hundreds of athletes. She recently co-chaired the Congressional Commission on the State of United States Olympics and Paralympics, and she was a member of the Aspen Institute Sport and Society’s Children’s Rights in Sports Work Group.

When it comes to youth sports, she says, there is much that needs fixing, and colleagues say Koller is uniquely qualified to drive those changes.

“She has been a pioneer in her teaching and her scholarship,” says Prof. Margaret Johnson, co-director of UBalt Law’s Center on Applied Feminism and director of the Bronfein Family Law Clinic.

Johnson notes that Koller has won the UBalt President’s Award for her teaching, scholarship and service, and has been recognized with the Association of American Law Schools’ 2024 award for significant contributions to the field of sports law.

“She models professionalism, hard work and commitment,” Johnson says. In her work at the law school, “She sees everyone for who they are, in a way that makes everyone feel good about being together in this shared enterprise.”

Koller leads a hearing in Congress in September 2023 as chair of the Commission on the State of U.S. Olympic and Paralympics.

Focus on Youth

Koller’s first book, More Than Play: How Law, Policy, and Politics Shape American Youth Sport, is due out in 2025.

“The book mirrors my approach to sports law generally, which is to take something that we take for granted and illuminate areas that we maybe haven’t been paying attention to,” she says. The book challenges the unspoken assumption “that youth sport is good, it’s healthy, every kid should participate.”

The truth is somewhat more nuanced, she argues.

From a legal standpoint, there’s an operating assumption that sports should not be regulated. That has real-world impact. “We’re over-training kids, overworking them, burning them out. It has physical consequences, and it has mental consequences,” she says.

While Koller doesn’t lay out a program for fixing all this, she has some strong thoughts on the subject, guided in part by her understanding of how sports in other countries are regulated.

“There are countries like Norway that do things very, very differently,” she says. “They give children some rights, meaning children can decide how much time they’re going to spend on their sport. They’re going to decide if they want to travel to compete. Children have some say.”

A better system would also reflect the fact that “parents can’t always be neutral judges or arbiters of their children’s youth sport experience,” she says. “Parents get swept away in their children’s performances and youth sport experiences. They lose that healthy mental distance they might be able to use in other contexts.”

That’s an argument for more government regulation. Koller would like to see a national standard, with “baseline levels for safety, including regulations for those who coach, making sure that there are background checks, that there are minimum competencies that coaches have to possess,” she says.

That’s easier said than done.

There’s a general mindset that government has no place regulating the creative and competitive world of athletics. “That might make sense when you’re talking about professional football, where athletes are protected by their union. But to take that mentality and apply it to youth sports is problematic,” she says.

At the same time, parents’ rights advocates are for the most part in knee-jerk opposition to government involvement in youth sports. But the idea here isn’t to rob parents of their decision-making authority, Koller says: It’s to protect the kids.

“I regularly hear from parents who are shocked that nobody’s regulating this or making sure the coach has any ability to coach,” she says. “The government doesn’t need to run Little League in order to set some minimum safety standards for the people who do run Little League.”

As Koller looks to elevate these issues within the legal community, and with the public at large, she expresses gratitude to UBalt Law for giving her the freedom to pursue this once-unrecognized field.

“I have been able to do this scholarship because of the University of Baltimore law school’s support,” she says. “Because the University of Baltimore believed in me, I’ve really been able to develop as a scholar, and to contribute to the field. All of that is a result of the University of Baltimore’s standing behind me and encouraging me. I have the career that I have because of this institution.”

Adam Stone is a writer based in Annapolis.
Photo by Larry Canner.

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Charles Tiefer: Scholar, Teacher, Mentor

Posted on September 3, 2024September 10, 2024 by Juan Soto in Features 2024

By amy e. sloan

If I had to describe Professor Emeritus Charles Tiefer in one word … I couldn’t do it! In his many years at the University of Baltimore School of Law, Professor Tiefer has been a scholar, public servant, teacher, mentor and friend. It would be impossible to reduce his contributions to our community to a single word.

Professor Tiefer began teaching at the law school in 1995. Over the course of his career, he produced an impressive body of scholarship. He has written books, law review articles, and dozens of articles in the popular press and on Forbes.com.

His Congressional Practice and Procedure book is the definitive work on Congressional procedure. His other books include The Polarized Congress: The Post-Traditional Procedure of Its Current Struggles (University Press of America, 2016); Government Contracting Law in the 21st Century (Carolina Academic Press, 2012); and The Semi-Sovereign Presidency: The Bush Administration’s Strategy for Governing Without Congress (Westview Press, 1994).

His articles have appeared in prestigious journals such as Harvard Journal on Legislation, Yale Journal on Human Rights Law and Development, Stanford Journal of International Law, and Cornell Journal of Law and Public Policy, to name just a few.

His many posts on Forbes.com have received hundreds of thousands of views. Receiving 10,000 views was just a regular day at the office for him. One post on Hillary Clinton’s emails received over 250,000 views. Consequently, in 2018 he was recognized with the faculty scholarship award for Excellence in Public Discourse.

His work extended beyond the academy. Throughout his career he has been a dedicated public servant. Before he became a law professor, he was acting general counsel and solicitor and deputy general counsel to the U.S. House of Representatives. After he joined the law faculty, he continued his public service. He provided testimony to Congress on a wide range of issues. From 2008-2011, he served as a commissioner on the congressionally chartered federal Commission on Wartime Contracting in Iraq and Afghanistan. He took a lead role in two dozen televised hearings, and he went on official missions to Iraq and Afghanistan concerning wartime procurement.

Professor Tiefer has also been a devoted classroom teacher. He taught Contracts I and II, Government Contracts Seminar, Legislation, and Secured Transactions. Numerous students expressed appreciation over the years for his clear explanations of the law. (They were somewhat less enthusiastic about his infamous multiple-multiple-choice questions that required figuring out two right answers instead of just one!)

More recently, during the COVID19 pandemic, he devoted many hours to preparing PowerPoint slides to transition his teaching from the in-person classroom to Zoom. Teaching effectively online was a challenge for many law professors, but Professor Tiefer was more than equal to the task. His students so appreciated his efforts that they created a video tribute that they presented to him at the end of one semester.

This long list of accomplishments does not fully capture what Professor Tiefer has meant to the UBalt Law community. He is more than a scholar, public servant, and teacher. He has been a mentor and a friend.

When I was assigned to teach Contracts for the first time, Professor Tiefer took the initiative to reach out to me about the course. He generously shared all of his teaching materials, everything from notes to old exams to supplementary materials. He patiently answered my many questions. Over subsequent semesters, we became teaching partners, sharing materials, hypotheticals, and entertaining stories. (And for those who may be wondering, yes, contract law can be entertaining, like the case that addressed whether an emoji can manifest acceptance.) Professor Barbara White had a similar experience when she began teaching Secured Transactions.

These examples typify the ways Professor Tiefer supported his colleagues. He would send notes of appreciation when someone helped him with a task. He made a point of seeking people out for lunch or coffee to talk about politics, scholarship, teaching, and life. And when those conversations inspired him, as they often did, he would jot down notes in a small notebook he carried in his shirt pocket so he would be sure to remember the ideas.

In the spring, the faculty voted to award Professor Tiefer the status of Professor of Law Emeritus. It’s an honor he unquestionably deserves. I and the rest of the faculty wish him all the best in his retirement. Charles, we will miss you!

Amy E. Sloan is a professor at UBalt School of Law.

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Katie Curran O’Malley Turns Her Passion for Women’s Rights into a New Career

Posted on September 3, 2024September 10, 2024 by Juan Soto in Features 2024

By Christianna McCausland

Katie Curran O’Malley

In January 2024, Katie Curran O’Malley, J.D. ’91, became the executive director of the Women’s Law Center (WLC). Within a week she was in Annapolis with another colleague, advocating for bills related to access to women’s reproductive healthcare and wage equality. Despite O’Malley’s extensive legal career, it was the first time she had ever testified in front of a legislative hearing.

“I could tell that the legislators really respected the opinions of the Women’s Law Center,” she says. “I think it’s because we’ve had such great lawyers who have been there over the years for really important bills, and when we go, they pay attention. I want to make sure we continue to do that.”

Being at the forefront of women’s rights has been a hallmark of O’Malley’s career. She began as a law clerk and then a prosecutor in Baltimore County, working for 13 years on “every case imaginable,” from robbery to white-collar crime. But she had her sights set on the bench.

“I appeared before so many judges that set a good example for me, I knew I wanted to do that,” she says. “The judges I wanted to be like afforded the parties the opportunity to be heard, were respectful, were knowledgeable of the law, and made sure everyone had a fair chance.”

In 2001, when Gov. Parris Glendening appointed her an associate district court judge for Baltimore City (a position she held for 20 years), she wanted to model the best of what she’d seen in the courtroom, having witnessed the worst, particularly in cases of intimate partner violence.

“As a young prosecutor, I didn’t like the way the victims were being treated. I thought they were being revictimized by going through the criminal justice system,” she says. “When someone would take the step and be willing to testify to the abuse they were receiving, they would be treated so poorly [by the court], they weren’t going to come back.”

O’Malley says that while judges must always be unbiased, domestic violence cases require context and special scrutiny because, if handled poorly, it could mean someone’s life. “You need to balance a person’s need for safety and some else’s need for liberty, and you don’t want to get the balance wrong,” she says. She saw such a need for judges to understand how to approach these cases that she, along with judges (all now retired) and fellow UBalt Law alumni Christopher Panos, J.D. ’89, Joann Ellinghaus-Jones, J.D. ’81, and Alexandra “Sandy” Williams, J.D. ’81, created best-practices training for new judges. Working with the National Council for Juvenile and Family Court Judges, she taught best practices in domestic violence cases around the country.

A Way of Life

O’Malley speaks at an ERA rally in Annapolis

O’Malley is a woman who likes to be busy. It’s a work ethic she says she got from her parents. She has raised four children and balanced her own career with the demands of that of her husband Martin, who was both mayor of Baltimore City and governor of Maryland, as well as a candidate for U.S. president. (He’s now the commissioner of the Social Security Administration.)

When she opted for law school, UBalt was the only school she applied to, not just because her father, J. Joseph Curran Jr., LL.B. ’59, was an alumnus, but because she needed a night school option so she could balance school and her job in finance. It’s not surprising then that when she retired from the judiciary in 2021, she was not planning to slow down.

In 2022, she ran for Maryland attorney general (the position her father once held). When she lost the election, the job at WLC emerged, and it seemed to her the perfect blend of her interests in advocacy and law.

Hon. Barbara Baer Waxman, J.D. ’80, now retired, has known O’Malley since she was a prosecutor and has watched her emerge as an expert in the field of domestic violence. She says O’Malley “is passionate. She cares. This is not a job, it’s a way of life for her.”

Waxman says the WLC job is a perfect fit for O’Malley because she brings so much knowledge to the position and is no longer constrained by a position in the judiciary. “As judges, we are hugely limited in how much we can do in advocacy,” Waxman explains. “Katie brings passion and the background of all she’s seen and learned, and now she has the ability to effectuate real change — both legislatively and one-on-one with victims’ rights.”

At the Women’s Law Center, O’Malley oversees a staff of 20. In addition to legislative advocacy, the center has numerous programs and services, including free legal representation for those seeking protective orders, and no-cost access to family law attorneys, which would be cost- prohibitive for many of WLC’s clients. There are programs specific to the needs of foreign-born victims of domestic violence and sexual assault, to ensure equal protection under the law, and WLC’s statewide hotlines—one for employment law, one for family law—are staffed by experienced attorneys who provide information free of charge to callers.

Interesting given O’Malley’s background, WLC is also part of the state’s judicial selection process, which means they interview prospective new judges and make recommendations to the selection committee.

O’Malley says she loves that WLC gives her the opportunity to interact with other attorneys, and she particularly loves the energy of young lawyers. She should, as three of her four children are lawyers. Although she and Martin are both very busy, she says they love to travel. And her garden and rescue chihuahua help keep her balanced.

O’Malley says the world of law, both for young female lawyers and for clients, has changed since she first walked into a courtroom. But it’s still far from an equitable place, and one gets the sense O’Malley sees a lot of improvements she’d like to see in the legal system.

“I do think things have gotten better,” she says, “but you can never be complacent.”

Christianna McCausland is a writer based in Baltimore.

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Alexander Giles Navigates the Depths of Maritime Law in Baltimore and Beyond

Posted on September 3, 2024September 10, 2024 by Juan Soto in Features 2024

By Adam Stone

When the Key Bridge came down, Alexander Giles, J.D. ’97, got busy. He’s leveraging a broad range of legal skills to help multiple clients navigate their respective parts of that Mar. 26, 2024, disaster.

It’s perhaps not surprising that Giles should find himself in this position. Maritime law seems to have been his destiny.

“My dad was in the Coast Guard for 24 years. He served in Vietnam and retired in 1991, which was right before I went to law school,” he says. In his second year at UBalt Law, Giles took a maritime law class and knew he’d found his fit. “It was serendipity.”

His instructor introduced him to a maritime lawyer at Semmes, Bowen & Semmes, and he’s never looked back. Now at Tydings & Rosenberg, he’s one of the premier maritime attorneys in the nation.

Giles says he represents “the 800-pound gorillas in the Port of Baltimore, the most obvious one being Ports America Chesapeake.” The other emerging heavyweight is Tradepoint Atlantic.

Among these big players, maritime legal issues can run the gamut. “Think about all the laws that affect people on land. You have all of that in maritime law, you’re just dealing with ocean commerce. You’re dealing with incidents that happen on the water,” he says.

In practical terms, “it’s anything from corporate-type issues to personal injury to cargo damage,” he says. “You can have employment law issues, workers’ comp issues, wrongful death issues, personal injury issues, contract issues, theft of cargo, and criminal actions as well.”

With the collapse of the Key Bridge, Giles has had to bring all those skills to the table.

“I’ve got several clients that are involved. Ports America, for example, is where the ship that struck the bridge left from, and that’s where the ship had been docked. They don’t have any suspected liability, but with the NTSB and U.S. Coast Guard and FBI investigations, there were a lot of touchpoints in terms of what they knew, and what they didn’t know,” he says.

Tradepoint Atlantic stepped in when the bridge went down, paving lots to use as laydown space for all the steel that needed to be moved from the channel. They also agreed to take and unload numerous ships destined for other terminals located inside the Key Bridge. Another client, McAllister Towing, had two tugs guiding the M/V Dali, the massive container ship that struck the bridge, during the early morning hours in question.

“The tugs were released by the pilot about 20 minutes before the ship hit the bridge, so they should not have any liability or exposure,” he says. But with repairs estimated at $1.9 billion, “there’s a big delta there between what sort of money may be available from litigation, as opposed to what money is needed to rebuild the bridge.”

That means he has a lot of work to do to demonstrate that his client is not, and should not be, on the hook for any of that funding.

In an incident as big as this one, Giles says, “It could be its own bar exam in terms of all the legal issues that are involved,” he says. To succeed as a lawyer in this environment, “You have to have a broad knowledge of all the laws that could be implicated. You need to know all the issues, because the issues all impact each other.”

Water and Wind

The Key Bridge incident is only one of the things keeping Giles busy these days. He’s also deeply involved in the legal work needed to bring to life offshore wind farms off the Maryland coast. Here, too, complexity is a dominant theme.

“There are a lot of pieces that go into making offshore wind successful,” he says. “My involvement has been on the maritime side: In terms of assessing navigability, pathways for commercial vessels, and how the lease space affects or doesn’t affect those pathways.”

The U.S. Coast Guard is involved, and the Jones Act also comes into play. That’s a federal law requiring goods shipped between U.S. ports to be transported on ships that are built, owned and operated by Americans. The law will impact what vessels may be used for the anticipated construction and installation of offshore wind turbines.

Offshore wind power “is going to happen in Maryland, just like it will in all the other states up and down the East Coast. It’s just going to take a little time,” he says.

Giles says his University of Baltimore experience prepared him well for the demands of a career in maritime law.

“One of the reasons I chose University of Baltimore was because it had a reputation of looking at things from a practical standpoint: Here’s how you practice law, but here’s what really happens,” he says.

“In my three years of law school I learned what happens in court, what happens when you work up a case, how to achieve the best result for your client — both from a legal perspective and also a business perspective,” he says. That kind of education “really helped me understand how to be effective for my clients.”

Adam Stone is a writer based in Annapolis.
Photo by Larry Canner.

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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.