News

Minnesota Women Lawyers has announced that 3L Meghan Knapp is the recipient of the 2020 Equal Justice Award.

The annual award invites for a paper submitted by a Minnesota law student on a topic involving law and social justice.

Despite the COVID-19 pandemic and statewide stay-at-home order, business is booming for a Minnesota Law program that offers free legal advice sessions to local small business owners.

The COVID-19 pandemic has revealed many things about the United States, not least of which is the frayed condition of its societal safety nets. But a collaboration between the University of Minnesota Law School and Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y., is putting at ease some worries for farm workers in upstate New York.

When Professor Fionnuala Ní Aoláin reached out to her research assistants and asked who would be interested in helping to develop a worldwide tracker of governmental responses to the COVID-19 outbreak, 2Ls Abby Oakland and Seiko Shastri jumped at the opportunity.

Professor Jill Hasday’s book, Intimate Lies and the Law, has won the 2020 Scribes Book Award “for the best work of legal scholarship published during the previous year.”

Scribes, the American Society of Legal Writers, has presented this award since 1961. Each year, the honor goes to a single work selected from a highly competitive field.

Thomas B. Poch ’67, who served for 15 years as a judge in Minnesota’s 1st Judicial District and as an assistant Ramsey County attorney for nearly three decades before that, died peacefully in his sleep at Breck Homes in Bloomington on March 15. He was 77 and had been diagnosed with dementia.

Poch joined the office of the Ramsey County Attorney shortly after earning his J.D. from the Law School. During his 29 years in that office, he headed up the Criminal Division and the Crimes Against Persons Unit, among other leadership roles.

Amy Monahan, Melvin Steen & Corporate Donors Professor and associate dean for research & planning at the Law School, has been named a Distinguished McKnight University Professor. 

The Distinguished McKnight University Professorship program honors the University's “most distinguished and highest-achieving mid-career faculty who have …. made significant advances in their careers at the University of Minnesota, whose work and reputation are identified with the University, and whose accomplishments have brought great renown and prestige to Minnesota."

Professor Susan Wolf will co-lead a statewide Minnesota COVID Ethics Collaborative created to rapidly share expertise and support sound ethical policy to cope with the moral challenges posed by the COVID-19 crisis.

The collaborative brings together experts from organizations across the state including ethics, law, public health, medicine, nursing, disaster planning, and spiritual care. It is a joint venture of the Minnesota Department of Health, the State Health Care Coordination Center, Minnesota Hospital Association, and the University of Minnesota. 

Mary Louise Lockhart, who with her husband Greer Lockhart ’53 generously supported the Law School for many years, passed away at the age of 90 on Feb. 14, 2020.

Yen Florczak ’98 worked at 3M as an engineer for a couple of years before she enrolled at Minnesota Law. During her student years, she served as a law clerk at 3M, joining the company as an intellectual property attorney after graduation. Today, she is 3M’s chief intellectual property counsel.

Can you describe your day-to-day work as chief intellectual property counsel at 3M?