Chicago-Kent Magazine Spring 2023

A Letter From Dean Anita K. Krug

Dear Alumni,

I am happy to report that Chicago-Kent College of Law is thriving. Enrollment numbers, student success, and faculty scholarship are all as strong as ever. Our faculty are publishing articles and books, while our students are continuing to succeed in moot court and trial advocacy competitions across the country. As the academic year comes to a close, our graduates are taking their first steps toward becoming leaders in the legal community.

As is the case every year, many of our 2023 graduates are choosing to dedicate their careers to public interest work. Chicago-Kent has always taken pride in being a place where students with a passion for closing the justice gap can gain the skills they need to create the positive change they want to see in the world. In order to provide a wider range of opportunities for our public interest-focused students, Chicago-Kent opened the Public Interest Center in fall 2022.

In this issue, you will learn how the Public Interest Center is building on Chicago-Kent’s history of supporting access to justice. The center has pulled together existing public interest programs, including the Self-Help Resource Center at the Richard J. Daley Center, and the Public Interest Awards. Staff members are also creating new opportunities for students to build a career based on service.

You will also learn about Rachel Brady ’13, whose work at a private civil rights firm in Chicago advocating for the wrongfully convicted brought her to the Illinois Supreme

Court to argue a case she ultimately won. Due to her advocacy, innocent people who are exonerated face fewer hurdles in rebuilding their lives after they are released from prison.

Militza Pagán ’17 is also creating lasting change for Chicago families. In her nonprofit work, she has helped the Chicago City Council pass laws protecting domestic workers’ rights. Pagán also works to further immigrant rights. She won a case against the Trump administration regarding a rule aimed at blocking immigrants from accessing social services.

Many of you may feel the impact of the work done by August Hieber ’19. Working for the Administrative Office of the Illinois Courts, Hieber is responsible for making Illinois courthouses inclusive and accessible for all. Hieber is working to elevate the voices of community members so that the courts can better ensure an experience that works for people of all backgrounds.

A J.D. degree confers a tremendous amount of power to an individual. The alumni you will read about in this magazine are excellent examples of how our graduates use that power to create lasting change that will be felt for generations. Thank you for your ongoing support of this remarkable law school and this university.

Anita K. Krug Dean and Professor

Chicago-Kent College of Law students Alyssa Yoshino ’23, Connor Larson ’23, and Keaton Smith ’23 finished in first place and won best brief in the Chicago regional of the Saul Lefkowitz Moot Court Competition. The group advanced to nationals, where they won best oral arguments in March 2023.

Alexis Endres ’24, Nic Zito ’23, Rana Salem ’23, and Jack Debacker ’24 won best closing argument at the 2022 National Civil Trial Competition in November 2022.

Justice Student Advocacy Competition after winning all 15 ballots in the regional competition in March 2023. Brittany Dushman ’24, Ben Sheinbein ’24, and Aaron Thompson ’24 finished as the champions of the 2023 virtual McGee Civil Rights Moot Court competition in March 2023.

Marisa Gelabert ’24, Helen Gustafson ’24, and Nell Riordan ’24 scored a secondplace finish in the Frank A. Schreck Gaming Law Moot Court Competition hosted by UNLV’s William S. Boyd School of Law in March 2023. Jay Castillo ’24 and Charlie Johnson ’24 made it to the quarterfinals of the competition. Johnson took home the award for best oralist.

Two Chicago-Kent College of Law teams finished as regional semifinalists in the American Bar Association Law Student Division National Appellate Advocacy Competition. Paul Ansani ’24 and Manuela Burek ’24 comprised one team, while Elizabeth Weber ’24 and Hannah Wiese ’24 made up the other.

Elizabeth “Lizzie” Horwitz ’23 and Kaitlyn Kloss ’23 started the season strong at the Hunton Andrews Kurth Moot Court National Championship at the University of Houston Law Center in January 2023. The Kurth Championship is an invitational, with only the top 16 teams from the prior year allowed to compete. Kloss earned second-best oralist.

Cole Gunter ’23, Jack DeBacker ’23, Paige Bareck ’24, Nic Zito ’23, and Emanuel “Manny” Centeno ’24 finished as semifinalists in the American Association for

Clarice Fisher ’24 and Evelyn Tarnovsky ’24 earned first place in the virtual UCLA School of Law Cybersecurity Moot Court Competition in March 2023.

Erin Gallagher ’24 and Kaitlyn Watkins ’24 finished as semifinalists in the University of Wisconsin Law Schools’ Evan A. Evans Constitutional Law Moot Court Competition.

Christopher Romero ’23 and Hani Salameh ’23 finished as runners-up at the Midwest regional of the Giles Sutherland Rich Memorial Moot Court competition in March 2023.

Alyssa Yoshino

Connor Larson

Keaton Smith

Cole Gunter Nic Zito

Paige Bareck

Emanuel Centeno

Jack DeBacker

Kaitlyn Kloss

Patent scholar and equity issues expert

Jordana Goodman will join the faculty at Chicago-Kent College of Law in fall 2023. Goodman is an expert on gender and race equity issues in STEM fields. Her research explores intellectual property ownership and diversity in terms of how attorneys are recognized for their work. She spent six years as a patent prosecutor after passing the United State Patent and Trademark Office’s patent bar. In that role, she wrote patent applications to develop portfolios for a variety of clients.

During her time as a practicing attorney, Goodman encountered many problems, such as “a lack of diverse client acquisition, high prices, lack of diversity of attorneys.” She turned to academia to “teach my students how to be more equitable attorneys.”

Goodman joins Chicago-Kent from Boston University School of Law where she works as a lecturer. She also acts as an innovator in residence at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Nicole Jansma ’23 was named a 2023 Law Student of the Year by National Jurist and preLaw magazines. The honor recognizes students “who have made outstanding contributions to their law schools and their communities” in 2022. While pursuing her concentration in public interest law, Jansma secured competitive internships in public defender offices across the country—first with the Federal Defender Services of Wisconsin in Milwaukee and then with the Illinois Office of the State Appellate Defender, the Federal Defender for the Northern District of Illinois in Chicago, and the Public Defender Service for the District of Columbia in Washington, D.C. Her work was funded by a John Paul Stevens Public Interest Fellowship.

Jansma was the 2022 president of the Kent Justice Foundation, a Chicago-Kent College of Law student organization that

FACULTY/LAW SCHOOL NEWS

Professor of Law

Daniel Martin Katz released explosive research in March 2023 that showed that OpenAI’s latest artificial intelligence software, GPT-4, is capable of passing the Universal Bar Examination, including the essay and performance sections. Katz and his co-authors graded the essay and performance portions. Katz says that they did their best to try to grade it fairly, but the computer scored so well on the multiple-choice portion that there was a lot of room for error in the essay and performance sections.

The program’s performance on the essay section was notable. Katz says the only indicator that the essays were written by computers and not humans was an absence of typos and grammar that was “near perfect.”

As AI tools make their way into law offices across the country, Katz hopes that their influence will reach beyond that. He believes that AI could be a “force multiplier” that will allow more people to access legal services that may have been too expensive before.

is dedicated to increasing student awareness of public interest law issues and opportunities. At the 2023 Public Interest awards, she was honored with the 2023 Vivien C. Gross Pro Bono and Public Interest Leadership Award. She also earned the Dean’s Distinguished Public Service Awards for completing more than 250 hours of service, primarily with the John Howard Association, an Illinoisbased nonprofit prison watchdog group. Additionally, she serves as vice president of the Moot Court Honors Society and as a notes and comments editor for the Chicago-Kent Law Review. She also serves on the National Advisory Committee for Equal Justice Works, a highly regarded Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit that coordinates funding for public interest fellowships and is the country’s largest facilitator of opportunities in public interest law.

Cary Martin Shelby has been named the newest Ralph Brill Endowed Chair at Chicago-Kent College of Law. She joins the faculty as a professor of law from Washington and Lee University School of Law. Shelby specializes in corporate and securities law, and her research “scrutinizes the blurred distinctions between public and private investment funds resulting from financial innovation, systemic risk, and retailization.”

In the course of her research, Shelby began to see how financial systems can perpetuate inequality, particularly disadvantaging people of color and lower earners. Now she conducts her research through a critical race theory lens.

Shelby grew up in chronic poverty and entered the foster care system at 13. Now in her spare time, she works to help young people who have experienced foster care achieve their college goals.

Nicole Jansma

Jordana Goodman

Neil Richards, author of Why Privacy Matters (Oxford University Press 2022), won the 2022 Roy C. Palmer Civil Liberties Prize on Democracy, Civil Liberties, and the Rule of Law. The Palmer Prize was established in spring 2007 by Roy C. Palmer ’62 and his wife, Susan M. Palmer, to honor a work of scholarship that explores the tension between civil liberties and national security in contemporary American society.

Over the course of 200 pages, Richards breaks down what privacy is, dispels some common myths about privacy, and explains how the law governing our privacy could be strengthened. He says society needs “reasonable laws that protect us as consumers, as citizens, and as humans in the digital environments in which we have no choice but to live in the twenty-first century.”

Richards is the Koch Distinguished Professor in Law and the director of the Cordell Institute at Washington University in St. Louis School, where he teaches courses on privacy law.

Former United States Securities and Exchange Commission attorney James Tierney is joining the Chicago-Kent College of Law faculty as a professor of law in fall 2023. He currently teaches at the University of Nebraska’s College of Law. There, his research focuses on securities law, primarily on how people engage with the stock market and financial advice, which can “create a lot of traps for the unwary.”

Tierney says this research can also help us show whose interests the law is promoting “in an age of widening inequality.” He chose to conduct his research in securities law in the hope that it can help democratize finance, giving ordinary people the ability to meet their financial goals.

Some of Tierney’s recent research involves zero-commission stock trading apps such as Robinhood, which promotes that “investing doesn’t have

to be that hard.” In recent articles published in Duke Law Journal and Yale Law Review Forum, he examines how securities law might respond to “gamified” apps that use “behavioral psychology to encourage frequent and often maladaptive trading activity.”

Professor Edward Lee, who serves as co-director of Chicago-Kent College of Law’s Program in Intellectual Property Law, published a book, Creators Take Control: How NFTs Revolutionize Art, Business, and Entertainment, in March 2023. In it, Lee argues that non-fungible tokens (NFTs), despite being difficult for many to understand, will soon become ubiquitous in our lives.

An NFT is a computer code that creates a unique digital token. When that token is sold, the transaction is recorded in a virtual ledger, known as a blockchain. By owning the token, “people believe they own something, then it enables a vast number of uses.”

In the book, Lee examines the controversy that has arisen around the concept of NFTs. He compares it to the commotion surrounding the early days of modern art. Artists such as Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque completely changed the concept of what art is by “ignoring the artistic convention of the renaissance in which artists used a single linear perspective to perceive things as you would in a photograph.”

It took decades, but people eventually accepted “modern art.” Lee argues that as society’s definition of ownership evolves, NFTs will also be accepted widely.

The Chicago-Kent College of Law community continues to mourn the loss of Clinical Professor of Law Vivien C. Gross, who passed away on March 4, 2023, after a long battle with cancer. Gross was a beloved faculty member for 45 years, growing and overseeing the legal and judicial externship programs, and teaching courses on professional responsibility. Gross was fundamental in the growth of public interest opportunities for students. She established the Public Interest Resource Center, which tracked student community service hours, recognizing students who completed 50 or 250 hours. She also served as the longtime faculty adviser for the college’s public interest student organization, the Kent Justice Foundation. Aside from being an exceptionally dedicated colleague, brilliant attorney, and cherished mentor, Gross was fun and engaging to be around. She took immense pleasure in mentoring students.

“There’s no one like her. A unique personality. I can’t think of a bad thing to say about her. How many people can you say that about?” Clinical Professor Richard Gonzalez says. “When you first meet her, you think, this isn’t real, no one can be that good. But time goes on and you realize she is that good. Vivien was that kind of person.”

Fighting the Good Fight

There is no single definition of what public interest law is. Some say it is about closing the justice gap, while others argue it is about fighting systemic injustice through policy changes. At Chicago-Kent College of Law, students have always been encouraged to create change in whatever way they choose. Chicago-Kent’s alumni take on injustice in the public and private sector, from government offices to big law firms to nonprofits. They may go about it in different ways, but each of them is working to build a more just and equitable world.

CHAMPION FOR THE INNOCENT

In the state of Illinois, it’s now much easier for innocent individuals who are wrongly convicted to receive financial compensation and to have their records expunged due to the work of Rachel Brady ’13, who took a case all the way to the Illinois Supreme Court—and won.

Brady met Charles Palmer during her first week as a justice fellow at Loevy & Loevy, a Chicago-based civil rights and whistle-blower law firm, in 2017. Palmer had just been exonerated by DNA evidence after spending 17 years in prison for murder.

Brady set about the difficult work of helping Palmer get financial relief.

“One of his parents died while he was in prison. One of his daughters died while he was in prison. He missed out on so much, not to mention the absolute horror of being in prison. And the work history: He has an 18-year gap in his resume. He needed that money to help him get back on his feet,” she says.

After 17 years wrongfully in prison, Palmer was entitled to more than $220,000 from the State of Illinois. Getting a certificate of innocence (COI) is the first step toward getting a faulty record expunged and receiving financial restitution.

A COI also entitles the wrongfully incarcerated to other benefits, such as re-entry programs, that aren’t available to those who didn’t complete their sentence.

It also holds immeasurable emotional value.

“It’s a judicial declaration that a person is innocent. That, in and of itself, has a lot of value to people who have been fighting for decades—screaming for decades—that they’re innocent,” says Brady.

The state opposed Palmer’s petition for the COI. Its counsel argued that DNA evidence taken from under the victim’s fingernails proved Palmer didn’t commit the murder, but it didn’t prove that he had no involvement and wasn’t present.

“How do you prove that you didn’t do something? DNA is the gold standard of proving innocence. If DNA isn’t enough, what else is there?” Brady asks.

“Maybe if he had known 20 years ago that he would be accused of being there, he could have generated some other evidence,” she adds.

To Brady, this was a gross misreading of the COI statute.

“We were concerned that this would end up in a situation where the state is opposing all the certificates of innocence on the grounds that the person could have been there, simply because it’s nearly impossible for a petitioner to prove that negative,” says Brady. “My team and I just felt like it was wrong. This could not be what the legislation was designed for.”

Danielle Hamilton, a colleague of Brady and partner at Loevy & Loevy, recalls the passion that Brady brought to the brief and the arguments.

“It was the first time I’d ever seen it. She said, ‘This law is wrong, and it needs to be right, and I’m going to change it.’ Then she took it all the way to the Supreme Court, and won—and now things are better,” says Hamilton. “The impact is immeasurable. It’s going to make a huge difference for her client, for future clients, for anyone in Illinois trying to file one of these petitions.”

Brady drew on the moot court skills

prisons, and it is deeply, deeply disturbing. That kind of put this area of law on my radar a little bit.”

In that time, she saw hundreds of cases brought by pro se prisoners.

“I saw that a lot of their meritorious cases were kicked for procedural reasons, or exhaustion problems, things that would have been solved with a little bit of legal training or assistance,” she remembers.

That sparked her interest in working for the rights of incarcerated persons.

She then completed a two-year Skadden Fellowship with Equip for Equality, where she assisted youth with disabilities transition out of Illinois juvenile justice facilities.

By that point, she had become aware of the work that Loevy & Loevy does, and she couldn’t see herself anywhere else.

that she gained while at Chicago-Kent College of Law in preparing for her arguments. She even practiced with some of her old moot court buddies.

The stakes were high, and losing wasn’t an option. So she won.

“It is a highlight of my career and probably my life. When I see that case cited in other opinions, for the good law that it is, it feels really good,” she says, smiling.

Now, the formerly incarcerated only have to prove that they didn’t commit the crime that they were convicted of when applying for a COI. They don’t have to defend against other theories.

Brady is now a partner at Loevy & Loevy, specializing in cases of wrongful convictions and unconstitutional confinement and medical care while incarcerated.

These issues first came on her radar when she was a clerk at the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit for two years after graduating.

“Until I started working there, I didn’t know the horrific things that we do to incarcerated folks in this country. I just had no idea,” she says. “I learned a lot about what’s happening inside of our

“My firm is interesting and unique because we are a private firm, but we fund a nonprofit called the Exoneration Project,” she says. “The firm has used the resources we have as private attorneys to exonerate hundreds and hundreds of people.”

Now, she is working on wrongful conviction cases all over the country. Locally, she’s fighting to get relief for those wrongfully convicted by former Chicago Police Detective Reynaldo Guevara. Currently, 40 of his convictions have been thrown out based on misconduct, and Loevy & Loevy has recently filed 11 more cases

“It’s going to be expensive to resolve these cases because how do you compensate someone for 20 stolen years? But the city has the responsibility to own up for the misconduct that these detectives committed under its watch, and it just won’t do it, so we will litigate them all,” she says.

Facing an uphill battle, Brady has never questioned her career choice.

The work can be hard and can be thankless, but it’s worth it in the end.

“When someone has spent 20 years in prison for something they didn’t do, helping them get justice seems like a good pursuit,” she says. 

“It’s a judicial declaration that a person is innocent. That, in and of itself, has a lot of value to people who have been fighting for decades—screaming for decades—that they’re innocent.”

— Rachel Brady

A History of Service

I want to inspire every law student and lawyer and encourage them to take the time to do pro bono work,” says Michelle Vodenik, director of Chicago-Kent College of Law’s Public Interest Center. “It’s rewarding, you gain skills, and you make an impact in people’s lives that you oftentimes can see immediately.”

The Public Interest Center at Chicago-Kent is a new addition. It opened during the 2022–23 academic year, and staff have already hit the ground running.

“Developing the Public Interest Center is my dream come true. This is what I’ve hoped I’d get to do since I started, to bring all the public interest and pro bono pieces that were already here at Chicago-Kent together and build upon them, so we can make a much bigger impact in the Chicago area in terms of supporting people who need access to justice,” says Vodenik.

Chicago-Kent has a long history of supporting public interest.

The law school was one of the first funders of Illinois Legal Aid Online, and the venture lived at Chicago-Kent for years before moving to its own space.

Vivien Gross, a clinical professor at Chicago-Kent for more than four decades before passing away in March 2023, ran the Public Interest Resource Center, which tracked student community service hours. Every year, she held a ceremony to honor

Chicago-Kent Adds to Pro Bono Lineage with Opening of Public Interest Center

students who completed 50 or 250 hours of community service during their time in law school.

Chicago-Kent also runs the Self-Help Resource Center (SHRC) at the Richard J. Daley Center in Chicago, where student volunteers help pro se litigants navigate the justice system. In a nation where upward of 80 percent of litigants appear unrepresented, many of whom are up against a represented opponent, the desk can help close the justice gap.

“They’re coming into this situation maybe not understanding all the words that are being used in the Daley Center, or how to navigate it, because it’s complicated,” says Tobias Rodriguez ’19, the associate director of Career Services at Chicago-Kent. “If someone comes in and says, ‘I don’t know how to fill out these forms,’ no one else there is going to help them. That just doesn’t exist.”

“That’s one of the reasons I enjoy the Self-Help Resource Center so much is because I’m helping people with things that seem very basic to me,” he adds. “But it seems basic to me because I come from a place of privilege.”

The SHRC was shut down during the COVID-19 pandemic but re-opened in April 2023 with a donation of new computers and printers from Chapman and Cutler LLP.

Reopening the SHRC is just one of the ways that the Public

Interest Center is working to close the justice gap and provide opportunities for law students who are dedicated to the cause.

“I get very angry about injustice,” says Joseph Strom ’25, student manager at the Public Interest Center.

“There are a lot of students who are very passionate people,” he says. “They’re here because they care about justice, and they’re go-getters on that front. They want to make positive change in the world.”

The goal of the Public Interest Center is to make it easier for students, such as Strom, to pursue public interest. To make that happen, Vodenik took all aspects of public interest that existed at Chicago-Kent and pulled them together under the umbrella of the Public Interest Center.

“A lot of schools have a public interest center, and it’s very

important to have one. We were always doing all the parts, we just weren’t doing it in an organized way,” she says. “Now, requests come in in a more organized fashion. I have organizations reaching out to me about pro bono opportunities, whereas before, they didn’t really have a place to reach out to.”

The center’s focus is to provide students with the resources that they may need to go into the public interest field.

“For us, part of the goal is to show them that public interest can lead to financial stability, that there are ways to make change in the world and do public interest work that can be tangible careers. It doesn’t have to be this sacrificial thing for only the most idealistic people. If you want to be pragmatic, if you want to have stability, you can still do this stuff,” Strom says.

Vodenik is building on the existing structure by creating volunteer opportunities every month for students and by creating a pro bono pledge—a dedication to doing 50 hours of community service that students can take during 1L orientation. She is also working to establish relationships with pro bono counsel at outside law firms.

And that’s just the beginning.

“I would really like to have more designated, named public interest scholarships for students. Many students, if the opportunity isn’t paid, they’re not going to be able to take that opportunity. That’s even more true if you’re a first-generation law student or you come from a lower-income family,” says Vodenik. “Law school is very expensive. There are students that very much would like to do public interest work, but because they’re stretched financially and will take a paid position such as a law clerk, when what they really want to do is a summer at a public defender’s office. That is a shame.”

In the state of Illinois, attorneys aren’t required to do pro bono work, but they are required to report whether or not they did any or donated to a legal aid organization every year. Studies have indicated that law students who are exposed to volunteer opportunities in law school may be more likely to engage in pro bono work in their careers.

In a country with an immense justice gap, the staff at the Public Interest Center want to do their small part to close it. In 2021 low-income Americans did not receive any or enough legal help for 93 percent of their legal problems. Only 28 percent of that group believe that the American justice system will treat them fairly.

To Strom, that’s unacceptable.

“I see the law as a way to make sure we’re taking care of everyone—that no one gets left behind,” he says. “All of this is here to make sure we can do that in a way that’s not violent and vindictive, and instead that people can be taken care of and believe that there’s some type of fairness in the world and that fairness can apply to them.”

“That’s something I think all of us should dedicate a little bit of time to in our professional lives.” 

“There are a lot of students who are very passionate people. They’re here because they care about justice, and they’re go-getters on that front. They want to make positive change in the world.”

—Joseph Strom ’25

[Top row, from left] 1. Clinical Professor Vivien Gross 2. Cheryl Lipton, Pro Bono Project coordinator, Center for Disability and Elder Law; Jordyn Metrick ’25; and Ethan Coniglio ’25 at a guardianship clinic on Public Service Day 3. Clayton Kovich ’25, Kyler Kappes ’25 and Michael Rossmiller ’25 volunteers at Legal Prep Charter Academy on Public Service Day [Bottom row, from left]4. Public Service Day at Just Roots Chicago, a group led by Isabelle Abbott ’23, president of Environmental Law Society 5. Michelle Vodenik, director of the Public Interest Center 6. John McKeown ’25; Kelsey Cruz Gonzales ’25; Francesca Sikora ’25 volunteer on Public Service Day with Gillian Fealy ’13, Founder, Live Grit Soars

A LegacyLasting

I want immigrants and low-wage workers to be seen as people,” says Militza Pagán ’17. “From what I’ve seen, when immigrants or workers are exploited, it’s because others don’t see them as human beings.”

Pagán works as a staff attorney at the Shriver Center on Poverty Law. She fights to create lasting legal and legislative change for immigrants and low-wage workers, particularly domestic workers.

Before Pagán came onboard in 2016, the Shriver Center successfully advocated for the passage of the Illinois Domestic Workers Bill of Rights. It established basic worker rights, such as minimum wage and overtime protections and protections against discrimination and sexual harassment, for domestic workers across Illinois.

“Before the Illinois Domestic Workers Bill of Rights, domestic workers were not protected under the Illinois Human Rights Act, so a domestic worker could be sexually harassed and there was really no legal remedy for them,” says Pagán.

In 2017, Pagán joined the Shriver Center as a Skadden Fellow.

She then began the difficult work of overseeing the implementation and expansion of those newly established rights for domestic workers.

“Much of my work has been the implementation of that law and the education of domestic workers,” Pagán explains. “That meant also getting the Illinois Department of Labor, who is in charge of enforcing the protections, to issue regulations to explain how the law applies, especially to live-in domestic workers who are often in the most vulnerable situations and taken advantage of.”

She also worked to further expand protections for domestic workers in Chicago.

She helped shepherd many domestic worker protections through the Chicago City Council, including minimum wage and overtime protections, as well as the right to a written contract.

“Due to their informal job arrangements, domestic workers are often exploited, not paid what they were promised or often required to do work that was not in the original terms of the employment,” says Pagán. “Now employers are required to provide domestic workers with a written contract to formalize the employment arrangement, making it more difficult to exploit domestic workers.”

Pagán also advocates for protecting immigrants’ access to public benefits. That work led her to a case against the Trump administration’s public charge rule that ended up at the United States Supreme Court.

The Trump administration’s regulation made it difficult for low-income immigrants to become lawful permanent residents by penalizing them for accessing life-saving government services, such as food assistance and medical care, even if they were legally entitled to those services.

“The purpose of the regulation was to intentionally discriminate against low-income immigrants of color and to create fear,” says Pagán. “It created a chilling effect to make sure immigrants feel afraid of accessing government services or interacting with the government and penalize individuals just for being poor.”

The legal battle was long and arduous, but ultimately successful. In March 2021

the regulation was invalidated nationwide. Unfortunately, the regulation was in effect for much of the COVID-19 pandemic and had a devastating effect on immigrant families.

“Many people lost their jobs in the pandemic,” says Pagán. “But many immigrants and their families did not access government assistance—such as food assistance and medical care—and did not get vaccinated because they were concerned that it might affect their ability to stay in this country with their families.”

As with her work with domestic workers, Pagán wasn’t content to sit in her office writing motions. When she was fighting the regulation, she also spent time in the communities, working to educate immigrants about their rights.

The best part of Pagán’s work, she says, is working with members of the community.

New Haven, Connecticut.

“That was when I realized I could build a career helping people,” she says. “My experience at Junta completely changed my professional trajectory.”

Her journey to help others brought her back to Chicago, where she grew up and worked as an AmeriCorps Fellow at the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights before taking a position as deputy director of the Puerto Rican Cultural Center.

That was when she decided she wanted to go to law school.

“I found again and again that it was helpful to understand the law and understand how policies get passed,” she says. “Law school taught me to advocate for individuals in difficult positions.”

She continued her work in the public interest sector during her time at Chicago-Kent with multiple internships, including as a Public Interest Law Initiative intern at Business and Professional People for the Public Interest (now Impact for Equity). She was also a Peggy Browning Fund Fellow at Raise the Floor Alliance and externed for Chief Judge Rubén Castillo in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois.

Now she’s been at the Shriver Center for more than five years—and she’s living her dream.

“People with her expertise and position, advocates that do very high-level work, can sometimes develop a distance from the community or the people that the policy is going to impact,” says Adam Kader, public policy director at Arise Chicago, who works closely with Pagán. “Militza never allows that to happen. She never forgets others’ humanity in the process, and I think that’s apparent in the way she works. She’s inclusive and careful to make sure people are heard.”

Pagán subscribes to the idea of community lawyering.

“The idea is that people directly impacted by laws and policies should determine and lead the change they want to see in their communities,” she says. “The role of the lawyer is to help community members achieve the change they want to see through policy and legal strategies.”

Public interest has always been Pagán’s focus. Even before she knew she wanted to go to law school, she was working with nonprofits.

While working toward her undergraduate degree at Yale University, she worked at Junta for Progressive Action, a nonprofit providing social services for the Latine community in

“I want to eventually look back at my career and see that I used my law degree to create a long-term impact that improved people’s lives,” she says. “That I fought to ensure the law works to the benefit of marginalized communities.”

This year the Public Interest Center honored Pagán with the Honorable Abraham Lincoln Marovitz Public Interest Law Award, a prestigious award bestowed on an alumni who has demonstrated outstanding public interest leadership, reflecting “the character, life, and work of Judge Marovitz ’1925.”

She encourages all attorneys to think about the impact that they could make with their knowledge and power.

“The legal system is intentionally complicated, convoluted, and difficult to access,” she says. “Lawyers are the small group of people who can fully access that legal system. Because of that, lawyers have an important and unique responsibility to ensure that the law gives everyone the opportunity to thrive.”

“What is the legacy that you want to leave behind when you leave your legal career?” she asks. “Is it one that will outlast you? And is it one that ultimately changes people’s lives for the better?” 

“ The idea is that people directly impacted by laws and policies should determine and lead the change they want to see in their communities. The role of the lawyer is to help community members achieve the change they want to see through policy and legal strategies.”—Militza Pagán

To Serve the COMMUNIT Y

The courts are forums for the community, so they need to care about what the community experiences and lives through,” says August Hieber ’19. “You can’t serve without being culturally responsive, free from bias, and inclusive.”

Hieber works as the senior manager of inclusive access in the Administrative Office of the Illinois Courts. Their job is to make the Illinois court system more accessible to everyone, especially members of historically marginalized communities.

“Commitment to community accessibility has been a thread through my career,” they say. “I’ve always wanted to make sure that the community is able to access the services that I’m trying to provide.”

They help coordinate efforts to keep courtrooms compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act across Illinois, including by writing a new disability access policy that can be implemented across the state. But maintaining courtroom access for those with disabilities is only one aspect of Hieber’s job.

They’re also heading up the Illinois Supreme Court Commission on Access to Justice Community Trust Committee.

“The goal of that committee is to promote the community’s trust in the court system,” says Hieber. “I argue that it goes in the other direction, too. I think courts need to trust communities to let the courts know what they need.”

Hieber is hosting listening sessions with court users, where the users can anonymously share their experiences. Hieber then prepares feedback for other Supreme Court committees to read. Recently Hieber hosted a listening session with domestic violence survivors and advocates.

One domestic violence survivor shared during the session, “They only listen when we’re bleeding.”

“That quote is going to go to a Supreme Court committee so it can inform its work,” says Hieber. “We’re creating a conduit from court users to the Supreme Court.”

“August is asked to do a monumental convening,” says Alison Downs Spanner ’10, director of access to justice and strategic planning at the Administrative Office of the Illinois Courts and Hieber’s director. “We’ve asked them to try to bring under the court’s umbrella those who have been historically marginalized or excluded and make them feel included.”

“We’re attempting to make the courts more accessible for a system that wasn’t designed for self-represented litigants or people without attorneys,” Downs Spanner continues. “To face that really monumental challenge every single day with the amount of enthusiasm that August brings to the role adds value beyond just their intellect and knowledge.”

Besides the immense undertaking already on their plate,

“When you’re enmeshed in a community, I think being a part of that means supporting your fellow person. I wouldn’t go so far as to say attorneys have an obligation, but when you have access to the knowledge that we have in this profession, if you don’t share it with your community, you’re foreclosing access to that privilege. You’re further enhancing disparity.”—

August Hieber

Hieber has recently taken on a passion project. They’re heading up an initiative to make the court more inclusive for LGBTQ+ court users.

This issue is personal for Hieber.

“I had to come out as trans in court because a judge was so confused by my pronouns on the Zoom call and demanded to know what they meant and why I had them,” says Hieber. “I had to explain that I was transgender. He told me that I should use my hard life to try and negotiate a better settlement for my client. Then he evicted her.”

“That was the death of my practicing. I recognize that the bias I experience prejudices my client,” they add. “That dynamic is not something I can ethically subject someone to.”

So, why not just choose a pronoun and gender conform in court?

“This forum is for me. I am an attorney. I am a court user. I have a right to this space,” they say. “I don’t think the institution has the right to tell me to change something that

is so intrinsic about myself. I know that to be more true than any court order or ruling or anything a judge is going to say to me about my pronouns.”

After graduating from Chicago-Kent, Hieber built Proud to Thrive, a legal clinic serving LGBTQ+ older adults at the Center on Addison, a comprehensive community center dedicated to advancing community and securing the health and well-being of LGBTQ+ people in and around Chicago.

The project was sponsored through an Equal Justice Works fellowship at the Center for Disability and Elder Law.

“Because of lifetimes of discrimination and legal marginalization and social rejection, LGBTQ+ older adults are more likely to experience financial marginalization, they’re more likely to be socially isolated, and they’re less likely to have support from family of origin,” says Hieber.

“If an LGBTQ+ older adult doesn’t have an advanced directive in place and is estranged from their family and relies on chosen family, but didn’t recognize that through power of

attorney,” they add, “the estranged family can make medical decisions over the person, even if they haven’t spoken in decades.”

Their work at the Illinois courts keeps them busy, but Hieber always finds energy in the community they serve.

“When you’re enmeshed in a community, I think being a part of that means supporting your fellow person,” they say. “I wouldn’t go so far as to say attorneys have an obligation, but when you have access to the knowledge that we have in this profession, if you don’t share it with your community, you’re foreclosing access to that privilege. You’re further enhancing disparity.”

There is a long way to go until all members of the public trust the courts, but Hieber is grateful that Illinois is putting in the work to be more inclusive, especially when they see other states going the other way and passing laws restricting trans rights.

“We need to do everything we can to counter that and say that doesn’t have a place in Illinois,” they say. 

A “Low-Bono” Clinic for All Taxpayers W

hen I joined the Chicago-Kent College of Law clinical program in 2000, the Tax Clinic was funded by a United States Internal Revenue Service-administered matching grant that, by its terms, required our clients to be essentially indigent. I was often asked, “What kind of tax problems do poor people have?” Well, lots. The IRS has a long-standing practice of disproportionately auditing taxpayers who comprise the bottom economic tiers in society. These groups of people are low-hanging fruit, since most of these individuals can’t afford legal representation because of their lack of sufficient income and the relatively small dollar amount at stake in their cases. This is the need toward which the enabling federal legislation creating the funding for “low-income tax clinics” was directed. It was a good idea when it was proposed in the late 1990s, and it’s a good idea today, as thousands of indigent taxpayers are assisted every year by these free tax clinics, most of which are associated with accredited law schools.

For 11 years, I proudly supervised the Chicago-Kent Low Income Tax Clinic as my students vigorously represented indigent taxpayers in quixotic battles against the IRS and the Illinois Department of Revenue for no legal fees. For these 11 years, I was consistently impressed with the dedication, passion, and empathy expressed by my students, as well as the enormous gratitude expressed by our diverse clientele. We were performing public service in the purest sense, and it was tremendously fulfilling to share these experiences with my enthusiastic students.

But something very disturbing became apparent. There was a tremendous gap in representation—a dark hole of taxpayers who didn’t qualify for free clinic services because they exceeded the indigent qualification threshold, but still lacked the resources to hire an attorney to help defend

themselves against the taxing bullies. Along with then Director of Clinical Education Gary Laser, we came up with a plan to assist those individuals and small business taxpayers caught in the middle, a “low-bono” alternative to the LaSalle Street practitioner fees.

The Tax Practice was born in 2012, aimed at providing aggressive and ethical representation to middle-income taxpayers with IRS and Illinois state tax disputes for below-market fees. Over the years, the practice has expanded its original menu of services to include transactional services, nonprofit entity formation and consultation, foreign bank account reporting and penalty abatement, and a variety of small business legal services, in addition to our primary focus as tax controversy litigators. And though we serve a different slice of the public need, I believe my students and I are the only ones doing what we are doing—providing high-quality legal services to a formerly neglected and severely under-represented community for affordable rates that evens the playing field somewhat.

From my perspective, this is a professional calling that just feels right.

—By Jonathan Decatorsmith, Director of Clinical Education and Supervising Attorney and Professor of the Chicago-Kent Law Group’s Tax Clinic

Jonathan Decatorsmith

Class Notes

1983

Peter J. Birnbaum, President and Chief Executive Officer of Attorneys’ Title Guaranty Fund, Inc., was recently reappointed by Governor JB Pritzker as the Chief Justice of the Illinois Court of Claims. Peter has served as a judge on the court since 2004 and was first appointed Chief Justice in 2015.

1989

Kenneth Goetz, Chicago, is sad to announce that classmate Mary Ann Jachna ’89 passed away on August 15, 2022, in Ocala, Florida.

1990

Ina Silvergleid, Evanston, Ill., was interviewed on WTTW’s Chicago Tonight in November 2022 about her criminal justice-themed artwork. An extension of the work that she does is representing people who have a criminal background and are seeking a second chance.

1995

Michael Fleck, Rochelle, Ill., closed his full-time law practice in Huntley, Illinois, after 27 years. He is now senior trust officer and counsel at Resource Bank, N.A. in DeKalb, Illinois. He is also an adjunct professor at Northern Illinois University College of Law, teaching Trusts and Estates.

1996

1997

Kevin M. Gross, Arlington Heights, Ill., has worked for the Chicago Staff Counsel department of GEICO Insurance Company since 2001, where he currently serves as a supervising attorney. He lives in Arlington Heights, Illinois, with his wife and daughter.

1999

Jennifer Ashley, Chicago, was named a Top 100 Illinois Super Lawyers for 2023 and one of the Top 50 Female Super Lawyers for 2023. She is a partner at the Illinois law firm Salvi, Schostok & Pritchard, where she concentrates her legal practice in cases concerning personal injury, wrongful death, and medical malpractice.

2006

Sherry Knutson, Chicago, is now partner at Tucker Ellis LLP and co-chair of the firm’s Health and Life Sciences Group, and has been selected for inclusion on the 2023 Illinois Super Lawyers list in the area of Personal Injury-Products: Defense.

1996

Joanna Horsnail, River Forest, Ill., was appointed as managing partner of Mayer Brown’s Chicago office. While working with Mayer Brown for nearly 25 years, Horsnail has held numerous leadership roles and remains a diversity champion.

Michael Wilder, Chicago, has been elected chair of Littlers 2023 Board of Directors, succeeding Kate Mrkonich Wilson (Minneapolis), who reached the firm’s three-year term limit and will continue on as a board member.

2008

list of the state’s top young lawyers based on his work in intellectual property law.

2011

Michael Holden, Chicago, of Romanucci & Blandin, helped secure a $35 million resolution following a civil trial for the life-changing birth injury of a girl in 2015.

Justin Nemunaitis, Dallas, has been recognized on the 2023 Texas Rising Stars

Bruno Marasso, Chicago, of Romanucci & Blandin, secured a $6.9 million settlement on behalf of a mother and her daughter-in-law who were killed in a car collision in October 2020 in Michigan. The plaintiff decedents were at a stop sign when the defendant decedent, driving a company car, collided with the plaintiffs’ car at more than 130 mph. The case was filed in the Circuit Court of Cook County, Illinois, and resolved through mediation. The two descendants were residents of Cook County.

Justin Nemunaitis

Michael Fleck

Julio Costa, Chicago, is a founding partner of Costa Ivone, LLC, which is based in Chicago. He focuses his practice exclusively on personal injury and workers’ compensation cases. Costa has been recognized as a Rising Star by Super Lawyers magazine yearly since 2015, an honor bestowed on the top 2.5 percent of attorneys in the state under the age of 40. Additionally, Costa has been recognized as an Emerging Lawyer in Illinois by Leading Lawyers since 2016, as well as being honored with the Top 40 Under 40 award since 2018 by the National Trial Lawyers Association.

transactions. Clients rely on Sullivan for his attention to detail, problem solving, and strong follow-through on their real estate transactions.

2014

employment law counseling, collective bargaining, contract administration, and representation before the National Labor Relations Board.

2022

Ryan F. Sullivan, Chicago, a member of Polsinelli’s Real Estate Practice Group, was named a shareholder at the law firm. He focuses his practice on commercial real estate

Daisy Ayllon, Chicago, of Romanucci & Blandin, helped secure a $35 million resolution following a civil trial for the life-changing birth injury of a girl in 2015.

2020

Jake Earl, Chicago, is a new associate at a national intellectual property law firm in Chicago. He focuses his practice on trademarks, litigation, and Patent Trial and Appeal Board litigation. He attended Chicago-Kent College of Law as an honors scholar and graduated magna cum laude. While at Chicago-Kent, he served as an executive articles editor of the Law Review, served as the vice president of the Intellectual Property Law Society, and was inducted into the Order of the Coif.

Rob Kohen, Chicago, has been promoted to partner at the Chicago law firm Salvi, Schostok & Pritchard. He joined the firm as an associate attorney in 2014, and concentrates his practice on cases concerning catastrophic personal injury, medical malpractice, and product liability. He was also named an Illinois Super Lawyer Rising Star for 2023.

2016

Michael R. Sherer, Waukesha, Wis., has joined von Briesen & Roper’s Labor and Employment section in its Waukesha, Wisconsin, office. He focuses his practice on employment litigation,

Mitchell Bild, Chicago, has joined the Chicago law firm of Corboy & Demetrio as an associate attorney. He is a plaintiff’s trial lawyer who practices in all areas of personal injury law.

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We want to hear from you. Send us your class note by visiting alumni.kentlaw.iit.edu/ mykent/class-notes. Submissions may be edited for style and brevity.

In Memoriam

Jerome R. Vainisi ’69

Robert W. Selby ’70

Harry John Sterling ’70

Richard P. Miller ’72

Raymond Prazen ’74

Frank B. Castiglione ’79

Revelle G. Peritz ’80

Elizabeth J. Rice ’80

Peter F. Herzog ’85

Doug Miller ’86

Jordan R. Labkon ’95

Jon M. Ellison ’12

Michael Sherer

Power the Difference

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