News

At all levels of education, meaningful teacher feedback is crucial to a student’s growth. But until recently, law schools seldom gave students more than a cold letter grade on exams weeks, if not months, after the completion of their first-semester core classes.

When Troy Bader ’88 launched his legal career 30 years ago, his long-term interest was in a transactional practice. His immediate impulse, though, was to get into the courtroom and try cases.

David S. Weissbrodt has collected documents that fill 100 file cabinets. He has shepherded more than 500 interns into his chosen field. He has founded a Human Rights Center at Minnesota Law that turns 30 this year. But for this internationally renowned human rights lawyer, author, scholar, teacher, and advocate, who officially retired Sept. 1, the work is never done.

The Law School’s magazine, known for the last 13 years as Perspectives, has undergone a name change. Starting with the current issue (Fall 2018), the magazine’s new name is Minnesota Law.

“We renamed the magazine Minnesota Law to more closely align it to the Law School’s branding and better connect it to the Law School community,” said Dean Garry W. Jenkins in a letter to readers in the inaugural edition of Minnesota Law.

Welcome to a new version of your alumni magazine! As you may recall, our award-winning alumni magazine was formerly called Perspectives, a name it has borne since fall 2005. Prior to that, the magazine’s title was Law Alumni News. Today we rename the magazine Minnesota Law, to more closely align it with the Law School’s branding and better connect to our Law School community. After 13 years in the same format, the time also seemed right to freshen and modernize the look and feel of the magazine. We hope you like it, and, as always, we welcome your feedback.

Cheryl Dalby ’95 has accepted the position of chief executive officer of the Minnesota State Bar Association, Hennepin County Bar Association, and Ramsey County Bar Associations.

The combined CEO position was created after the boards of directors of the three associations decided in June 2018 to adopt a shared staff model to better coordinate efforts, increase efficiencies, and improve member value. Dalby, who has served as executive director of the Ramsey County Bar Association for the last 18 years, was selected after a nationwide search.

The Law School’s National Moot Court Competition teams continued the program’s success in achieving outstanding results at the Region 14 tournament, with one team making it to the semi-finals and the other emerging as regional champions.

The Region 14 competition was hosted by the University of South Dakota Law School in Sioux Falls on Nov. 16-17. The Respondent team (3Ls Allison Chadwick, Kelly Nizzari, and Brendan Johnson) completed a clean sweep of the awards: Region 14 champions; best Respondent brief; best overall brief; and best oral advocate in the finals (Nizzari).

Justice Alan C. Page ’78 received the nation's highest civillian honor, the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

This prestigious award may be given by the president to individuals who have made especially meritorious contributions to the security or national interests of the United States, to world peace, or to cultural or other significant public or private endeavors.

At a special program celebrating the 30th anniversary of the Human Rights Center, Professor Michael Posner, a former top U.S. State Department official and well-known human rights advocate and scholar, marked the occasion with a celebration of the progress made on human rights in the last three decades and exhortation to continue to build on that work.

The spring 2018 edition of Perspectives, the Law School's alumni magazine, recently was recognized with two design excellence awards by the Minnesota Media & Publishing Association (MMPA).