Emory Lawyer | Fall 2013

lawyer FALL 2013

Extreme moves Sheetal Aiyer 04L is vice president of venues for Tough Mudder, “probably the toughest event on the planet.�

Also The China connection Opening dialogue for a better world From Georgia to Georgia New approach to exporting democracy

v d dean’s view

Expanding our global reach

As I travel around the country meeting with alumni, I am frequently asked about Emory Law’s global ambitions.

Robert A. Schapiro Dean and Asa Griggs Candler Professor of Law

I am pleased to report that one of our strategic priorities is to extend the global reach of an Emory Law education. In a number of exciting ways, we are working to ensure that people from around the world benefit from the extraordinary teaching and scholarship that Emory Law offers.

People in every region recognize the value of the rule of the law and the success of the American legal system in promoting economic growth, even as it safeguards individual rights. Students, practitioners, and officials from other countries seek to learn about law in the United States, and Emory Law is expanding its leadership in reaching this global audience.

Sometimes we carry the Emory Law banner abroad. Reuben Guttman 85L and Matthew J. McCoyd 93L joined professors Nat Gozansky and Paul Zwier in China in March to train Shanghai prosecutors and other Chinese lawyers on investigation strategies for the prosecution of financial fraud and insider trading cases.

Emory faculty also are teaching courses in Mexico, Norway, Kenya, Ireland, Singapore, Israel, and the Republic of Georgia, among other countries.

Global education takes place here at Emory as well. In June, 29 judges from China joined us for an inaugural three-week introduction to American law. Next spring, we will host Chinese prosecutors and defense lawyers as part of a partnership with Jiao Tong University’s KoGuan Law School in Shanghai. At the same time, the number of international students in our JD, JM, LLM, and SJD programs continues to grow.

Now an Emory Law education is available virtually everywhere. This past spring, Professor Polly Price offered our first massive open online course (MOOC). Twenty thousand students from around the world took her course in Immigration and Citizenship. The Internet never will take the place of an in-person Socratic dialogue, but then again, even if we used every available classroom, we could not fit 20,000 students into Gambrell Hall.

As students from around the world seek an Emory Law education, so Emory Law continues to prepare its students to practice in a global environment. I frequently hear from alumni about the importance of understanding the international implications of transactions and disputes and the need to be aware of potential applications of foreign law. As foreign students, judges, and practitioners come to Emory, our students and faculty learn from them about their legal systems.

Our faculty attend closely to international legal developments, and their scholarship has impact around the globe. In May, for example, Harvard University Press published Professor Teemu Ruskola’s book, Legal Orientalism: China, the United States, and Modern Law, and Robert W. Woodruff Professor Martha Fineman received an honorary degree from Sweden’s Lund University.

But perhaps the most exciting aspect of extending the global reach of an Emory Law education is the resulting expansion of our international network of alumni. Through alumni, Emory Law will have its greatest influence around the world.

In this issue of Emory Lawyer, you can read about some of our international outreach as well as Emory Law programs closer to home that are influencing public policy, helping juveniles, and aiding returning veterans.

You also will find articles about several alumni who have taken paths less traveled in their careers. In addition, this issue premiers a new format designed to help tell the Emory Law story and share the remarkable accomplishments of our alumni and friends. As always, we welcome and encourage your comments and suggestions. dean’s view overrun

Emory Lawyer Fall 2013

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About Emory Law yer Emory Lawyer is published biannually

by Emory University School of Law, in partnership with Emory Creative Group, and is distributed free to alumni and friends.

Advisory Committee Robert B. Ahdieh, Vice Dean Susan Carini, Executive Director, Emory Creative Group Susan Clark, Associate Dean for Marketing and Communications and Chief Marketing Officer Cecily Craighill, Director of Alumni Relations Katherine Hinson, Senior Director of Internal Communications and Engagement Timothy Holbrook, Associate Dean of Faculty Joella Hricik, Associate Dean for Development and Alumni Relations Dean Robert A. Schapiro Editor Marlene Goldman Contributors Lisa Ashmore, Martin Bunt, Susan Carini, Susan Clark, Rachel Erdman, Dana Goldman, Stacey Jones, Maria Lameiras, Martha McKenzie, Breckyn Wood, William Mosher, Rafael Pardo, Eric Rangus, Joshua Thomas, Christine Van Dusen, Yael Williams Design Gordon Boice Photography Ann Bordon, Dmitry Gudkov, Kay Hinton, LeahAndMark Photography, Scott Rudd Cover Photo Dmitry Gudkov Contact Us: We welcome your comments and suggestions. Please send letters to the editor, news, story ideas, and class notes to communications@ law.emory.edu or contact Susan Clark, Emory University School of Law, 1301 Clifton Road, Atlanta, GA 30322; 404.727.0055; susan.clark@ emory.edu.

Send changes of address by mail to Office of Development and Alumni Records, Emory University, 1762 Clifton Road, Suite 1400, Atlanta, GA 30322.

Email: communications@law.emory.edu Website: law.emory.edu

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The China connection:

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From Georgia to Georgia

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Opening dialogue for a better world Chinese prosecutors and judges aim to combat fraud, find commonalities, and explore the differences between legal systems in China and the United States.

Former Republic of Georgia politician David Tkeshelashvili 06L brings leaders of developing countries to Emory Law to learn about democracy within their own cultural contexts.

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Extreme moves

The changing job market has inspired some Emory Law alumni to leverage their law school education, their personal interests, and their entrepreneurial spirit into nontraditional careers. Sheetal Aiyer 04L and Stephen Kunen 11L have gone to the extreme (sports, that is).

Departments:

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Student Voices

The student-run Emory Law Volunteer Clinic for Veterans is in prime position to alleviate the challenges facing returning veterans.

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F a c u lt y V o i c e s

Professor Rafael Pardo examines access to Chapter 7 relief by pro se debtors.

Securities expert Urska Velikonja says regulate business as if all people matter.

2 2 A l u m n i P r o f i l e s

Greg Slamowitz 90L flips the pyramid.

Aloke Chakravarty 97L is co-prosecutor of the Boston Marathon bomber.

Patrise Perkins-Hooker 84B 84L will take the State Bar reins.

2 5 C l a ss n o t e s

Thad Kodish 00L: New president of the Alumni Board.

Emory Chicks: Eight friends from the Class of 1976.

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Giving Back

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Worth Noting

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the china connecti Opening dialogue for a better world b y C h r i st i ne Va n D usen P h oto s b y L e a h a ndM a r k P hOto g r a ph y

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Zhou Jianjun had read textbooks, thumbed through articles, and watched T V courtroom

Through all that, he had gained a certain academic and, perhaps, melodramatic sense of the American legal system.

But it wasn’t until Jianjun, presiding judge of the 4th Civil Division of the Tsingdao Intermediate Court in China, traveled to Atlanta as part of an Emory Law program that he saw how laws are interpreted and enforced in America.“This was my first time in the United States,” he says. “What surprised me most was the mutual lack of knowledge or understanding between the two nations.”

Emory Law is improving that level of understanding through a number of initiatives, including two ground-

dramas.

The idea to partner with KoGuan Law School was first floated after Professor Weiping Sun, a faculty member at KoGuan, visited Emory in 2010.

“She took my evidence class and then participated in the Trial Techniques program and became very interested in developing a partnership between our schools,” says Paul J. Zwier II, professor of law.

Although a lot of American law schools make a casual effort to engage with China, Emory Law is “in this for the long haul,” says Vice Dean Robert B. Ahdieh, professor of law and director of the Center on Federalism and Intersystemic Governance.

“China is a strategic, economic, political, and social force participating in the global community in a way that it wasn’t 20 or 30 years ago,” he says. “We want to be part of shaping the direction that China takes going forward. And we count ourselves lucky to be part of that.”

Practical approaches to market integrity

on breaking programs with China: the Financial Fraud Prosecution Program with Jiao Tong University’s KoGuan Law School in Shanghai and the Chinese Judicial Program with City University of Hong Kong’s School of Law and the Chinese Supreme People’s Court.

The programs aim to open dialogue, find commonalities, and explore the differences between China and the United States and their systems of law.

“It helps us understand the Chinese cultural and legal system better and affords them an opportunity to understand more about our culture and legal system,” says Adjunct Professor Matthew J. McCoyd 93L, associate director of Emory’s Center for Advocacy and Dispute Resolution. “It establishes relationships, and those ultimately make for a better world.”

For the Financial Fraud Prosecution Program, initiated in 2012 and recently hosted in March, Emory educators traveled to Shanghai to train the financial crimes unit of the prosecutors’ offices in investigating securities fraud.

“They’re driven by economics, and they desperately want to demonstrate that their markets have integrity,” says Reuben Guttman 85L, an adjunct faculty member in Emory Law’s Kessler-Eidson Trial Techiques Program and a director at Grant & Eisenhofer. “So any programs they can develop with Western countries that demonstrate they are doing things to maintain integrity are critically important.”

The program is part of a larger partnership with KoGuan Law School that allows Chinese lawyers to study American law and earn a master’s degree.

The half-day session in March focused on the investigation of insider-trading claims and helped participants determine what evidence could be used in court and how to secure leads, order an investigation, question witnesses, and collect digital evidence.

“This program is designed to combat international securities fraud,” says Robert Schapiro, Emory Law dean and Asa Griggs Candler Professor of Law. “Both of our countries recognize the importance of market integrity.

We are promoting dialogue to find practical approaches to that goal. This is a novel role for a law school.”

The program also acquainted Emory educators with the structure of Chinese financial law and the best ways to cooperate in a successful international prosecution.

“The program was particularly well timed, as China is making a big push to fight corruption in its financial

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The Center for I n t e r n at i o n a l & C o m pa r at i v e Law at E m o r y International law, both public and private, is best understood through a working knowledge of comparative politics, history, and culture.

Emory Law’s Center for International and Comparative Law explores the interaction among international and domestic legal systems from various perspectives, including politics, finance, trade, crime, human rights, religion, the environment, immigration, tax, and labor.

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the china connection

markets,” says Zwier. “There is an understanding that to draw investment, China must investigate and prosecute manipulations of the market and insider trading.”

As more Chinese companies seek financial investment from American markets, these businesses are facing more and more allegations of securities fraud, Guttman says.

“A lot of this stems from a lack of understanding of the transparency and obligations that surround our securities law,” he says.

Since the conclusion of the session, the participating prosecutors have put several Chinese companies on notice, Zwier says.

“Now they will start selecting cases for prosecution,” he says. “The challenges Chinese prosecutors face in prosecuting prominent insiders are very similar to those US prosecutors face.”

Putting the law in context: East and West Emory Law’s second program—the product of an alliance between Emory Law and City University of Hong Kong’s School of Law and the Chinese Supreme People’s Court—brought 29 Chinese judges to Atlanta in June for a month-long immersion in the legal system of the United States.

This first class of judges included presiding and assistant judges from Intermediate People’s Courts

Reuben Guttman 85L (above, center) led the prosecutors program along with Professor Paul J. Zwier. Other Emory participants included Daniel Guttman, Matthew J. McCoyd 93L, Assistant US Attorney Steven Grimberg 98L, and Jennifer Williams 12L. At right, Chinese judges came to Emory to learn about the US judicial system.

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These programs are a catalyst to understanding each other and creating common mechanisms to solve cross-border problems.”

—Reuben Guttman, Grant & Eisenhofer

throughout China. More than half of the participants were female.

Participants visited the US Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit courthouse where key decisions were made during the civil rights movement. They also toured the Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change and The Carter Center.

“We offer a unique perspective and lens through which to look at constitutional law and the US legal system,” McCoyd says. “It’s very appropriate that we’re hosting this program in Atlanta.”

On another field trip, the judges visited the DeKalb County Drug Court and the DeKalb County Jail.

On the academic side, the judges took customized classes at Emory Law, focusing on US constitutional law, criminal law, and the evidentiary system.

“Our approach is to use this as a learning experience for us,” Guttman says. “When you bring over judges from China, you’re bringing over a slice of their legal system and exposing our students and scholars to that experience. That’s a pretty remarkable learning opportunity.”

The judges also participated in mock trials, sitting not just as judges but also as prosecutors, defense lawyers, witnesses, and jurors.

“They don’t have oral evidence in mainland China; it’s primarily written submissions,” McCoyd says. “So we wanted them to experience what it’s like to present evidence in an oral system like ours.”

The judges were fascinated by the differences between their procedures and those in place in the US. “In our system, you train to be a lawyer, you practice law, and then some subset of lawyers—either by dint of the appointment process or election—seek to be judges,” Ahdieh says. “In China, you become a judge first, then progressively rise through the ranks. It’s a bureaucratic system of promotion.”

This was true for Jianjun, who worked as a court clerk for three years before taking the bench in 2002. He now presides mainly over commercial cases, particularly those involving foreign trade and investment.

He and the other judges recognized several notable differences between the legal systems of China and the

US. For example, in China a person is entitled to a jury trial only if he is facing seven or more years in prison. In the US, it’s six months or more.

And then there are the subtler, but no less important, cultural differences. In China, a fundamental part of business and society is guanxi, an understanding between two or more people that allows for providing favors and asking for them. Reciprocity—the idea of “you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours”—is the key. But Westerners often interpret guanxi as corruption and cronyism.

“It seems like we know a lot about each other, but there is still a lot more to learn,” Jianjun says.

Says Guttman, “Understanding the law is not just a question of reading the law; everything needs to be understood in context. Words can be translated with precision, but the meanings may be different, and we need to navigate those differences. It’s virtually impossible to practice complex legal endeavors today without transcending Right to a jury trial geographic boundaries.”

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based on possible sentence US:

months

China:

years

Catalyst for mutual understanding

These two programs with China aren’t a one-off for Emory Law; administrators say the school’s commitment is ongoing and that these partnerships are likely to evolve and grow. “We’re already talking about innovations for next year,” Ahdieh says.

One exciting possibility is a joint master’s degree program, wherein students from China could study in Shanghai for the fall and then move to Emory Law for the spring term.

“It really is a two-way street,” Guttman says. “It’s not about us going over there and talking about our legal system and how you should adopt it. Ours is flawed. These programs are a catalyst to understanding each other and creating common mechanisms to solve cross-border problems.”

It’s increasingly important for members of the legal communities in China and the United States to understand each other and work together, Ahdieh says.

“There is a recognition that the Chinese economy and political and social order are increasingly engaged with the world,” he says. “We are one global community. To succeed in that world, it’s important to have an understanding of both American and Chinese law and the structures that define each legal system.”

R e lat e d R e a d i n g Legal Orientalism: China, the United States, and Modern Law (Harvard University Press, 2013) by Teemu Ruskola

The association of China with lawlessness and the United States with rule of law has a long history, says Emory Law Professor Teemu Ruskola. The term legal orientalism refers to a set of political and cultural narratives about what is and is not law, and who has it. The book is a comparative and historical study about ideas of Chinese and US law, and of how those ideas have produced “distinctive subjectivities, articulated social relations, and shaped geopolitical conditions” in China, the United States, and globally.

Principled Negotiation and Mediation in the International Arena—Talking with Evil (Cambridge University Press, 2013)

by Paul J. Zwier Emory Law Professor Paul Zwier envisions a foreign policy in which the United States, through the use of principled and pragmatic mediators, actively engages with the “enemy,” no matter how “evil.” By doing so, the United States can be actively involved in sustainable conflict resolution in some of the most intractable conflicts in the Middle East, Asia, and Africa.

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S tat e o f G e o r g i a Es t a b l i s h e d :

1732 59,425 9,919,945 1,500 Area (square miles):

P o p u lat i o n ( 2 0 1 2 ) :

Judges:

From Georgia to Georgia

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B y E r i c R a ngus

When a political party loses a national election, looking at the bright side is

rarely part of the narrative. Not so in the Republic of Georgia. Being voted out is a painful experience for any

career politician, but to hear David

Tkeshelashvili 06L tell it , the election of 2012 represented a significant milestone in his country’s history—and in his own life as well.

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R e p u b l i c o f G e o rg i a E sta b l i s h e d :

1991 26,911 4,483,800 227 Ar e a ( s q u a r e m i l e s ) :

P o p u lat i o n ( 2 0 1 2 ) :

Judges (2010):

“It was the first peaceful, democratic change of power in the history of the Republic of Georgia,” says Tkeshelashvili, who, beginning in 1995, served in various roles in the Georgian government before his party was voted out in October 2012.

The Republic of Georgia, a nation of about 4.5 million nestled in the Caucasus Mountains between Western Asia and Eastern Europe and a sovereign nation only since 1991, became independent when the Soviet Union collapsed. The republic’s first 22 years of existence have not been without difficulty, but in the past decade, Georgia has seen corruption decreasing, business growing, and its ties to democratic Western Europe and the United States strengthening.

As in the United States, the Republic of Georgia took time to transition between the election and the new government ascending to power. By the time that happened in April 2013, Tkeshelashvili was set to begin the next phase of his life and career. He reconnected with some old friends at his alma mater, Emory Law, and added new titles to his résumé: adjunct professor and associate director of the Center for International and Comparative Law. He also took up a new challenge—creating and captaining an institute that helps developing nations pursue culturally applicable democracy-building experiences similar to those he helped lead in Georgia.

Long history of collaboration Emory’s relationship with the Republic of Georgia dates back more than two decades, and it has touched the

highest levels of Georgian government. Former Prime Minister Lado Gurgenidze 93B, for instance, is a graduate of Goizueta Business School.

The late Harold Berman, Emory’s first Robert W. Woodruff Professor of Law, opened the door to Georgia, often visiting there (as well as other regions of the former Soviet Union) during his more than 20 years on the Emory Law faculty. Kenneth Walker 56OX 58C 63M 65MR 70MR, professor of medicine and neurology at the School of Medicine, established the AtlantaTbilisi Healthcare Partnership in 1992 (Atlanta and the Georgian capital are sister cities), and it is still going strong today. In fact, it was Walker who first connected Tkeshelashvili to Emory.

In 2004, Tkeshelashvili had served in the Georgian parliament for nearly 10 years, and he was looking to do something different. He decided to spend a year in the US pursuing a master of laws (LLM) degree. That’s when a mutual friend in Tbilisi introduced him to Walker. The medical school professor took an immediate liking to the young politician and, upon learning of Tkeshelashvili’s plans to attend law school at another institution, made plans to steal him away.

Walker contacted Emory Law and encouraged the school to pursue Tkeshelashvili. Tkeshelashvili entered Emory Law in fall 2005. He met Professor of Law Nat Gozansky, then director of the LLM program, and the two became fast friends. Tkeshelashvili earned his LLM in 2006, then went home to a new job in the Georgian Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources Protection.

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from georgia to georgia

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“The year I spent in Atlanta gave me a lot,” says Tkeshelashvili, who is fluent in Georgian, English, and Russian. “There were fresh ideas, different knowledge, and a different experience. It was a starting point not just for my career, but for a new life, basically.”

After graduating, Tkeshelashvili kept his Emory ties and hosted gatherings of fellow Georgian Emory alumni in Tbilisi. Other contributions were more substantive.

In 2009, Tkeshelashvili was the driving force behind a program that sent Georgian civil servants to Emory Law to earn their LLM degrees and—as he did—return home to put their newfound knowledge to use for the betterment of the country. Gozansky managed it from the Emory side. Not only do the Georgian students complete

the formal LLM curriculum, they do field placements in the city of Decatur where they learn the inner workings of a city of 18,000—rather large by Georgian standards.

Some of their assignments might appear tedious— riding with sanitation workers or police officers, attending council meetings—but for government workers in a democracy that’s barely reached drinking age, the experience is invaluable. Four Georgian students have joined the LLM program in the 2013–2014 academic year, after which Tkeshelashvili aims to reestablish the pipeline.

Even though his party is out of power, reconnection might not be as difficult as it sounds. Tkeshelashvili has many friends in the current government and even when his party was in power, the selection of which students came to the United States wasn’t political. Emory chose them without government input.

he Carter Center has excelled T in shaping elections. What we want to do is everything that leads up to elections.”

A new approach to exporting democratic ideals

—Nat Gozansky, Professor of Law Emeritus

David Tkeshelashvili 06L Former Republic of Georgia politician

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The as yet unnamed institute Tkeshelashvili is building falls under the auspices of Emory Law’s Center for International and Comparative Law. Even though the idea of

G r o w t h o f E m o r y L a w ’ s LLM From a handful of students just a few years ago, Emory exporting democratic ideals to transitional governments is not a new one, how Emory seeks to do so is.

Law’s LLM program has grown to include 44 candidates “One of the old criticisms of the process of helptoday and partnerships around the world, including ing countries develop their legal systems was that it n China University of Political Science and Law was characterized by a kind of quasi-imperialism,” says n Sungkyunkwan University Law School, South Korea Robert Ahdieh, vice dean, professor of law, and director n The Republic of Georgia Ministry of Development and of the Center on Federalism and Intersystemic GoverInfrastructure nance. “It was ‘We have an answer. We’re going to come n Shanghai Jiao Tong University, China and give it to you.’ And we had the same answer for n Tsinghua University, China every single country. Just translate this into your native n Shanghai University, China language and you’ll be set.”

Rather than exporting American ideals—legal and otherwise—to newly democratic nations, Tkeshelashvili, with Gozansky’s assistance, is interested in turning that plan on its head. Similar to the way Georgian civil servants have been coming to Emory for years, the tions—we’ll be able to help the newly elected leadership institute—once fully up and running—will bring young prioritize what they need to do to succeed.” leaders to the United States (and Emory Law) so they “Democracy does not happen in a day; it is a process,” can gather new knowledge and interpret it within their Tkeshelashvili says. “We sometimes miss opportunities own cultural and governmental contexts. to help leaders when whole populations can benefit.

“When you bring people like David to the US and A democracy may start on election day, but it is a very let them see how our government functions, they are complex structure and involves many factors.” going to be able to adjust those ideas so they work in Building an institute from scratch also is a long, their own environments,” says Gozansky, now professor many-factored process, but its potential to bolster of law emeritus. the world’s emerging democracies may be well “There are tons of success stories, not just in Georworth the wait. gia but in many other Central and Eastern European countries,” Tkeshelashvili adds. “There are other countries in North Africa, Southeast Asia, and Latin America that can benefit from this type of experience. This is what we will try to Emory Law by the numbers do. We can serve as a kind of consultancy and work with these governments as they are in the enrolled students* representing process of transition.”

Internal partnerships with the Halle Institute countries and The Carter Center are being forged, and Tkeshelashvili has already states touched base with colleagues undergraduate institutions in Eastern Europe to solicit their thoughts about how they achieved their success. *Degree options available: JD, JM, LLM, SJD “When we’re successful, we should end up as The Carter Center’s best buddy,” Gozansky says. “The Carter Center has excelled in shaping elections. What we want to do is everything that leads up to elections, or—once they’ve had the elec-

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market for lawyers has inspired some Emory alumni to leverage their law school education, their personal interests, and their entrepreneurial spirit into nontraditional careers. Two alumni, Sheetal Aiyer 04L and Stephen Kunen 11L, have gone to the extreme—extreme sports, that is. Here are their stories.

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extreme moves

The changing job

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One tough mudder B y M a r lene G o ld m a n ph oto s b y D m i t r y G udk o v

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Sheetal Aiyer 04L could take mud, fire, and ice,

even 10,000 volts of electricity. But walking a plank 20 feet up in the air then dropping into a pool below terrified him. Worse was crawling on hands, knees, and belly through an underground mud tunnel, fighting off claustrophobic waves of fear, even as his teammates and colleagues urged him on.

It was well worth it, says Aiyer about making it through a Tough Mudder obstacle course. “You conquer your fears and feel like you’ve conquered the world. Then you get your orange headband and your Dos Equis, and you join the Mudder Nation.”

Challenging himself is nothing new to Aiyer, who last year became vice president for venues at Tough Mudder, which in just three years has emerged as the self-proclaimed “probably toughest event on the planet.” It puts on hardcore, 10- to 12-mile obstacle courses designed by British Special Forces to test all-around strength, stamina, and mental grit. These untimed challenges encourage teamwork—and demand a sense of humor—in the face of such physical and mental terrors as Fire Walker, Kiss of Mud, Arctic Enema, Berlin Walls, Boa Constrictor, and Trench Warfare.

Growing up together Aiyer came to Tough Mudder through a series of career moves that led him from litigator, to start-up adviser, to in-house counsel, and most recently to brand ambassador for Tough Mudder.

After spending six years in court in Texas, he moved to New York in 2010 where he worked as in-house counsel at JPMorgan Chase and then founded his own law firm, Aiyer & Petkos. He became an advocate for the “untapped entrepreneurial spirit” and ditched the billable-hour model, which he views as an impediment to start-ups. “We sold buckets of services and handled most of the basics that businesses needed to take care of to get up and running, including founding corporate

documents (articles, operating agreements), employment agreements, intellectual property registration and protection, basic tax advice, and contract drafting.”

One of his early clients was an upstart company with attitude. In its first year (2010), Tough Mudder had sponsored three events; by 2011, that number had swelled to 14 and the company had around 15 employees.

“When I was starting my firm, I knew the CEO and co-founder of Tough Mudder, Will Dean, so I reached out to him somewhat naively to compare notes. He provided a lot of advice and over time began to ask me to take a look at a contract or help him respond to someone who was trying to infringe his trademark.”

Before long, Aiyer was spending 95 percent of his time on Tough Mudder’s work, and Guy Livingstone, Tough Mudder’s other co-founder, asked Aiyer to become in-house counsel and build out their legal department.

“Tough Mudder was one of the fastest-growing companies in the world,” says Aiyer. “It was a great opportunity.”

While he wasn’t quite ready himself to tackle the toughest event on the planet—not a requirement for

“

By the end of this year, more people will have run a Tough Mudder than a marathon.”

employment—he was well prepared to bring his legal savvy to Tough Mudder, where he recruited and trained a half-dozen attorneys to help the company manage its exponential growth and manage risk.

Today, Tough Mudder’s legal department handles general corporate issues along with vendor and sponsorship agreements, taxes, employment, entertainment, and media law matters. As look-alike companies have sprung up in the wake of Tough Mudder’s success, intellectual property and licensing challenges increasingly have required dedicated attorneys to help the company grow its commercial side and protect its brand. Tough Mudder also has established strong links to outside counsel with specialties in tax law, litigation, and international law.

Last fall, Tough Mudder hired a chief legal officer with 20 years of trademark litigation experience including representing the NHL and NFL, and Aiyer transitioned to the venue-operations side of the business as a senior executive.

Location, location, location Aiyer and his team have scouted locations this year for some 53 events in five countries. They will attract about 700,000 participants—ages 18 to 80 plus—and ring up revenues exceeding $125 million. Eighty events are planned for 2014 in a dozen countries. The company now has more than 150 employees in three countries, and if its website hiring page is any indication, Tough Mudder is still growing strong.

It’s not all fun, pain, and gain though. Tough Mudder also has helped raised more than $5 million for the Wounded Warrior Project, which provides combat stress recovery, adaptive sports programs, benefits counseling, and employment services for wounded veterans.

Aiyer and his venues staff—another attorney, a former accountant, a city planner, and several recent college graduates with diverse backgrounds— work with tourism boards, chambers of commerce, city governments, and fire departments, to name a few, to ensure that each event can be delivered without a hitch to both participants and spectators. When scouting locations, his team looks for marketable and well-known venues like Whistler Resort in British Columbia, Canada. Venues need good access and transportation to accommodate the 10,000 to 30,000 participants plus spectators that flock to every Tough Mudder event. Services of all types must be available to make sure each event is delivered without a hitch.

“A lot of what I do is let people know who we are, what we do, that we are a professional event. We talk about revenue streams, how the course will be built, IP, insurance. The idea is to have consistency over time and deliver great experiences,” he says.

As a member of the Tough Mudder Executive Committee, Aiyer participates in long-term

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one tough mudder

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It’s about overcoming your fears and mental obstacles, tapping into the idea of pushing boundaries and value systems through unconventional life-changing experiences.”

Practice Societies From antitrust to sports and entertainment to torts and insurance, Emory Law’s 23 studentled practice societies help students find their passions just as Sheetal Aiyer and Stephen Kunen did. With faculty advisers, student leaders, alumni, and career strategy advisers, students plan networking and professional development events. To share your expertise with a future Emory lawyer, contact Assistant Dean for Professional Development and Career Strategy Lydia Russo at lydia.s.russo@emory.edu.

strategic discussions about international growth opportunities and system issues.

Taking safety seriously

Although no school could prepare him to be a Tough Mudder executive, Aiyer says Emory has been a cornerstone of his career. “We had a wide range of professors who helped us think about approaches to problems and how to deconstruct them. You can apply those skills to anything.”

That ability to think critically has been an important part of Aiyer’s approach as an attorney and as a Tough Mudder team member.

“It’s important to really understand what the risks are for a client and come up with meaningful solutions, to become a partner in the business,” he says. “Every company faces risks, but one thing that’s lost on many lawyers is the difference between pointing out risks and quantifying risks. We’re trained as attorneys to tell our clients there might be an issue, but what people running businesses really want is added value—strategic thinkers who embrace change. For example if there’s a risk of trademark infringement, we need to talk about the real risk, what happens if we do or don’t pursue it. I believe that we have to become meaningful advisers.”

Managing and minimizing risks is taken seriously at Tough Mudder, says Aiyer. “We’ve worked hard to build our events, and we maintain a strong commitment to safety. Specialized engineers help design our obstacles; we have the right health and safety partners, and we are continuously evaluating our safety protocols. We’ve recruited professionals from the Olympics who have experience handling large events as well.

“We are not going to eliminate risk; the idea is to minimize and mitigate it and be comfortable with the

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risk profile. We have global aspirations and intellectual property we want to protect, and it’s important that we maintain a strong safety profile.”

His enthusiasm for what he does and the people he works with is palpable. “We’ve been fortunate to attract some of the most ambitious, bright, and hardworking people I have ever met, and now that I’ve transitioned from a more traditional legal role, I’ve learned that you don’t need to follow the lock-step legal career that lots of people fall into right out of law school.

“I would encourage people to think about what they really want long term, whether it’s traditional law, government, business, even the sports or fitness industry; there are lots of directions your law degree can take you.

You just have to reach out, put yourself out there, and take educated risks.”

Coming back for more After completing his first event at Mount Snow in Vermont in July 2012, Aiyer challenged himself again in October 2012 at Tough Mudder’s Tri-State event in New Jersey along with four friends and his wife, Hilary Fairbrother 06M 06PH, who is the director of Medical Student Education at New York Methodist Hospital in Park Slope, Brooklyn. He plans a third run as well.

“It still doesn’t feel good while you’re running it,” he admits, “but then there’s this incredible sense of achievement and camaraderie. The whole idea is that people can accomplish anything they want.

“What Tough Mudder is trying to do—to push you to be better—speaks to a lot of people. The experience sticks with you and drives you back to do it again.”

b y sus a n c a r i n i 0 4 G ph oto s b y S c ott Rudd

O

that Stephen Kunen 11L has not followed the yellow brick road to this point in his career.

For starters, there is a cage, the sort in which mixed martial arts (MMA) fighters compete. Then, alongside a typical lawyer-in-suit photo is another of him in a T-shirt, shiny with sweat, his jiu-jitsu belt draped over his shoulders. Let’s call that gritty.

And “gritty” says a lot about Kunen’s career thus far. That quality carved out a place for him in the profession, and it keeps him atop his game as a blue belt in jiu-jitsu.

Kunen is a combat sports attorney practicing in the New York City area. For those itching to Google this curiosity, keep reading; Kunen’s career provides the best definition out there.

Kunen practices in the world of MMA, which is the fastest-growing sport in the world, boasting a fan base of 65 million and nipping at the heels of hockey’s popularity in the United States.

One look at his website tells the story

Unexpected career shift Combat sports law isn’t where Kunen set out to be. After spending two years as a paralegal for an intellectual property (IP) firm, he had imagined a career doing similar work for a prestigious firm. He had expected a smooth ride. But his growing interest in martial arts, coupled with the recession, changed everything, and he changed with it.

As a neuroscience undergraduate at Columbia University, Kunen fell in love with the martial arts, specifically Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu—a martial art, combat sport, and selfdefense system that focuses on grappling and especially ground fighting. Part of its appeal to Kunen—who was president of Columbia’s Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu club—is that its methods allow a physically small or weak individual a means of defending against a larger and stronger attacker by maximizing leverage.

E m o r y L aw y e r Fa l l 2 0 1 3

extreme moves

Kicking from the hip

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F eat u r e

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kicking from the hip

Bruce Lee, considered the father of MMA, believed that “the best fighter is not a boxer, karate, or judo man. The best fighter is someone who can adapt to any style, to be formless.”

Kunen describes the broader benefits of the sport this way: “I find that training MMA has many parallels to the law and life. There will be many times when you are in a dominant position and things are going your way, but you often have to learn how to escape from a dangerous situation, believe in the skills you have acquired when you Training MMA has are in danger, and maintain the many parallels to mental fortitude to persevere.”

Wanting to explore life outthe law and life.” side New York City, Kunen was interested in Emory Law in part for its Technological Innovation: Generating Economic Results (TI:GER) program, a collaboration with Georgia Institute of Technology in which PhD candidates and MBA and JD students together solve technology, commercialization, and IP issues. He also appreciated Emory Law’s transactional program and emphasis on real-world skills. And he credits Associate Professor Kay Levine with helping him bring his law and MMA interests

Kunen’s Scorecard in Get Real MMA (April 29, 2013): “Secure Your Trademark or Risk Losing Your Brand.” n Author of “Superhuman in the Octagon, Imperfect in the Courtroom: Assessing the Culpability of Martial Artists Who Kill During Street Fights,” Emory Law Journal 60:1389 (Summer 2011). n Kunen Law was named a New York City Business Solutions Success Story and a SCORE Business Counselors Success Story in 2013. n On his blog, Kunen has taken on the transgender controversy sparked by Fallon Fox, an MMA athlete born male but performing as a woman. n Married Handie Peng 13PhD. n Featured

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together in an Emory Law Journal piece (see “Kunen’s Scorecard”). In his words, “I went to the best person I could find who took a chance on my idea to write about potential issues in MMA. She was invaluable in helping me get my writing up to snuff, fleshing out the intricacies of the criminal law, while I provided the details of the martial arts.”

In 2010, at the height of the recession, Kunen sought a summer associate job. Opportunities were drying up, but he learned that the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC)—the world’s largest MMA promotion company— was looking for a legal intern. Had he drafted the job description himself, it could not have been more perfect.

MMA offers its legal experts exposure to many areas that Kunen had studied at Emory, including promotional and sponsorship agreements, trademark and copyright issues, and immigration and legislative matters.

Kunen credits the UFC with turning around the sport’s bad rap until that point—a sport that Senator John McCain once called human cockfighting. In collaboration with state athletic commissions, the UFC worked hard to get the states to regulate MMA. In 2000, New Jersey became the first state to ratify the Unified Rules of MMA; to date, 49 states have done so, with New York (ironically, for Kunen) being the only holdout.

Hope has been sparked in New York, though; the UFC filed a lawsuit alleging constitutional violations in keeping MMA out of the state, and on September 30 a federal district court judge denied the state attorney general the right to throw out the case.

Dream becomes reality The UFC internship was a dream job. Kunen got to work with Ike Lawrence Epstein, the executive vice president and general counsel for the UFC and the man who, as Vanderbilt Lawyer crows, took his company “from the verge of collapse into the lodestar for the fastest-growing sport in the world.” Days as UFC’s legal intern consisted of learning combat sports law, training with the fighters during lunch, and then going to fights at night to police trademarks—an experience close to perfection, he says.

When he graduated from Emory Law, Kunen was offered a position with Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati in New York.

He quickly saw that anyone expecting to retreat to a corner office with a huge book of work was in the wrong business. Those same people were being laid off

due to lack of cases, recalls Kunen. “Law is different now.

It is the things you fear most that you most need to do.”

Like generating your own work, which Kunen has done with unstinting dedication.

In March 2013, he separated from the firm, taking the attitude that “when nothing is easy, you might as well do what you like.” And he is doing exactly that. He is still a curiosity; in all of New York, there might be 10 combat sports attorneys.

In a sport with no union, one of Kunen’s goals is to make things better for the fighters. Kunen’s cases tend to build on one another. If, say, an MMA promoter has acquired a mixed martial artist, that person might need a visa. Beyond that, the next step might be for Kunen to draft a sponsorship agreement.

Mixed martial artists can qualify for the P-1 visa for athletes if they have achieved international recognition in martial arts–related competitions. For example, a Russian fighter who Kunen worked with applied for a P-1 visa based on his success in sambo and MMA competitions in his home country. The client has joined a company that sends its fighters to international competitions, so Kunen’s ability to coordinate the timing of the visa to a US competition is critical.

Sponsorship is key for fighters and promoters to get paid. The agreements that Kunen crafts with sponsors help fighters pay for training and other expenses while enabling promoters not only to cover the cost of producing an event but also, ideally, turn a profit. Payouts are generally based on how many audience members each fighter can attract; therefore, unless a fighter has an established following, a promoter has little incentive to give the fighter a large slice of the earnings from an event. If Kunen can convince merchants to pay the fighters to be part of an advertising campaign through endorsements, wearing and sampling products, and other creative proposals, the fighters can earn a better living.

expand and former students in a particular training system wish to open their own schools.

The business of MMA is still maturing, so there is no set path one follows to get into the sport. There remain many pitfalls along the way for an MMA company or fighter on the road to financial and athletic success.

As Kunen says, “I want to be the premier person that MMA schools turn to when they have legal issues.

I know the field. I trained in this area. As scary as these people might seem based on their public personas, I am scarier because I understand the legal and business issues behind the sport.”

Protecting clients’ rights One of Kunen’s strengths is to educate promoters about intellectual property rights in the brands they are building. New companies often appear with logos similar to existing companies’ logos, causing confusion in the industry and requiring the trademark owner to enforce his or her rights. Kunen helps clients take steps early on to register trademarks and police their marks as schools

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B y M a r t i n B unt 1 4 L w i t h R a chel E r d m a n 1 4 L

The highly decorated veteran will never forget one harrowing incident during a late-night patrol in central Baghdad. After an IED struck the Humvee in front of him,

he rushed a fellow soldier to the medics, holding his friend’s body in his right arm and his severed left leg in his left arm.

It was but one of many tragedies of war that left the former Army sergeant wounded—physically and emotionally.

The veteran is home now, but his fight is not over. After three years unsuccessfully seeking meaningful disability benefits, he has turned to the Emory Law Volunteer Clinic for Veterans (VCV) for help—one of 20 veterans or their survivors who have sought the services of the clinic since its creation in 2012.

The mission of the VCV is clear. Georgia has one of the fastest-growing veteran populations in the nation with 200,000 veterans in the greater Atlanta area and more than 777,000 in the state. With the war in Iraq over and our troops scheduled to leave Afghanistan in 2014, thousands more veterans arrive back home every month. Many need help navigating their return to civilian life, and Emory—located just down the road from the regional Veterans Administration Hospital—is in prime position to alleviate the challenges those veterans face.

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T

The idea of the Emory Law Volunteer Clinic for Veterans started after I [Martin Bunt] was elected president of the National Security Society (NSS) in spring 2012.

During my first meeting with NSS faculty adviser, Charles Shanor, he mentioned that the Military Legal Assistance Project of the Georgia Bar (MLAP) was trying to interest law schools in starting legal clinics for veterans. Shanor believed Emory Law could answer their call.

Shanor didn’t have to pitch the clinic very hard.

Before law school, I had interned with Congressman Jeff Miller (R-FL), chair of the Veterans’ Affairs Committee, whose district includes my hometown of Pensacola, headquarters of US Naval Aviation. Nothing had prepared me for the constant calls that flooded Miller’s office from both active soldiers and veterans who struggled with home foreclosures, military TRICARE, and military benefits issues. Although Miller’s office and committee staff went to great lengths to handle every issue, it was impossible for one group to do it all.

That day in Shanor’s office, I realized that a veterans legal clinic would provide an opportunity for law students to make a much-needed difference, and Emory Law was the perfect conduit.

Photo courtesy of US Department of Defense

Clinic Volunteers Make the Case for Veterans

sv student voices

By fall 2012 the idea of an Emory Law veterans clinic had garnered the enthusiastic support of students (including some veterans), Atlanta attorneys who practiced veterans law, and the general counsels at the Atlanta regional office of the VA. Even with MLAP support, we still needed faculty supervision, student leadership, an organizational structure, funding, attorneys to handle cases and mentor students, students to participate in the clinic, proper training, space to host the clinic, and, of course, clients.

The pieces fell into place. Retired King & Spalding partner Lane Dennard—a Vietnam veteran and former adjunct faculty member of Emory Law—agreed to co-direct the clinic with Shanor. We received a generous anonymous donation, and the Veteran Legal Support Clinic at John Marshall School of Law in Chicago agreed to train—for free—our faculty and students in benefits law and how to run a veterans clinic.

The war continues

Consider the case of the former sergeant. During his deployment overseas he suffered multiple concussions during combat and as a result of close-proximity IED explosions. In one incident, his platoon raced to the site of a nearby explosion to find four soldiers trapped inside Veterans in Georgia an RPG-struck-and-burning Bradley troop carrier. One of the trapped soldiers was the roommate of the veteran, and all four were his friends. Tragically, all four soldiers were lost despite the rescue efforts of the veteran’s platoon.

He came home with an honorable discharge and three medals as well as leg injuries, chronic tension headaches, and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

He applied for veterans benefits and enrolled as a student at Emory.

The VA gave him a 20 percent rating (on a compensation scale of 0 percent to 100 percent) for his lower-body injuries, denied his claim for tension headaches, and rated him at 10 percent for PTSD. As the veteran transitioned back to regular life in Georgia, his headaches and the conditions of his PTSD made it increasingly difficult to focus at —President Abraham Lincoln at his second work. His requests for an increased inaugural address in 1865

777,000

“. . . to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan . . .”

Today, the VCV has exploded from a dream into one of the largest legal clinics in the Southeast—all on a shoestring budget.

The key to VCV success is the incredible team of Emory Law student volunteers who handle veterans cases under VCV attorney mentors. Even though they earned no class credit, 38 volunteers attended the initial, mandatory three-hour training session on veterans benefits. Others took the course online. Then they set to work on time-consuming individual cases—20 to date, referred to the clinic by military or veterans organizations or practicing attorneys—plus two public-policy initiatives.

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Speaking with a veteran are Martin Bunt 14L and Rachel Erdman 14L, co-founders of Emory Law’s Volunteer Clinic for Veterans, which helps veterans through the legal challenges of returning to civilian society.

sv student voices

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disability rating were denied repeatedly. Finally, after filing disagreements with the VA for three years on his own, he contacted the VCV through our website. Two clinic students, under the supervision of a VCV volunteer attorney, now advocate to the VA Regional Office for the increased compensation this veteran has earned.

In another moving case, the widow of a deceased veteran who had served in the military in the 1950s is fighting to gain her spouse-death pension. The veteran’s military records were housed in the National Personnel

he VCV has exploded from a T dream into one of the largest legal clinics in the Southeast—all on a shoestring budget.”

Records Center in St. Louis, Missouri, which in 1973 fell victim to a massive, two-day fire that burned 16 to18 million official military records. When the widow filed for her husband’s military death pension several years ago, her claim was denied. The main issue is the loss of her husband’s records in the fire. She fought the denial for several years before her case was referred to the VCV by a national veterans’ rights group.

Her case will be argued before the US Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims, the last stop before a case is referred to the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia and then to the US Supreme Court.

Charles Shanor Professor of law and Veterans Clinic co-director

Lane Dennard Veterans Clinic co-director

Veterans courts offer alternative path In addition to casework, the VCV engages in publicpolicy initiatives for veterans, including research on the benefits of veterans courts as well as their operational and legal issues.

These courts offer veterans who commit low-level crimes an alternate path in the criminal system. Many veterans come home from Afghanistan and Iraq with horrific memories, PTSD, and traumatic brain injury. It can be unrealistic to expect a person who spent a year patrolling streets laced with IEDs to be able to drive the streets of Atlanta without the fear and anxiety that kept him or her alive overseas. This fear and anxiety can lead veterans to commit alcohol- and drug-related crimes as well as other offenses.

Veterans courts marshal the local, state, and federal programs and benefits that veterans have earned to provide a structured path back into civilian life. For example, a veterans court might sentence a qualifying veteran to intense 12- to 24-month probation with a mentor, man18

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How you can help The Volunteer Clinic for Veterans needs you!

If you can pledge your time as a volunteer lawyer or provide financial assistance to the clinic, contact the VCV at lawveteransclinic@emory.edu.

datory PTSD or other suitable treatment, weekly alcohol and drug testing, and job-training programs already available at every level of government. These courts have a success rate of 74 percent to 98 percent, much higher than standard probation programs.

In the future, students may become involved in lobbying efforts for a statewide veterans court system.

Meanwhile, the VCV is working in various counties in Georgia planning to establish such courts.

The VCV is growing its influence and capabilities every day. Recently VCV leaders spoke at the Georgia Accountability Conference about our work and our goal of passing legislation for Georgia veterans courts. We also presented at the VA’s Challenge forum and hosted a table at the VA Stand Down for homeless veterans.

The VCV has been featured in Emory Wire, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Emory Report, and the June edition of Georgia Bar Magazine.

We have done much on a shoestring budget, but can accomplish much more with proper resources. Director Dennard has been gracious to take on the heavy load of co-directing the VCV in his retirement but at some point will need to transition. The VCV desperately needs all the help it can get—additional attorney mentors, funding to hire a staff attorney and an administrative assistant, and stipends for students to continue clinic work in the summer. If you are interested in adding your support, contact the VCV at lawveteransclinic@emory.edu.

Our veteran service members have served us across the world. When they come home, it is our turn to serve them. “Serving Those Who Have Served Us” is the VCV motto. We hope that others will join us to carry this banner.

Editor’s note: In October 2013, VCV co-founder Martin Bunt learned he had received the 19th Annual PSJD Pro Bono Publico Award, an honor given to one law student nationwide for pro bono contributions to society. PSJD, formerly PSLawNet, is the Public Service Jobs Directory administered by the National Association for Legal Career Professionals.

v f f a c u lt y v o i c e s

Access to Chapter 7 relief by pro se debtors

From a creditor’s perspective, the typical Chapter 7 debtor obtains forgiveness of debt without having to pay a price merely as a result of having filed for relief under Chapter 7 rather than Chapter 13. A creditor likely perceives this outcome to be unjust based on the conviction that the debtor will generate future income that, 1 but for the Chapter 7 filing, could have been devoted to repayment of the creditor’s claim—either outside of bankruptcy had the debtor never filed for bankruptcy or b y R a fa el I . Pa r d o within bankruptcy pursuant to a Chapter 13 repayment plan. During the last couple of decades, this narrative or the past quarter-century, debate over the scope has underscored bankruptcy-reform efforts, a narrative of relief in consumer bankruptcy has primarily that Congress has recast in terms of abuse of the bankcentered on the “price” of discharge—that is, what ruptcy system—specifically, by classifying debtors with a debtor must give up in exchange for having his an ability to repay past debts from future income or her debts forgiven. Individual debtors generally file as abusive debtors who should not be eligible for for bankruptcy relief under one of two Bankruptcy Chapter 7 relief.

Code chapters—Chapter 7 or Chapter 13. While a debtor Congress’s enactment of the Bankruptcy Abuse who files for Chapter 7 relief will receive an immediate Prevention and Consumer Protection Act of 2005 discharge in exchange for his or her nonexempt assets, (BAPCPA) represented the most significant overhaul of federal bankruptcy law since the Bankruptcy Code’s enactment in 1978.

A dramatic growth in bankruptcy filings The issue of access to justice for presaged the statutory amendments to the code: After surpassing the one pro se debtors should be carefully million mark in 1996 for the first examined by policymakers.” time in our nation’s history, bankruptcy filings continued to climb through 2005, in excess of one million filings per year, a debtor who files for Chapter 13 relief will receive a and with more than 90 percent of those filings discharge only after completing a repayment plan pursu- constituting consumer-bankruptcy cases, ant to which a portion of the debtor’s future income has the overwhelming majority of which were been devoted to repaying creditor claims.

Chapter 7 cases.

The preferred choice of chapter for consumer debtors Congress interpreted these historihistorically has been and continues to be Chapter 7. This cally high bankruptcy filing rates as choice has been a source of consternation for credievidence that the bankruptcy tors because the overwhelming majority of Chapter 7 system was broken, victimized cases do not have nonexempt assets for liquidation and by abusive debtors who had the distribution (commonly referred to as “no-asset cases”). ability to repay their creditors, Creditor claims in no-asset cases will, of course, go and Congress sought to restore unpaid. To make matters worse, creditors whose claims the system’s health by enactagainst a Chapter 7 debtor have been discharged will not ing BAPCPA. The legislation have postbankruptcy recourse to collect from the debtor. expanded the grounds on which Thus, a Chapter 7 filing usually represents the “kiss of a debtor’s Chapter 7 case may be death” for the ability of a creditor to recoup directly from dismissed. Moreover, it increased the debtor any prebankruptcy debts owed to the creditor. the administrative requirements imposed upon debtors who file for bankruptcy (e.g., increased financial disclosures), which in turn has had the effect of increasing the direct costs of 1. This article consists of excerpts (with some modifications) from Rafael filing for bankruptcy (e.g., filing fees I. Pardo, “An Empirical Examination of Access to Chapter 7 Relief by Pro Se Debtors,” 26 Emory Bankruptcy Developments Journal 5 (2009). and attorneys’ fees).

F

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Continued on next page

Rafael I. Pardo is the Robert T. Thompson Professor of Law at Emory Law. He specializes in bankruptcy and commercial law and has testified as a bankruptcy expert before both houses of Congress.

v f f a c u lt y v o i c e s

Regulate business as if all people matter

watching her country make the often-rocky transition from communism to a free-market economy. Like many countries trying to privatize formerly state-owned enterprises, Slovenia looked to the US as a model.

But in the early 2000s, while Velikonja was working toward her law degree, that model seemed to lose its moral compass. Enron Corporation, WorldCom, and a slew of other major corporations grabbed national headlines with multi-billion-dollar accounting scandals.

“What fascinated me was that the reaction to those scandals focused on the harm done to shareholders and ignored the harm to anyone else,” says Velikonja. “What about employees who not only lost their jobs but now had the black mark of Enron on their résumé? What about competitors and suppliers who made decisions based on inflated earnings reports? These stakeholders seemed to be invisible.”

That interest in corporate governance and securities regulation eventually shaped Velikonja’s career path.

After graduating first in her class from the University of Ljubljana School of Law, she enrolled at Harvard Law School, but she ultimately wanted to teach law at her alma mater in Slovenia.

Velikonja did return to her home country after getting her LLM in 2003 and practiced for three years with an Austrian firm doing international banking in Slovenia. But her academic aspirations were stifled there.

“In Slovenia, current professors pick professors to groom, like an apprenticeship. The professor who wanted to work with me taught Roman law. I wasn’t sure that was the topic I wanted to teach.”

So Velikonja again enrolled in Harvard Law, this time to get her JD. While a law student, Velikonja taught a course in international corporate governance, twice receiving the Harvard University teaching award. “By the time that first class was over, I knew teaching was what I wanted to do,” she says.

After graduating magna cum laude in 2009, she taught for a year at Arizona State University’s Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law, then clerked for Judge Stephen F. Williams of the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit. She spent the next two years teaching securities regulation and corporate governance at the University of Maryland’s Francis King Carey School of Law before joining Emory in August to teach securities regulation, mergers and acquisitions, and corporate governance.

Velikonja’s research focuses on the issues that captured her interest as a law student watching Enron

With this increased complexity in accessing Chapter 7 relief, concerns have arisen that BAPCPA has had a disproportionate impact on pro se debtors. In 2009, I sought to provide preliminary insight into answering the question by examining the dismissal of Chapter 7 cases filed by individual debtors in the US Bankruptcy Court for the Western District of Washington from 2003 through 2007. Among other things, I focused on the effect of BAPCPA on the dismissal of a case based on the debtor’s failure to file the information required by the Bankruptcy Code (as opposed to having been dismissed for some other reason).

I found that the odds of dismissal on this basis for post-BAPCPA pro se debtors were 4.42 times greater than for pre-BAPCPA pro se debtor, 4.14 times greater than for post-BAPCPA-represented debtors, and 11.68

times greater than for pre-BAPCPA-represented debtors.

The data strongly suggest that the combination of lack of representation and filing for bankruptcy post-BAPCPA has had an overwhelmingly negative effect on the probability of a debtor overcoming the procedural hurdles that impede access to Chapter 7 relief.

By not being able to obtain attorney representation to assist in deciphering BAPCPA’s convoluted system, some pro se debtors have failed to access the benefit of bankruptcy’s fresh start. The issue of access to justice for pro se debtors should be carefully examined by policymakers given this state of affairs. As legal historian Bruce Mann has observed, “Whether a society forgives its debtors and how it bestows or withholds forgiveness are more than matters of economic or legal consequence. They go to the heart of what society values.”

Meet securities expert and Assistant Professor Urska Velikonja B y M a r th a N o l a n Mc K enz i e

“

. . . the cost of fraud to shareholders is overstated, and the cost to other stakeholders is understated.”

Access to Chapter 7 relief continued

Follow Rafael Pardo @bankruptcyprof

U

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rska Velikonja came of age in Slovenia

E m o r y L aw y e r Fa l l 2 0 1 3

v f f a c u lt y v o i c e s

“

We don’t need more regulation, just different regulation.”

Assistant Professor of Law Urska Velikonja

implode. Indeed, that fascination is as relevant as ever given that the basic assumptions underlying securities regulation have not changed.

“The SEC still looks at the costs and benefits to investors only,” says Velikonja. “It doesn’t recognize that the labor, capital, and product markets are all related and what happens in one spreads out like a wave to the others.”

She points to recent financial reform statutes—the JOBS Act and the Dodd-Frank Act—as well as the 2011 DC Circuit decision in Business Roundtable v. SEC as evidence that the worldview of fraud fallout hasn’t changed. “The way markets are regulated today, the cost of fraud to shareholders is overstated, and the cost to other stakeholders is understated.”

That’s because the price paid for stocks is already discounted to reflect the inherent risk of fraud. Share-

holders can minimize this risk by diversifying their portfolio. In addition, shareholders who suffer losses from fraud can sue the firm for damages, and the SEC can establish a fair fund to compensate them.

Other stakeholders have no legal recourse for compensation, but their costs are often considerable.

Employees, for example, suffer. And not just those employed by the fraud-committing company. Fraudulent revenue reporting at WorldCom resulted in overinvestment by the entire telecommunications industry.

Employment in the industry increased to 1.3 million during WorldCom’s heyday but fell 25 percent after the fraud was revealed. Suppliers suffer. Entire firms might emerge to deliver specialized products only to see the market for these products evaporate. Rivals suffer. AT&T responded to WorldCom’s seeming cost cutting by letting go some 20,000 employees and splitting up the firm. “Those decisions based on fraudulent information turned out not to be good for AT&T,” says Velikonja.

Velikonja argues that other stakeholders need to be given the same legal rights as those of shareholders.

“The ultimate goal of my work is to regulate business as if all the people mattered, not just shareholders.”

What can applicable business acumen do when paired with exceptional legal expertise?

Open doors to new opportunities.

Goizueta Business School’s Full-Time, Evening and Executive MBA programs have a history of providing JD students and law graduates with practical business skills in an experiential setting, giving them the confidence and know-how to tackle new challenges and career paths.

Consider how an MBA, paired with your law degree, can impact your future or the future of someone you know.

Visit www.goizueta.emory.edu/programs to learn more.

Jim Lazone 98 JD/MBA

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ap a lu m n i p r o f i l e s

Greg Slamowitz:

Flip the pyramid b y Da n a G o ld m a n Illus t r at i o n b y S a r a h C l a r eh a r t

G “I just love playing the game of business,” says entrepreneur and author Greg Slamowitz 90L.

reg Slamowitz 90L is ready to come

clean about how he made one of the first important decisions of his life. “I’m going to tell you the truth,” he says. “I went to law school because my mother told me to go to law school.”

Thirty-three years later, life has taken Slamowitz in directions neither he nor his mom could have predicted, and he’s made many more big decisions without his mother’s advice. He founded and ran Ambrose Employer Group, which handled outsourced human resources and benefits for other businesses. When he decided to start a new business, he sold Ambrose for a sizable profit.

There’s also his authorship of Flip the Pyramid: How Any Organization Can Create a Workforce That is Engaged, Aligned, Empowered, and On Fire (Highpoint Executive Publishing, 2013). And there is the fact he hasn’t practiced law since the mid-1990s.

“I was passionate about law school, but I just wasn’t passionate about the practice of law,” Slamowitz says.

After a few years as a tax attorney, he had an important realization. “You can go to law school because your mom tells you to, but I don’t think you can practice law for the rest of your life because your mom tells you to.”

But his ties to Emory Law remain strong. The respected business owner, family man, and former lawyer serves on the Emory Law Advisory Board, married fellow alumna Kirsten Hilleman 91L, and enthusiastically talks up Emory Law more than two decades after his own graduation.

Needless to say, Slamowitz’s mother was not happy when he first gave up his legal career to start Ambrose.

But there was a family history of entrepreneurship that Slamowitz couldn’t resist. His father, grandfather, and great-grandfather were small business owners. “Outside of law, business was the only other thing I knew,” he says.

Soon, the self-discipline Slamowitz had learned at Emory Law was helping him build up Ambrose. His timing didn’t hurt either. Slamowitz founded Ambrose in 1996, just before the beginning of the dot-com boom.

Within a year of starting operations, Ambrose had grown to more than 100 employees. Starting in 1998, the company grew more than 8 percent a month for three 22

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years straight. About 85 percent of Ambrose clients were in the dot-com sector, and Slamowitz and his staff just tried to keep up.

Then the dot-com bubble burst.

Slamowitz fielded phone call after phone call from clients saying they couldn’t make payroll.

“The dot-com implosion was brutal,” he says. But his fiscal caution and the company’s initial strong profits during the boom helped Ambrose survive the bust. “We had built a great organization and retained sufficient capital and earnings in our company, so we were organizationally and financially prepared for bad things.”

Slamowitz took advantage of the downturn and played catch up internally—creating and updating hiring processes, and deciding what kinds of clients he wanted for his company. Despite the recession, Ambrose turned away prospective companies if they didn’t have strong business plans and finances.

By 2008, 10 years in, Slamowitz was struggling with burnout and knew that Ambrose’s top-down organizaton culture had something to do with that as well as the company’s slowed organizational growth. He read hundreds of business management books and thought about how business parallels another of his loves: sailing.

With sailing teams, micromanagement is counterproductive. What works better is a culture supportive of each sailor’s individual roles. Thinking about his readings and his experiences on the ocean, Slamowitz began encouraging his employees’ ideas and initiative.

Soon, the size and profits of his business were climbing again, and this time Slamowitz wasn’t burnt out.

Others began to notice. In the two years leading up to Slamowitz’s sale of Ambrose, the company was named one of the best companies to work for in New York state.

And Slamowitz’s blog about the company’s transformation became the basis for his book Flip the Pyramid.

Now Slamowitz is presenting workshops based on his book and beginning to build another business. While working with small to mid-sized companies at Ambrose, he noted the impact of high health care costs on clients’ abilities to stay competitive in the marketplace. His new two-employee company, Wellness Rebates, is in start-up stages and aims to help companies create custom wellness programs for employees.

Growing another company from the ground up might sound daunting to some, but not Slamowitz. After all, he’s done it before, and he’s happy to be following in his family’s entrepreneurial footsteps. As for his mom, who wanted him to be a lawyer and was upset when he quit?

Slamowitz laughs. “My mother has forgiven me.”

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Aloke Chakravarty:

Prosecuting the Boston bomber b y S us a n C a r i n i 0 4 G

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n law annals, it will be known as US v. Tsarnaev, 13-CR-10200, US District Court, District of Massachusetts (Boston).

The world, with far more emotion, knows it as the Boston Marathon bombing case—in which four people lost their lives (including an eight-year-old boy) and nearly 300 were injured. Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 20, a US citizen, is charged with using a weapon of mass destruction against persons and property. Lining up on the other side is Aloke Chakravarty 97L—a name that will, over the course of Tsarnaev’s trial, become a household word. The assignment is a major milestone for a man who didn’t set out to be a lawyer, whose family instead considered the world of medicine as a suitable career.

Chakravarty’s father, an electrical engineer, emigrated to the US, and the family settled in South Carolina after traveling throughout the Middle East and Europe. They stayed with his aunt and uncle who, says Chakravarty, were considered “good immigrants” because they were academics. Along the way, Chakravarty learned about the place of Indian families in what he refers to as the “evolving South.”

In his own evolution, Chakravarty came to appreciate that “the law can positively affect more people than a doctor treating an individual.” Emory Law beckoned him in several ways. At first, he thought that he would marry his medical and legal aspirations by doing tort litigation in the area of medical malpractice or medical devices.

He also appreciated the law school’s strengths in international law and the ties to The Carter Center. Ultimately, the Kessler-Eidson Trial Techniques Program reeled him in—getting “to what I enjoyed about oral advocacy— connecting with your audience and persuading them.”

To his parents’ initial shock, Chakravarty passed on a lucrative career in corporate law to become a county prosecutor in Massachusetts. His next step up was in the state attorney general’s office, where he participated in more complex investigations. “I developed a real appreciation of what law enforcement is capable of when investigating crimes,” he says. “I got a crash course in how facts can be interpreted when looking at criminal conduct as one dimension of a person’s life. It reminded me of the human cost of what we were doing.”

On the morning of 9/11, Chakravarty could not get in touch with his fiancée, who lived across from the World Trade Center towers. As it happened, she had taken the train away from the area a mere 10 minutes before.

Motivated by the attacks, Chakravarty joined the FBI as a national security lawyer. It was an “exciting exposure to the national security world at a crucial time. Some of the lawyers working there had never had to defend constitutional rights. It taught me that we needed to be intelligent about how we proceeded and remember how important it was to have that balanced view.” His current post is as assistant US attorney in the Antiterrorism and National Security Unit for the District of Massachusetts.

For us, it is a duty; to the What do his parents think now? Long ago, they began to victims, it is their lives.” view his profession with pride, —Aloke Chakravarty which swelled as news about the Tsarnaev case broke and their son’s face was on the front page of the Times of India.

Chakravarty is sharing the limelight with co-prosecutor William Weinreb who he knows well; they were key players in the prosecution of Faisal Shahzad, who was sentenced to life for the attempted bombing of Times Aloke Chakravarty 97L Square three years ago.

The skill and passion that have led to highlevel prosecutions will serve Chakravarty well in this case. Says Edward Davis, Boston’s police commissioner, Chakravarty was in the middle of the bombing case “right from the get-go.

He was at the command post every time I walked in there. I don’t think he slept at all.” And he was at Tsarnaev’s bedside for the formal notification of the charges against him.

Though Chakravarty cannot speak about the case, he did offer the following perspective about his work: “Everyone is striving to ensure that justice gets done. We all carry an incredible sense of responsibility from day one all the way through. For us, it is a duty; to the victims, it is their lives.”

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Patrise Perkins-Hooker:

Bar president-elect uses talents to better her community

By Maria Lameiras

Patrise Perkins-Hooker 84B 84L

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s a young attorney in the late 1980s, Patrise Perkins-Hooker 84B 84L arrived early at an

important bond closing with government officials outside of Atlanta to make sure all documents were prepared properly.

“As I distributed papers to everyone at the meeting, the county commission chair said to another attorney in my firm, ‘That’s a good girl you have there. You need to make sure you keep her,’ ” Perkins-Hooker recalls. “This was a time when women still weren’t being taken very seriously as lawyers. There were many times I was treated like a secretary. You just had to be yourself and act competent and professional in the face of ignorance.”

Those traits have served Perkins-Hooker and her community well. In June, Perkins-Hooker was installed as president-elect of the 45,000-member State Bar of Georgia. When she becomes president in June 2014, she will be the first African American and third woman in the post.

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Perkins-Hooker is vice president and general counsel for the Atlanta BeltLine, one of the largest, most wideranging urban redevelopment and mobility projects under way in the United States. When complete, the BeltLine will provide public parks, multiuse trails, housing, and transit along historic railroad corridors around downtown Atlanta connecting 45 neighborhoods. She is energized by the progress the young initiative has made, just six years into a comprehensive 25-year It is plan to revitalize the exciting communities surroundbeing a ing downtown Atlanta.

“Recently we had part of something 14,000 people using the that is so catalytic eastside corridor on a in the redevelopSunday. I am very proud ment of depressed to be a part of the team creating this,” she says. parts of Atlanta.”

Her role with the Atlanta BeltLine is a culmination of nearly 30 years of experience in corporate, taxation, real estate, municipal finance, and commercial law, combined with a deep personal dedication to improving her community economically and socially.

A native Atlantan and lifelong resident, PerkinsHooker became interested in addressing the needs of her community while she was growing up. She wondered why successful minority neighborhood businesses never achieved more than limited growth.

Eager to learn as much as she could about business, Perkins-Hooker participated in Junior Achievement at Frederick Douglass High School and was selected as an outstanding junior executive in her senior year. The honor came with a full four-year scholarship to Georgia Tech, where she studied industrial management with a concentration in accounting. After graduating in 1980, she enrolled in Emory’s School of Law and Goizueta Business School to pursue joint JD and MBA degrees.

“My Emory experience helped me with my career, developing and refining tools that began with college, honing them so I could see the bigger picture, deal with negotiations, and advocate for people,” she says.

Her first job was as a tax accountant and CPA with Deloitte Haskins & Sells in Atlanta (now Deloitte & Touche). Later at Arrington & Horne, where she worked for Marvin Arrington Sr. 67L as an attorney and financial manager, she obtained tax-exemption status for 100 Black Men of America and worked on the merger of Clark Atlanta University. During the course of her career, Perkins-Hooker has been a partner or executive for law and engineering firms and ran her own law practice for nearly a decade, during which time she represented the

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Atlanta Committee for the Olympic Games. Later she joined Hollowell, Foster & Gepp as the partner in charge of the Commercial Real Estate Group until she was hired away by her client, the Atlanta BeltLine, as its general counsel.

She counts Arrington and Linda Klein, the first female president of the State Bar of Georgia, among her role models.“Marvin Arrington is a committed community servant, dedicated to his neighborhood, his college, his community, and his church, all while being a successful lawyer. Linda Klein was such a trailblazer. She made diversity her platform as president of the bar. I am the fruit of that effort.”

In all her endeavors, Perkins-Hooker seeks to mirror and honor those and other role models in her life. She has used her legal and business expertise as a volunteer leader for nonprofit organizations including Hosea Feed the Hungry and Homeless, the Metropolitan Coalition of 100 Black Women of Atlanta, the Juvenile Justice Fund, Bedford Pine Child Development Center, and Jack and Jill of America.

Through the legal system, Perkins-Hooker has witnessed some of society’s greatest ills. Determined to protect vulnerable members of the community, Perkins-Hooker established Angela’s House, a safe home for sexually exploited young women. In addition to operating the program for eight years, she advocated for a state law making pimping and pandering of a minor a felony. Although Angela’s House no longer operates, it inspired youthSpark, which continues the mission of protecting young women from sexual exploitation.

At Emory Law, Perkins-Hooker was the president of the Joint Degree Association and was awarded the Wall Street Journal Award for Outstanding Student Achievement. She has served on the Dean’s Committee of Twenty and the Emory Public Interest Committee Award Selection Committee, and most recently received the 2013 Eléonore Raoul Greene Trailblazer Award given to an Emory Law alumna who has blazed a trail for others through her own professional and personal endeavors. She also has been an adjunct professor in the law and business schools and chaired the Business School Alumni Association. In 1996, the Georgia Supreme Court presented Perkins-Hooker with its prestigious Amicus Curiae award for outstanding volunteer service and professionalism in the practice of law.

“I appreciate the opportunities I have been given to make a difference in the lives of other people. I hope it will matter to somebody,” she says.

Class notes A centennial celebration Randolph Thrower 34C 36L—retired senior partner at the Atlanta law firm of Sutherland Asbill & Brennan, and namesake of the Randolph W. Thrower Symposium, an endowed lecture series sponsored by the Thrower family and hosted by the Emory Law Journal and Emory Law—celebrated his 100th birthday in September. His career also included service in the Marines, commissioner of the IRS, chair of the American Bar Association Tax Section, chair of the Atlanta Ethics Committee, and a trustee of Emory University. He was president of Atlanta Legal Aid, chair of Georgia’s Committee on the Involvement of Women in the Profession, and president of the Lawyers Club of Atlanta.

50s 70s Harry Lamon Jr. 58L has received the Salvation Army’s Order of Distinguished Auxiliary Service honor. Army General George Carpenter established the order in 1941 to recognize distinguished service rendered by non-Salvationists who have helped to fulfill the mission of the Salvation Army. To date, fewer than 100 people have received this honor.

Darton State College in Albany, Georgia, presented its first Lifetime Service Award to Joseph B. Powell Jr. 58L, who has served on the college’s board of trustees since the 1960s.

60s

The Nevada State Bar gave the Outstanding Achievement Award to Bill Turner 66C 69L for contributions to alternative dispute resolution. Turner also was selected for the seventh year by Super Lawyers and his peers as an outstanding mediator and arbitrator.

John Stephen “Steve” Jenkins Sr. 65OX 67C 70L was elected to a four-year term as judge of the State Court of Elbert County, Georgia.

1 Chambers USA has recognized Steven Dunlevie 73L in the 2013 Chambers USA report for distinguished work in banking and finance law. Dunlevie is chair of Womble Carlyle’s financial institutions team and practices in the firm’s Atlanta offices.

2 Frances “Kem” M. Toole 76L was appointed to a threeyear term on the Federal Court Practice Committee of the Florida Bar.

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Cozen O’Connor Family Law Practices Group Co-Chair David L. Ladov 78L has joined the Family Law Department of Obermayer Rebmann Maxwell & Hippel, one of the larger family law practices in Pennsylvania. Ladov serves as co-chair of the department.

Kathy L. Portnoy 78L has joined Warner, Bates, McGough, McGinnis & Portnoy

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Meet New Law Alumni Board President Thad Kodish:

as a named partner. The Atlanta firm has practiced matrimonial and family law for more than 30 years.

At the Intersection of Rock, Tech, and Intellectual Property

E. King Poor 79L has been named by Illinois Super Lawyers magazine as a 2013 Illinois Super Lawyer. No more than 5 percent of total lawyers in the state are selected for inclusion.

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Torn between two callings as an undergraduate—rock music and chemical engineering—Thad Kodish 00L chose a third: intellectual property (IP) law. Though the connections among those three areas may seem murky at first glance, he explains that arguing patent law cases in court gives him the opportunity to analyze technology and to perform in front of a jury.

“At trial, I have to keep people’s interest and help them understand what they need to know to make a decision about complicated technologies,” says the new president of the Emory Law Alumni Board. “It is a theatrical presentation, in which I use analogies—fence lines to illustrate patent law or how a patented component is like a windshield wiper on a car, one small piece of a complex mechanism—to illustrate the case.”

Born on a Navajo reservation in New Mexico, Kodish lived in Montana, Connecticut, and Michigan before he made his home in Atlanta. He credits living in such different places with his ability to connect with almost anyone.

Emory and the relationships fostered through the school have played a key role in his life. Kodish chose to attend Emory Law in part because his friends “raved” about the school and because David Patton IV 88C, former Emory Law assistant dean of students, took the time to have an in-depth conversation with him at a busy event. Kodish met his wife, Elisa Smith Kodish 99L, while a student. A partner at Nelson Mullins Riley & Scarborough, she is Kodish’s go-to “trial” audience and debate partner. They have two children—Sammy (seven) and Talia (three). “Emory has been no small part of my success,” he says.

Trained as a chemical engineer, Kodish began his career at Pratt & Whitney Aircraft, where he helped design compressor blades for jet engines. Now managing partner at Fish & Richardson, a leading IP law firm, Kodish works with inventors, industry experts, professors, lawyers, and engineers.

80s

Robert G. Pennington 74OX 76C 81B 81L has joined A. Montag & Associates as a managing director. He will direct marketing and business development at the 30-yearold Atlanta firm, which has approximately $950 million under management.

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Jeffrey M. Williams 81L has again been recognized as a Pennsylvania Super Lawyer.

He is a founder and managing partner at Williams & Hand and focuses on complicated divorce and child-support cases. As chair of the Pennsylvania Bar Association Family Law Section, Williams helped improve and implement new child-custody laws in the Pennsylvania legislature.

5 James A. Durham 83L has written a new book, My Father’s Writings (BohlsenGroup), which weaves the author’s personal letters, articles, observations, and memories into a fictional story of hope, inspiration, and reflection.

Durham also is a motivational speaker on topics ranging from work-life balance to finding the right livelihood.

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John C. Levy 85L was named president of the Minnesota Food Truck Association in April.

He is a shareholder and business law attorney at Henson & Efron in Minneapolis and also chief manager and co-owner of AZ Canteen, a food truck launched last summer with the Travel Channel’s Andrew Zimmern. Levy organized the association to advocate for the fast-growing industry.

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Wayne D. Taylor 82C 85L has been inducted as a fellow of the American College of Coverage and Extracontractual Counsel. Taylor is a partner at Mozley, Finlayson & Loggins in Atlanta and specializes in insurance coverage and litigation.

3 Anne Marie Ambrose 87L is commissioner of the Philadelphia Department of Human Services, which received the 2013 United Nations Public Service Award, Second Place, for demonstrated excellence in serving the public interest. The department has seen transformational changes since Ambrose became commissioner in 2008, including a familycentered, neighborhood-based approach to child welfare.

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Rochelle “Shelly” Levy Cooper 87L was named senior vice president, general counsel, and secretary of IAP Worldwide Services.

J. Michael Martinez 87L is the author of American Environmentalism: Philosophy, History, and Public Policy (CRC Press 2013), which provides readers with a foundation in American environmentalism, including modern environmental politics, agencies, stakeholders and tenets of the sustainability movement.

4 Andrew R. Klein 88L is the new dean of Indiana University’s Robert H. McKinney School of Law in Indianapolis.

90s

Lata N. Reddy 90L has been appointed vice president, Corporate Social Responsibility, and president, the Prudential Foundation at Prudential Financial in Newark, New Jersey.

5 Family law attorney Amanda S. Trigg 94L was named as one of the top 50 women lawyers in New Jersey

by Super Lawyers for 2013. She is with the firm Lesnevich & Marzano-Lesnevich.

Christi Anne Cannon 95L was named vice president for client relations at Garden City Group.

She will continue her work

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00s

9 Jonathan P. Rotenberg 91C 00L was promoted to partner at Howick, Westfall, McBryan & Kaplan. His practice focuses on family law and commercial litigation.

Stephen Ho Chen 95C 00L and Ming Hsu Chen announce the birth of their daughter, Maya Hsu, on February 8, 2013.

Chen is a supervisory attorney with the US Department of Education, Office for Civil Rights, in Boulder, Colorado.

Maya is named for civil rights pioneers Maya Angelou and Maya Lin.

At his first job after law school, he worked with Larry Nodine 75C 78L, who became a close friend and mentor. Upon Nodine’s invitation, Kodish in 2008 joined the Dean’s Ad Hoc Leadership Review Committee, which was dedicated to making the law school a better place, and he was elected to the Emory Law Alumni Board. He began mentoring students and participating in the Emory Law Intellectual Property Alumni Society.

“I can appreciate how stressful it is to be a law student,” he says. “I want to help guide students in their job searches, to teach them how to be effective in interviews, and to explain the preparation they should do outside of school.”

As board president, his charge is to increase alumni engagement and philanthropy. Philanthropy funds scholarships to attract the best and brightest students, while alumni engagement plays a key role in students’ placement success. Both help attract top students, which improves ranking. More important, greater alumni participation—on both fronts—helps build a better law school and improve the student experience.

“Meeting with students is great fun. I feel like I’m back in law school,” he says. “It’s a chance to work on things that are important, interesting, and meaningful.”—Yael Williams

with the firm’s team handling the BP Deepwater Horizon class-action settlement and claim administration.

Robert “Bobby” West 96L is now a partner and chief operating officer of TriBridge Residential in Atlanta.

Loraine McMurray DiSalvo 97L of Morgan & DiSalvo in Alpharetta, Georgia, was named for inclusion in the 2013 listing of Super Lawyers in the Atlanta area practicing estate planning and probate.

6 Peter L. Kogan 97L has been promoted to counsel at Reed Smith. A former associate, he works within the real estate practice group in the firm’s Pittsburgh office.

David H. Pflieger Jr. 97B 97L was appointed president and CEO of Silver Airways effective May 1, 2013. Pflieger also joined the company’s board of directors.

Frederick Reynolds III 97L was appointed deputy director of the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), a bureau of the Treasury Department. He oversees FinCEN’s work to protect the US financial system from money laundering and other forms of illicit financial activity and to advance the national security interests of the United States.

7 Christian Torgrimson 97L is a managing partner at Pursley Friese Torgrimson, which she helped found in January

Glenn Danas 01L was named one of the top 20 attorneys under 40 in California. He is lead counsel in Iskanian v.

CLS Transportation, a closely watched case pending before the California Supreme Court.

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10 Tiffani Hiudt Casey 02L was named a “Rising Star”

by Georgia Super Lawyers magazine. She is an associate in the Atlanta offices of Fisher & Phillips and specializes in workplace and employment law.

2013. She practices eminent domain law and was recently recognized as a top Georgia attorney by Super Lawyers.

Daniel H. Marti 99L is the new managing partner of Kilpatrick Townsend’s Washington, DC, office. He has been with the firm 12 years and specializes in intellectual property law.

8 For the sixth time, Chad I. Michaelson 99L was named a Pennsylvania Rising Star, ranking him among the top up-and-coming attorneys in the state for 2013. Michaelson is a partner at Meyer, Unkovic & Scott in Pittsburgh and chairs the Sustainable Development Practice Group. His practice is focused on commercial and construction litigation.

11 Lucian E. Dervan 02L was named the recipient of the Early Career Faculty Excellence Award, one of six awards for faculty-staff excellence given

by Southern Illinois University– Carbondale. An assistant professor, Dervan in 2012 was the School of Law’s Scholar of the Year. He also serves as co-chair of the American Bar Association’s Criminal Justice Section, Academics Committee.

12 Kate C. Lowenhar-Fisher 02L was featured in the ABA Journal (February 2103) cover story, “Working for Free: Lawyers Incorporating Pro Bono into Their Lives Talk about Its Rewards, Challenges.”

Adam L. Miller 02L was named a partner at Vorys, Sater, Seymour and Pease. As a member of the corporate and finance group at the firm’s Columbus office, he counsels clients on mergers and acquisi-

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13 Relaxing in Spanish Wells on their first of many visits there are Class of 1976 Emory Chicks Kem Toole, Biz Van Gelder, Sandy Bair, Joyce Kramer, Elizabeth Faiella (formerly Taylor), and Sally Blackmun. Not pictured are Joan Goldfrank and Kathlynn Fadely Lear, who took the photograph.

Emory Chicks Still Flocking Together The “Emory Chicks” hatched at the 30th reunion of the Class of 1976. These eight accomplished women with personal and professional relationships that stretch back to their first days of law school decided one reunion was not enough. So they reassembled in Spanish Wells, a town in Eleuthera, Bahamas, for more catching up.

As much as they try to keep details secret (“What happens in Spanish Wells, stays in Spanish Wells,” says group member Frances “Kem” Toole, mischievously), they’ve had too much fun not to share. There’s swimming, sailing, dancing to Motown music, karaoke, eating, sunset walks on the beach, and lots of conversation.

Through busy and successful careers, marriage, motherhood, divorce, and illness, these classmates have been each other’s support system, individually and collectively. “We had this intense three years of shared experience, and I think it gave a foundation that we have built on and cherished,” says Joan Goldfrank.

All have impressive résumés. Sally Blackmun retired in 2011 as in-house counsel for Darden Restaurant Group in Orlando. Elizabeth Faiella is a medical malpractice attorney in Winter Park; Emily “Sandy” Bair runs a solo family law practice in Atlanta; Kathlynn Fadely Lear worked for the US Department of Justice for many years, as did Toole and Goldfrank, who retired in 2012 as a DC Superior Court judge. Joyce Kramer is a senior vice president with Morgan Stanley, and Biz VanGelder is a white-collar criminal defense attorney in Washington.

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tions, securities reporting and disclosure, business formation, entity selection, and corporate governance issues.

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13 Greenberg Taurig announced the elevation of Eric T. Coffman 99C 03L to shareholder. Coffman has experience in a wide variety of real estate, leasing, joint venture, and financing matters.

Milana Draughn 04L is associate director of career development at Atlanta’s John Marshall Law School.

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David V. Dreyer 04L has been promoted to income shareholder at Chamberlain Hrdlicka’s Atlanta offices.

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Dreyer is a commercial litigator and was recognized in 2012 as a “Georgia Rising Star” in business litigation by Georgia Super Lawyers and was selected by the Daily Report as one of 14 attorneys under 40 who are “On the Rise.”

14 Justin DuClos 05L has established J. DuClos, a Boston-based firm that practices a range of disciplines, including environmental and intellectual property law. He and his wife Jenny left Harvard in mid-2013 after five years in residence as fellows and officers. “But most important,” he writes,” our son Haven Noah was born in February 2012.”

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Kevin P. Robinson 05L has been named a shareholder at Zimmerman Kiser & Sutcliffe in Orlando, Florida. Robinson practices in the areas of commercial and business litigation.

Jessica Levin Colombo 07L and Jason Michael Colombo were married in January at the Ritz-Carlton in San Juan, Puerto Rico. She is an associate at Morrison Cohen, a Manhattan law firm.

15 Matthew R. Simpson 07L was named a “Rising Star” by Georgia Super Lawyers magazine. Simpson is an associate in the Atlanta offices of Fisher & Phillips and specializes in employment and labor law.

16 Britt-Marie K. Cole-Johnson 03C 08L was presented with a Volunteer of the Year Award from the Pro Bono Partnership. She has provided ongoing employment counsel to various nonprofit clients, including uninsured or underinsured children and their families. She is part of Robinson & Cole’s labor and employment practice group in the firm’s Hartford, Connecticut, office.

Christine Norstadt 09L is a founding team member of Pursley Friese Torgrimson, an Atlanta firm that opened in January 2013. She is an associate focusing on commercial real estate transactions and litigation.

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Their law school class saw an exponential growth in women students—some 30 percent of the total class enrollment—the year they entered. The 3L class ahead of them had only seven women, and there were only two women on the law school faculty. The school’s dean at the time, Michael Epstein, pressed to open the school more fully to women, but their gradually increasing numbers didn’t guarantee total acceptance.

“I wouldn’t necessarily say that all the professors and male students were on board,” says Goldfrank.

“In addition to having a very large female population, there was also a large number of students from the Northeast,” says Kramer. “So the ‘Southern charm’ of the deep South was infused with some of the edginess of the Northeast corridor. I think it made for a good combination.”

The women learned to lean on one another, which helped them prepare for their eventual pathbreaking careers. Blackmun is proud of their group, which juggled family responsibilities with demanding work. “We were serious about our careers and making it work out somehow. We all hung in there and had our 30-plus year careers,” she says.

“None of us took a break in our practices,” says Toole. “I think it Wo m e n g r a d uat e s f r o m E m o r y Law had to do with being on the front line of women in the profession and

feeling a responsibility not to damage the image of women lawyers. We went to law school to become lawyers, and that’s what we stuck with.”

(64) graduated in 1976 Faiella, who owns the house in Spanish Wells, finds spending time with her smart and accomplished friends a “freeing experience—the (159) graduated in 2013 combination of friendship and professional commonality is just powerful.” And they’re creating lots of new memories. “We talk about everyToday, the Legal Association for Women Students at Emory thing, whether it’s provocative or not, there is no topic that’s off limits (LAWS) encourages awareness and discussion of legal issues confor us,” says Lear. “That’s the beauty of it: you can talk about anything, cerning women and challenges facing women in the law. say anything, and there’s this absence of judgment.”

It supports female law students through peer-to At first, the women got together sporadically, every two or three peer mentoring, practitioner networking, and years. Eventually they decided to make their visits annual. As women in academic panels and discussions. Alumni who their 60s, they don’t underestimate the importance of keeping people want to be involved can contact Becky Lowe in their lives who knew them in their youth. “For all of us, we share the at relowe22@gmail.com. value of these friendships and the ease of them,” she says. “We have this love of the law and appreciation of our family and friends that have kept us together.”

Sandy Bair, the group’s unofficial photographer, says, “These are wonderful friendships. They’ve gotten stronger because of these trips, for sure.”—Stacey N. Jones

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Christina Del Gaizo 09L and her husband, Andrew L. Del Gaizo, announce the birth of their daughter, Olivia Joan Del Gaizo, on March 27 in Greensboro, North Carolina.

10s

17 Ruth Dawson 12L 12PH is a Reproductive Justice Fellow based in the American Civil Liberties Union’s (ACLU) Southern California office. Dawson previously worked in the ACLU of Northern California office in San Francisco as a Justice John Paul Stevens Public Interest

Fellow. She was awarded the outstanding 3L Commitment to Public Service award by the Emory Public Interest Committee.

Editor’s note: Class notes are submitted by alumni and are not verified by the editor. While we welcome alumni news, Emory Lawyer is not responsible for information contained in class notes.

Read more about Emory alumni, at law.emory.edu/alumni. Send your updates to communications@law.emory.edu.

In Memoriam Charles (Charlie) J. Collins Jr. 51C 52L died December 31, 2012, in Orlando, Florida.

Thomas Banister Hampson Jr. 53L of Atlanta passed away on February 25, 2013.

John William Stokes Jr. 53L passed away in Atlanta on February 24, 2013.

Cliffe Lane Gort 74L died January 23, 2013, in Atlanta.

Laurie Ann Allen 88L passed away December 29, 2012, in Los Angeles, California.

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Barristers have wise hearts The Emory Law alumni community historically has demonstrated philanthropic leadership at the law school through the Barristers’ Society. We recently have renamed the Barrister Society as the Wise Heart Society, which is a university-wide giving society. Gifts to Emory Law through the Wise Heart Society directly benefit the law school and our key priorities and support a variety of critical needs including scholarships, support for our distinguished faculty, our Center for Professional Development and Career Strategy, and much more.

We thank all donors, but we are especially grateful to Wise Heart members, who give at least $1,000 to the law school. The following list reflects the donors in the inaugural year of the Wise Heart Society at Emory Law (gifts received September 1, 2012 through August 31, 2013).

Through generous giving, Wise Hearts turn dreams into achievements.

Visionaries (gifts of $25,000 and above)

Innovators (gifts of $10,000–$24,999)

Anonymous Facundo L. Bacardi 96L and Elizabeth Bacardi Sally Blackmun 76L and Michael Elsberry 74L The Center for Land Reform, Inc. David S. Cohen 94L and Craig A. Benson Lynn Pattillo Cohen 87B and Glenn Cohen Janet Hayes Davis Foundation Gabriela and Juan Jose Delgado Allan B. Diamond 79L and Sharon Diamond Geoffrey W. Emery 86L John C. Ethridge Jr. 82L and Cynthia Cates Ethridge David Giannotti 72L and Kathy A. Giannotti Kathy Buckman Gibson 89B 89L and James W. Gibson Jr. Timothy J. Goodwin 90L and Andrea G. Weyermann C. Lash Harrison 62B 65L and Paula Hilburn Harrison C. Robert Henrikson 72L and Mary Eagan Henrikson Pedro J. Martinez-Fraga McDonald Agape Foundation Alonzo L. McDonald Jr. 48C and Suzanne M. McDonald Kathleen S. Miers Kenneth F. Murrah 55C 58L and Ann Hicks Murrah Philip Syng Reese 66C 76B 76L and Daphne Craven Reese Thomas A. Reynolds III 77L and Hope Reynolds The Sapelo Foundation, Inc. Onnie Mae Spruill Foundation Turner Foundation, Inc. Chilton D. Varner 76L and K. Morgan Varner III Henry Kenneth Walker 56OX 58C 63M 65MR 70MR

Anonymous Abdullahi Ahmed An-Na’im and Sara Osman BDO USA, LLP Gardner G. Courson 74L and Haidee Courson Cravath, Swaine and Moore Lorre Barbara Cuzze, Esq. 13PH William F. Denson III 68L and Deborah D. Denson Diamond McCarthy LLP Carole L. Dowd 65L and John M. Dowd 65L Richard G. Garrett 70C 73L and Barbara Friedson Garrett Greenberg Traurig, LLP Paul B. and Beryl S. Greetin Foundation Reuben A. Guttman 85L and Joy Bernstein Linda Kagan-Horowitz 89L and Seth R. Horowitz Alice and Noah N. Langdale Jr. Martin Liberman 74L Matthew Joseph McCoyd 93L Morgan Keegan and Company, Inc. Morris, Manning and Martin, LLP H. G. Pattillo The Pittulloch Foundation Brent Jamieson Savage 78L and Linda Lebey Savage Robert A. Schapiro and Lillian R.G. Schapiro Southern Alliance for Clean Energy John C. Staton Jr. 63L and Sue Staton Sutherland David Tkeshelashvili 06L and Nino Tkeshelashvili Briggs L. Tobin 89L and Jessica B. Tobin Eliza Ellison 96T and John Witte Jr.

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Matthew J. McCoyd 93L (left) and Reuben Guttman 85L stand with Corky Gallo, director of classroom technology, in the Judge Elbert Tuttle Courtroom.

McCoyd and Guttman have provided generous funding to upgrade audiovisual technology in the courtroom.

Pioneers (gifts of $5,000–$9,999) Anonymous Frank S. Alexander and Joan B. Alexander Carolyn Fisher Arthur and Thomas C. Arthur Deborah Pitman Austin 77C 84L and Jesse H. Austin III 80B 80L Barbri Inc. Albert Joseph Bolet 91L and Cynthia Adams Bolet 93N Bondurant, Mixson and Elmore, LLP Channah and Michael J. Broyde Suzanne and Richard Brozman James W. Cooper 89L and Renata Kendrick Cooper 86C 86G 89L H. Lane Dennard Jr. Martha Grace Duncan M. Jerome Elmore 76L and Susan Elmore David M. Epstein 88L and Sandra L. Epstein 89L Louise Lambert Freer and Richard Dale Freer Courtney Knight Gaines David Ley Hamilton 75L and Ann B. Hamilton Corey F. Hirokawa 00L and Benjamin T. Hirokawa Laura S. Huffman 08L and David C. Huffman John Paul Stevens Fellowship Foundation Walter E. Jospin 79L and The Hon. Wendy L. Shoob Robert Jeffrey Kaufman 75L and Barbara Alexander Kaufman Sam K. Kaywood Jr. 86L and Cheryl Lynn Kaywood Kilpatrick Townsend and Stockton, LLP Christopher E. Klein 87L and Nita Ann Knight Joyce L. Kramer 76L Frederic M. Krieger 75L and Alice T. Whittelsey Andrea and Michael Leven Lenore S. Maslia David C. McBride 75L and Sally McBride Diane and David McIntee Lee P. Miller 82L Mr. and Mrs. Anthony Montag Norman and Bettina Roberts Foundation, Inc.

Frank B. Sewall 74L and Angela Maynard Sewall Susan McRae Shanor 89L and Charles A. Shanor Kirsten J. Hilleman 91L and Gregory A. Slamowitz 90L Hipolito M. Goico 95L and Susan Walker Goico 89OX 91C Gertrude and William C. Wardlaw Fund Cheryl and Jerome Weinberger Donna L. Yip 04L and Matthew Perchonock

Mentors (gifts of $2,500–$4,999) Anonymous Terrence B. Adamson 68C 73L and Edith E. Holiday Alston and Bird, LLP Ursula and David Blumenthal Jessica Sara Boar 02L and Roland Del Cid Suzanne and Robert Boas Sara Beth Brody 87L and Robert Michael Gailey Buchalter Nemer Christopher A.P. Carpenter 94L and Catherine C. Henson The Estate of Emmett B. Cartledge Jr. Han Chun Choi 93L and Catherine M. Abrams The Coca-Cola Company Debra R. Cohen 88L Halli D. Cohn 90L and Richard J. Warren 92L Columbus Equipment Company Elizabeth D. Floyd 83L and John E. Floyd 83L Jeffrey K. Garfinkle 90L and Debra L. Garfinkle J. David Gibbs 79L and Kaye L. LaFollette David M. Grimes 87L Kenneth A. Gross 75L and Karin G. Gross Barbara L. Gunn James I. Hay 71L and Molly Hay Catherine Marie Hilton 95L and Larry W. Hilton Melba and James Hughes Jr. Elisa Smith Kodish 99L and Thad C. Kodish 00L Shari K. Krouner 84L and Todd Jay Krouner 84L

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John P. MacNaughton 74L and Bonnie B. MacNaughton Joseph L. Manson III 74L Teri Plummer McClure 88L and Roderick W. McClure Paul M. McLarty Jr. 63C 66L and Ruth Bunton McLarty Thomas R. McNeill 77L and Patsy L. McNeill Patricia Ratner McWeeney 84L and Micheal McWeeney Melanol Foundation Inc. Richard H. Neiman 75L and Eileen M. Neiman Sarah Ann O’Leary 04PH and Michael John Perry Seth Mitchell Park 15L Suzanne Tucker Plybon 86L and William T. Plybon 86L Gregory L. Riggs 79L and Kaye A. Riggs Michael P. Sarrey 76L and Paula K. Sarrey Debra A. Segal 79L and Randall Jeffrey Cadenhead Keith J. Shapiro 83L Wendie C. Stabler 83L and W. Laird Stabler III Charles E. Taylor 84L and Lisa Cannon Taylor Nari and Alton Todd Truist United Way of Metropolitan Atlanta, Inc. Mark D. Wasserman 86L and Rebekah H. Wasserman 87A John Legare Williams 01L Jack G. Yopp

Founders (gifts of $1,000*–$2,499) *$500 for graduates of the last decade ACCA Georgia Chapter Miles J. Alexander 52C and Elaine B. Alexander The Estate of James L. Alston Paul H. Anderson Jr. 75L and Debbie C. Anderson Joel Steven Arogeti 82L and Beth W. Arogeti Ellen and Morton Aronson Valerie J. Artzt 88L and Alan Gwertzman Andrea D. Ascher 77L and Paul B. Ascher Aspen Center for Social Values Inc Erin C. Vocke Bailey 06L and Matthew K.V. Bailey Emily C. Baker 98C 01L and Christopher Conrad Bly 99C 02L John B. Ballard Jr. 73L and Janet E. Ballard Justin Alexander Barton 12B 12L Henry R. Bauer Jr. 67L and Mary Carole Cooney 75L Gerald L. Baxter 76L and Deborah B. Baxter The Hon. Dorothy Toth Beasley 08L Jolayne and Sanford H. Bederman The Hon. Stanley F. Birch Jr. 70L 76L and Margaret Saye Sutton Steven R. Block 80L and Lisa A. Block Carol Bogash William L. Bost III 01L and Helen M. Bost William L. Bost Jr. 73L and Ruthanna J. Bost Henry L. Bowden Jr. 74L and Jeanne Johnson Bowden 77L William C. Bowers 75L and Joanne Kennedy L. Travis Brannon Jr. 52L and Jean Mouchet Brannon Peter A. Braverman 77L and Susan R. Rosenberg 78L Carolyn R. Bregman 82L Alice G. Brown 08L and William McKnight Brown 05B Robert L. Bunnen Jr. 80L Lisa Stephanian Burton, Esq. 92L and Mark R. Burton A. Paul Cadenhead 49L and Sara Davenport Cadenhead James C. Camp 76L and Delia Park Camp Robert D. Carl III 78L and Anne C. Currie Rhonda Carniol 82L and Lenard A. Adler 82M Paul T. Carroll III 74C 79L and Dale Clothier Carroll 75N 79N Virginia L. Carron Eiland 92L and Brent Hunter Eiland 94B John A. Chandler and Elizabeth V. Tanis Benjamin J. Chapman A. Morgan Cloud III and Shelby Dallam Gennett Sharon A. Cobb 87L and Ginger Lewis

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The Hon. Clarence Cooper 67L and Shirley Elder Cooper 84A Mark F. Dehler 84L and L. Cathy Cox Justin Archibald Critz 98C 08L David Dawes Nee II Foundation The Hon. Eric M. Davis 92L and Lisa Marie Davis Christina Ellen Del Gaizo 09L and Andrew James Del Gaizo 10MR Samuel R. DeSimone Jr. Robert S. Devins 78L W. Brinkley Dickerson Jr. 78B 82B 82L and Patricia M. Dickerson The Hon. John E. Dougherty 48C 50L Mary L. Dudziak and William Aitkenhead Steven S. Dunlevie 73L and Katherine S. Dunlevie Denis L. Durkin 73L James Olen Earl 92L and Sari Katz Earl 92L Matt E. Egger 78L and Virginia Ann Fowler W. Tinsley Ellis 55C 58L and Judith Williams Ellis 57C Jessica Duncan Felfoldi 11L and David N. Felfoldi Christine and George Felker Martha L.A. Fineman Firm Advice, Inc. Mr. William L. Floyd 65L and Mrs. William L. Floyd Richard Charles Forman 54L Andrew Joshua Frank 03L and Sivan Alyse Frank 04L Alison Elko Franklin 03L Gary S. Freed 81L Joel A. Freedman 84L and Donna Freedman Gerard J. Gaeng 84L Luck and David Gambrell Isabel M. Garcia 99L and David J. Sanchez Sharon A. Gay 82L and Neil C. Schemm Sanford A. Cohn 67L and Ruth H. Gershon 67C 70L E. Eldridge Goins Jr. 72L and Susan Wheelock Goins Danielle Elizabeth Goldstone 09L 09T Susan Laura Grace 12L Scott Allen Greer 95L and Karen Esther Greer Marc Geoffrey Gross 12L Ashley Brown Guffey 09L Elizabeth E. Hall 11L Robert S. Harkey 62C 65L and Barbara P. Harkey Anne M. Rector 87L and Julie Hassell 65OX 67C The Hon. Catharina Dubbelday Haynes 86L Charles S. Henck 69C 75L and Christine G. Henck The Hon. James C. Hill 48L Robert H. Hishon 69L Jack E. Horrell 76L and Karen Holley Horrell 76L Harry C. Howard 55L and Telside Strickland Howard The Hon. Kenneth A. Howard 50L and Sarah M. Howard Susan Hoy 74L Ruth R. Hoyt and Anne H. Jolley Foundation Joella and David Hricik The Huisking Foundation, Inc. The Hon. Willis B. Hunt Jr. 54L and Ursula S. Hunt Susan and Howard Hunter Hunton and Williams, LLP Richard C. Ingwersen 73L and T. W. Ingwersen Charles E. Izlar Makram B. Jaber 96L and Avis G. Brock Niji Jain 07C 11L Dorothy Anne Jarrell, Esq. 99L John A. Jordak Jr. 93L and Nancy Y. Jordak 93L Sheila and Seth Jutan Ruth J. Katz 77L Kevin M. Kearney 87L and L. Adair Kearney David Kessler 94L and Rhonda Kessler Bebe and Jay Kivitz The Hon. Phyllis A. Kravitch Kulynych Family Foundation II, Inc.

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Harry V. Lamon Jr. 58L and Ada Lamon The Hon. John S. Langford Jr. 58L and Margaret E. Langford Nancy F. Lawler 75L and J. Timothy Lawler Jonathan K. Layne 79B 79L and Sheryl S. Layne 79C Mary W. Legg 84L and Eugene Legg Steven K. Leibel 80L and Julie O. Leibel Daniel S. Levitas 10L The Hon. Elliott H. Levitas 52C 56L and Mrs. Barbara Hillman Levitas Thomas E. Lewis 70L Rhani Morris Lott 10L and Brad Kaiser Douglas J. MacGinnitie 92L and Michelle T. MacGinnitie Kareem A. Maddison 03L and Shonda Maddison John Maggio 96L Meghan Howett Magruder 80C 83L and Alexander Clarke Magruder Jr. 80C Tina Williams McKeon 96L and Robert J. McKeon John Francis McMullan 71L and Marilyn M. McMullan Linda Giunta Michaelson 90L and David J. Michaelson Merriam Mikhail 12L Thoral David Mitchell 89L Morgan Stanley Elizabeth Ann Morgan Carl W. Mullis III 75L and Marian Mullis Paul J. Murphy 86L and Gia M. Partain Christopher T. Nace 03B 03L Ki Tae Nam Norman Foundation, Inc. Kristi Kay North 13L and David A. North Brandy Fluker Oakley 10L The Hon. William C. O’Kelley 51C 53L and Ernestine Allen O’Kelley Roger W. Orlando 84C 87L Robert I. Paller 58L and Caryl Paller Charles F. Palmer 86L and Kathie Palmer Jaclyn C. Pampel 02L and Erik P. Pampel Wilmer Parker III 76L and Rebecca J. Skillern Parker Alyssa Janiece Parsons 10L David F. Partlett and Nannette S. Partlett Marc A. Pearl 79L Stuart David Poppel 94L and Deborah K. Poppel Leslie Anne Powell 09L Polly J. Price 86C 86G R. J. and Maureen W. Watts Fund Kiran Raj 07L and Meena Devi Raj 08M Mary Frances Radford 81L and Charles Lee Raudonis 76G Lawrence Andrew Reicher 08L and Ilene Reicher B. Allen Reid 80L Mark David Richardson 09L Elizabeth Barger Rose 07L and Matthew Rose Peter J. Ross 78L and Anne I. Thorson Amelia Toy Rudolph 88C 91L and Frederick M. Rudolph Joseph O. Saseen 54L and Patricia F. Saseen Daniel A. Sasse, Esq. 97L and Anne M. Brafford Patricia M. Scaduto 87L Jonathan Paul Schroeder 95B and Barbara V. Schroeder Arthur Jay Schwartz 72L and Joyce Straus Schwartz Jean S. Shanks 74G J. Ben Shapiro 64C 67L and Nancy Shapiro Peter Christopher Sherlock 04C 08L and Laura Gorham Sherlock 06C 11M Paul R. Shlanta 83L and Mary E. Long Mariette Stigter 99L Thomas E. Story III 80B 83L and Janice Kulynych Story 82B William P. Sullivan III 83L and Laura S. Sullivan Mary and Timothy Terrell William J. Terry 70L and Marie Carmen Fernandez

The Weil Firm LLC Randolph W. Thrower 34C 36L Willard N. Timm Jr. 68L and Wanda F. Timm Charles H. Tisdale 72L and Martha Eskew Tisdale Barbara and Christopher Troianos Cheryl F. Turner 94C 99L Bruce L. Udolf 79L and Sheryl Singer Udolf United Way of the Bay Area Elma and Johan David Van der Vyver Barbara A. Van Gelder 76L and Oliver B. Patton Matthew J. Vivian 12L and Priya Bhoplay Vivian 04C 09L James C. Walsh 82L W. Terence Walsh 70L and Patricia W. Walsh Waters Petroleum, LLC Susan and Douglas Waters R. J. Watts II 81L and Maureen W. Watts Amy Levin Weil 77C 81L and Craig E. Weil 81MR Neal A. Weinstein 81L and Rebecca L. Weinstein 81L Jordan P. Weiss 77L and Carol Login Weiss Louise M. Wells 74C 78L and Thomas M. Wells III Warren O. Wheeler 70L and Linda G. Wheeler Lloyd T. Whitaker 52OX 54C 61L and Mary Ann Baker Whitaker Wilmer Parker III, Attorney At Law David D. Wilson 93L and Melody Wilder Wilson Janet H. Wilson Stanford G. Wilson 80L and Debi T. Wilson The Hon. Dan P. Winn 48L Barbara and Charles Woodhouse Christopher C. York 66L and Marilyn Puder-York David Zalesne 87L and Anny Zalesne David A. Zimmerman 99L and Stephanie M. Zimmerman Marlene and Paul John Zwier II

The 1836 Society Comprising more than 700 alumni and friends, the 1836 Society is a special group whose planned gifts help Emory strengthen academic programs, conduct medical research, attract and retain eminent faculty, and enhance student scholarship. The following list reflects donors who created or augmented an estate gift to Emory Law during the past fiscal year.

Anonymous L. Travis Brannon Jr. 52L and Jean Mouchet Brannon Sharon A. Cobb 87L and Ginger Lewis Gardner G. Courson 74L and Haidee Courson Allan B. Diamond 79L and Sharon Diamond Ann A. Johnson 67C and Ben Johnson III 65C Philip Syng Reese 66C 76B 76L and Daphne Craven Reese

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New juvenile laws to improve outcomes, save money realized a long-held goal this year—an overhaul of the state’s 40-year-old juvenile code.The center had worked since 2006 with state legislators, juvenile court stakeholders, and other child-advocacy groups to rewrite Georgia’s badly aging juvenile laws. Among the revisions are changes in policies regarding sentencing; a statutory framework for open adoptions; an exception to the state’s child pornography laws to avoid felony charges for teen “sexting”; and a new law to help child victims of commercial sexual exploitation charged with prostitution vacate, modify, or seal their delinquency records.

New sentencing policies will prevent locking up low-risk juvenile offenders. Under the old code, Georgia’s juvenile offenders were given “very intrusive interventions at a high cost to the state, and with very poor outcomes,” according to Barton’s Executive Director Melissa Carter.

A year’s confinement for a juvenile offender costs the state $91,126, versus about $18,000 for an adult. A 2012 study by the Special Council on Criminal Justice Reform found that while the Department of Juvenile Justice spent about two-thirds of its $300 million budget on correctional facilities, more than half of the young people who entered the system wound up convicted of another crime within three years.

“It was a great session for the Barton Legislative Clinic,” says Kirsten Widner, the center’s former director of policy and advocacy. “We had three student legislative projects, all of which passed the General Assembly and were signed into law by the governor.”—Lisa Ashmore

Emory Law’s Barton Child Law and Policy Center

Talented Totenbergs tackle media and the law A journalist, a judge, and a media strategist—all with the same

famous last name—provided lively commentary for “Media & the Law: The 3 Totenbergs,” held in May at Times Center in New York. The event featured three accomplished sisters: Nina Totenberg, NPR’s legal affairs correspondent; the Honorable Amy Totenberg, US Federal District Court judge for the Northern District of Georgia; and Jill Totenberg, national media strategist.

The talented Totenberg sisters, who never before had come together to speak publicly about their respective areas of expertise in media and the law, mesmerized an attentive audience of Emory Law alumni, members of the media, and newly admitted students of the Emory Law Class of 2016. Emory Law Advisory Board Chair Allan Diamond 79L conceived the evening, which was presented by Emory Law in partnership with BDO Consulting and Diamond McCarthy.

—Susan Clark

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Robert Siegel, senior host of National Public Radio’s awardwinning evening news magazine, All Things Considered, convened the event, which featured (top, from left) Amy, Jill, and Nina Totenberg.

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Students score Supreme Court win Graduation day was even sweeter for Kedar Bhatia 13L, who found out the same morning that a case presented by the Emory Law School Supreme Court Advocacy Project (ELSSCAP) had won in the nation’s highest court.

Bhatia founded the group in 2010 with help from the late Emory Law Professor David Bederman, who had argued before the Supreme Court four times. ELSSCAP is the only student-run litigation program in the nation.

Bullock v. BankChampaign, N.A. centered on defining defalcation in bankruptcy code. Louis Laverone 13L led the team that wrote the merits-phase brief.

The case involved a family dispute over their father’s estate. Randy Bullock’s siblings filed suit, alleging misconduct arising from loans made against the estate. A unanimous opinion by US Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer found Bullock had not breached his fiduciary duty, noting all loans were repaid with 6 percent interest.

Most lawyers wait their entire careers for a chance before the Supreme Court, notes Emory Law Dean Robert Schapiro.

“Under the guidance of Professor Sarah Shalf and working with a partner law firm, our students had this opportunity while still in law school. Their achievement highlights a core value of an Emory Law education—the opportunity to integrate theory and practice to make a significant contribution to society.”

The Emory Law student team for the Bullock case also included Ed Philpot 13L, Rachel Erdman 14L, Scott Forbes 13L, and Michael Wiseman 14L. Bullock was argued on March 18 by Thomas M. Byrne of Sutherland Asbill & Brennan, an ELSSCAP partner firm.

“I’m very grateful that the students, Tom Byrne, and Jim Engelthaler [Bullock’s lawyer in the lower courts] are able to share in the excitement of this victory,” ELSSCAP adviser Shalf says.

“But most of all, I am delighted that we have won this case for our client Randy Bullock. He needed a fresh start, and the Supreme Court has granted him another chance at one.”—Lisa Ashmore

Pictured on the steps of the Supreme Court are, from left, Emory Law Dean Robert Schapiro, Edward Philpot 13L (writing team leader for cert petition), Professor Sarah Shalf, Rachel Erdman 14L (team member and ELSSCAP board member), David Jerger 14L (ELSSCAP board member and student who located the case), Louis Laverone 13L (2012–2013 director of ELSSCAP and team leader for merits briefs), Kedar Bhatia 13L (ELSSCAP founder), Scott Forbes 13L (team member), and Michael Wiseman 14L (team member).

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Emory Law Honors 2013 Distinguished Alumni Emory Law recognized five notable alumni in September for their generous contributions to the school.

Pictured in the front row with Emory Law Dean Robert A. Schapiro are, from left, Leslie A. Powell 09L and Priya B. Vivian 04C 09L, who co-founded the Emory Law Young Alumni Committee. They received 2013 Young Alumni Awards for notable leadership and service contributions to Emory Law and to the legal profession. Back row: Patrise PerkinsHooker 84B 84L, president-elect of the State Bar of Georgia, accepted the ElÊonore Raoul Greene Trailblazer Award, given to an Emory Law alumna who has blazed a trail for others through her own professional and personal endeavors. Barrett K. Hawks 60B 63L, whose many efforts on behalf of his school have included president of the Emory Law Alumni Association and service on the university Board of Visitors, is this year’s winner of the Alumni Service Award for his leadership and outstanding service to the law school community.

Georgia Attorney General Samuel S. Olens 83L, past chair of the Atlanta Regional Commission and Cobb County Commission, received the Distinguished Alumni Award for his extraordinary achievement in the legal profession and in service to society.

New faces at Emory Law Susan Clark Associate Dean of Marketing and Communications and Chief Marketing Officer susan.clark@emory.edu

Silas Allard 11L Associate Director, Center for the Study of Law and Religion silas.allard@emory.edu

Jessica Dworkin Assistant Dean, Graduate Programs jrdworkin@emory.edu

Cecily Craighill Director, Alumni Relations cecily.craighill@emory.edu

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Lydia Russo Assistant Dean, Center for Professional Development and Career Strategy lydia.s.russo@emory.edu

AnnualGiving

PROFESSOR RAFAEL PARDO’S first task as a U.S. Bankruptcy Court clerk involved a student-loan discharge proceeding. The student’s debt was so debilitating that Pardo was inspired to research bankruptcy relief from education loans. Now the Robert T. Thompson Chair at Emory Law, he is a national expert who has written extensively on the subject and testified before Congress. A scholarship helped him fund his legal education, and he believes strongly in the value of scholarship support. Give today, and help support the next generation of Emory lawyers.

Office of Marketing and Communications Emory University School of Law 1301 Clifton Road NE Atlanta GA 30322-2770

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For us, it is a duty; to the victims, it is their lives.� —Boston Marathan bombing co-prosecutor Aloke Chakravarty 97L