A Letter From Dean Anita K. Krug

Dear Alumni,

As we move forward with another academic year at ChicagoKent College of Law, I am happy to let you know that in the areas of enrollment numbers, faculty scholarship, student success, and so many others, your law school remains as strong as ever. Our students continue to meet and exceed our high expectations as they are awarded national fellowships, dominate in trial and appellate advocacy competitions, and prepare themselves to lead in whichever legal field they choose.

Chicago-Kent will continue to support areas of law that not only reflect growth, but that will also likely impact the legal industry in significant ways—which is why we’ve been wanting to explore this issue’s topic for some time: diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) in the legal arena.

I note that, for years, Chicago-Kent has done much more than talk about diversity, equity, and inclusion. In this issue you will read about our Pre-Law Undergraduate Scholars (PLUS) program, which reaches out to students from underrepresented racial or ethnic backgrounds who are thinking about exploring legal careers. Most law schools discontinued the program after just three years, when federal grant money expired. Not Chicago-Kent. After 20 years, and now under the guidance of Associate Dean Marsha Ross-Jackson, our PLUS program is now the longest-running one in the country.

In short, we are a leader nationally in addressing the country’s disproportionately low number of students from underrepresented backgrounds who attend law school.

You will also read about our new racial justice writing competition. Chicago-Kent’s A More Perfect Union competition, supported by Chicago-Kent board member Kathleen McDonough Mundo ’94, is intended to encourage and honor excellent student scholarship on racial justice. And the articles by the first two winners have been excellent indeed.

As for our alums, they lead the way nationally in championing the developing field of DEI law. DEI work branches into numerous legal fields, from labor and employment law to government work to public interest law, to name just a few. You will see this in the varied alumni profiles included in this magazine.

Our most recent commencement speaker, Jessica Muench ’04, played a major role in an initiative at United Airlines to tackle the huge disparity in demographics of United States airline pilots, where currently only 6 percent are women and only 7 percent are people of color. As the company’s chief DEI officer, Muench sought to have women and people of color comprise at least 50% of the participants of United’s in-house flight school. Her efforts more than succeeded, as 80 percent of the flight school’s first class were women or people of color.

When it comes to national renown, it’s hard not to mention Nicholas Cummings ’08, who, as a city attorney in Evanston, Illinois, helped craft the first publicly funded municipal reparation program in the country. Though he considers himself a “generalist,” he now stands at the forefront of DEI law nationwide.

And in the private arena, not only has Michael Wilder ’06 spent more than a decade reviewing the affirmative action plans of federal contractors, he has also co-founded an organization, the Black Men Lawyers’ Association, to provide resources and peer support to Black male lawyers, judges, law professors, law students, paralegals, and law clerks. His organization now includes hundreds of members globally.

As you will see in this issue, so many of our alumni are on the forefront of this ever-changing area of law, and Chicago-Kent will continue to prepare students for the challenges that come.

Thank you, as always, for your ongoing commitment to and support of our incredible law school and university.

Anita K. Krug Dean and Professor

More Than a Figurehead

Experiencing National Exposure

As the top city in Evanston, Illinois, Nicholas Cummings ’08 never thought the ordinance that he helped draft would put him at the forefront of the national DEI debate.

Valtierra ’23 and Ben Levine ’23 advanced to the semifinals and won best brief in the University of Notre Dame Law School’s Religious Freedom Moot Court Competition in October 2021.

In her first law school competition, Kaitlyn Kloss ’23 successfully argued her way past five opponents to win Chicago-Kent’s 30th annual Ilana Diamond Rovner Appellate Advocacy Competition in November 2021.

Jacob Skolnik ’22 and Zelpha Williams ’22 were regional champions in the NYC Bar’s National Moot Court Competition, and went on to earn top awards at the nationals in February 2022. Both were awarded the competition’s best petitioner brief award; Skolnik earned the best oralist award; and Skolnik was ranked the second-best oral advocate and Williams the fourth-best out of the 52 students who competed.

A fledgling team that included Catherine Arnprieste ’23, Sandra Khouri ’23, Claire Bullington ’24, Jennifer Dickey ’24, and Jenny Jung ’24 reached the finals in the first-ever National Trial League trial advocacy competition, which required the team to research and argue eight separate court cases over several months, ending in February 2022.

HONORS, AWARDS, AND FELLOWSHIPS

Zoe Appler ’22, Annora Alfonso ’23, Razaul Haque ’23, and Cole Gunter ’23 were finalists in the 2021 National Civil Trial Competition in November 2021. Sixteen teams competed; Appler also won best closing argument for the entire tournament.

Cole Gunter ’23 won best advocate at the Drexel Battle of the Experts, hosted by the Drexel University Thomas R. Kline School of Law in September 2021.

Hannah Bucher ’22 and Mia Hayes ’22 made it to the final round of the Hunton Andrews Kurth Moot Court National Championship, a January 2022 competition that pitted the nation’s top 16 moot court teams against each other. The pair also won the competition’s best brief title, and Bucher was named the competition’s third-best speaker.

Zoë Appler ’22 and Emily Salomone ’22 went undefeated to win the regional bout of the 2022 Midwest Championship of the American College Of Lawyers/Texas Young Lawyers Association National Trial Competition, which took place in February 2022.

A paper by Xavier Harris ’23, “The Miseducation of a Divided Nation: An Analysis of Laws Banning Critical Race Theory in K-12 Public Schools,” won Chicago-Kent College of Law’s 2022 A More Perfect Union writing competition, a new racial justice writing competition hosted by the law school. His 2022 paper explored the constitutionality of a slate of recent state laws banning critical race theory in elementary and high school classrooms. Harris argued that such laws will have a chilling effect on free speech, and concluded that courts, when deciding the constitutionality of such laws, should take into account “values underscored by the Supreme Court in early First Amendment cases. Namely that access to different perspectives ‘prepares students for active and effective participation in the pluralistic, often contentious society in which they will soon be adult members.’”

Hayley Loufek ’23 and Ryan Martin ’23 were regional co-champions of the American Bar Association’s National Appellate Advocacy Competition. In total, 24 teams competed in the early March 2022 regional bout.

The competition on’s inaurgural winning paper, by Chloe Bell ’22 in late 2021, entitled “The Lasting Impact of Housing Discrimination on Industrial Development, Environmental Justice, and Land Use,” explored the lasting impact of federal redlining in Chicago neighborhoods, from before the Great Depression to today. She researched old federal Home Owners’ Loan Corporation maps dating to the 1930s, which show the Chicago neighborhoods that had been redlined after the Great Depression. The maps, which ostensibly signaled to mortgage lenders the areas of “risk,” specifically mentioned race and ethnic identity, shading areas in red (the most “risky”) where a population was minority-majority. She then outlined how such areas were targeted for land use that residents would see as detrimental, such as heavy industry and hazardous waste dumps.

Marshan Allen ’26 was sentenced to life in prison without parole at the age of 15; he successfully appealed to earn his freedom a quarter-century later; and was later married by the Illinois Supreme Court judge who granted his appeal. This year Allen received the Honorable Abraham Lincoln Marovitz Scholarship to receive a full-tuition law scholarship to attend Chicago-Kent College of Law. The scholarship is awarded every three years to one incoming student exhibiting financial need and a strong dedication to public service.

Allen, who was sent to prison for his role in a double murder, spent much of the time after his release in 2016 traveling to Chicago high schools. There, he would speak at assemblies about his experiences, and urge students to make good decisions in their lives. He won the Chicago Bar Association Liberty Bell Award in 2019 after becoming a notable advocate of criminal justice reform, first working for the Restore Justice Foundation in Chicago and now as vice president of advocacy and partnerships for Represent Justice in Los Angeles, where he works virtually with both prosecutors and legislators on justice reform.

Two Chicago-Kent College of Law students and a Chicago-Kent alumna earned top honors in the Illinois Local Government Lawyers (ILGL) Association’s 2022 writing competitions, with research and analysis on such timely issues as noncitizens voting in school board elections and the prevention of cyberattacks. Kelby Roth ’22 and Andrew White ’22 won the ILGL’s top student writing contest, the Franklin W. Klein competition, for their article, “Equality, Enfranchisement, and Citizenship: How Expansion of the Electorate in Public School Board Elections Will Affect Illinois Attorneys.” Additionally, Monica Pechous ’20 won the ILGL’s practitioner writing contest for her article, “Cyber Cities—The Role of Illinois Municipalities in Preventing and Managing Cyber Attacks.”

Elizabeth Horwitz ’23 and Evan Turcotte ’23 both received the Harold J. and Nancy F. Krent Excellence Award for ranking at the top of their class in late 2021. The prize is awarded annually to the student or students who rank at the top of the combined first-year full-time and second-year part-time classes upon their return to Chicago-Kent College of Law for the next academic year. small- and mid-size municipalities that often don’t have their own staff attorneys. She also worked for the City of Chicago’s Mayor Office, and did public service work for several area nonprofits.

A Chicago-Kent College of Law labor and employment law student who specialized in government and community service work was awarded the 2022 Sandra P. Zemm Prize in Labor and Employment Law Erin Monforti ’22 received the prize for her essay highlighting “my love for representing employers in the local government context.” Over the past year at Chicago-Kent, Monforti has worked for Ancel Glink, P.C., a Chicago-based firm that represents titled “PIPA+: An Argument for the Creation of a Private Cause of Action to Protect Against Disclosure.” His paper argued that federal legislation inadequately protected the disclosure of private data within the workplace, rather than between an employer and outside parties. Santiago concluded that legislation such as the Illinois Biometric Information Protection Act were examples of good remedies, in that they allowed the aggrieved to seek recovery under common law without proving actual damages.

Grace Quigley ’24 was awarded a 2022 Peggy Browning Fund Fellowship, an award designed to educate and inspire students considering a career in labor law. She was one of a select few to receive the prestigious national fellowship to conduct legal work for a national labor union this summer. Quigley is working for the Washington, D.C., office of United Food and Commercial Workers International Union. There, she represents workers from across the United States and Canada, advising their local unions on legal strategies and conducting legal research on a variety of workplace issues.

A paper exploring easier ways to attain legal remedies against employers who improperly disclose medical information won Chicago-Kent College of Law’s premier labor and employment law writing competition.

Katherine Hanson ’22, who gave up her successful hair salon business to become a standout student at Chicago-Kent College of Law, was named a 2021 Law Student of the Year by National Jurist and PreLaw Magazine. The publications named 10 Law Students of the Year in their spring 2022 issues. The honor recognizes students “who have made outstanding contributions to their law schools and their communities” in 2021. Law schools across the country were each asked to nominate one student for the award. Hanson became editor of the Chicago-Kent Law Review, served on the executive board of Chicago-Kent’s Student Bar Association, and proved to be a powerful writer. She won the Mary Rose Strubbe Labor & Employment Writing Prize and placed second in the Louis Jackson Memorial National Student Writing Competition. Hanson is also working to establish a 501c3 nonprofit that seeks to address the needs of J.D. students with families nationwide by offering a supportive network and building a scholarship fund. The network will include a listing of local organizations and scholarships, information on Title IX, and other resources.

More Student Highlights

Enrique Espinoza ’22 was awarded the singular American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) Fellowship for 2022, a fellowship identified by Chicago-Kent College of Law Professor of Law Emeritus Martin Malin as “probably the most competitive and prestigious union labor law position in the United States.” Only one year-long fellowship is offered by the organization each year, and this makes the third time in four years it has gone to a Chicago-Kent student or graduate, the AFL-CIO confirmed. Since September Espinoza has been assisting with briefs filed in the U.S. Supreme Court, the federal courts of appeals, and the National Labor Relations Board; monitoring filings with the National Labor Relations Board and in the courts to identify important cases; helping to advise the officers and departments of the AFL-CIO; and working with the AFL-CIO Union Lawyers Alliance. An immigrant from Mexico, Espinoza worked in the hospitality industry for decades before enrolling at Chicago-Kent. What he experienced over those years—labor conflicts, he says, where employees were often too afraid to speak out—made him want to explore the law.

A half-dozen Chicago-Kent College of Law students decided to spend their 2021 winter break tackling one of the toughest pro bono jobs out there: helping survivors of domestic violence and sexual assualt file emergency protective orders. While interning for Chicago-based nonprofit Ascend Justice, the six students interviewed clients, helped them complete court documents, and wrote affidavits for the Circuit Court of Cook County. Ascend Justice officials noted the majority of their “winter immersion” interns this year were from Chicago-Kent. The interns, who volunteered anywhere from one to three weeks, included Blythe Pabon ’24, Noah Ramirez ’24, Sylvia Durlacher ’24, Shannon Cottrel ’22, Jaylin McClinton ’22, and Morgan Puckett ’22.

Carolyn Shapiro, Chicago-Kent College of Law professor and co-director of the Institute on the Supreme Court of the United States, was appointed in October 2021 to the Illinois Task Force on Constitutional Rights and Remedies by Illinois Senate President Don Harmon (39th District). The 19-member task force was created by the Illinois General Assembly to “develop and propose policies and procedures to review and reform constitutional rights and remedies, including qualified immunity for peace officers.” Shapiro focuses her research on the U.S. Supreme Court, its relationship to other courts and institutions, and its role in our constitutional democracy. She clerked for Justice Stephen Breyer in 1996–1997, has argued before the U.S. Supreme Court, and served as Illinois Solicitor General from 2014–2016.

Shapiro also testified at a congressional hearing in Washington, D.C., on July 28, 2022, about the history and future ramifications of a theory giving state legislatures exclusive authority over federal elections. Shapiro, who is Chicago-Kent’s associate dean for academic administration and strategic initiatives, testified before the Committee on House Administration during a hearing titled “The Independent State Legislature Theory [ISLT] and its Potential to Disrupt our Democracy.” The theory, which has been primarily backed by conservatives since Bush v. Gore, is based on language in the Elections Clause in Article One of the Constitution: “The times, places, and manner of holding elections for senators and representatives, shall be prescribed in each state by the legislature thereof.” Shapiro told the congressmen,

“You need to be concerned about all of these decisions that the state courts have made [relating to ISLT], and all of the precedent that exists…whether or not those will continue to be effective with respect to federal elections.…There could be an enormous amount of chaos, to put it mildly.” other investment products and services that investors may use to help them buy a home, send kids to college, or prepare for retirement,” according to its website The division’s primary responsibility is to enforce the Investment Company Act of 1940 and Investment Advisers

Raff Donelson, a legal philosophy and criminal law scholar, joined Chicago-Kent College of Law as an associate professor in fall 2022. Donelson’s research interests include moral philosophy, criminal law and procedure, constitutional law, and race and law. In his doctrinal work, he focused on constitutional protections for criminals and the accused, and his theoretical research interests include metaethics and general jurisprudence. Donelson’s research explores the “unexplored questions” about the fundamental concepts of law, punishment, and policing. As both a lawyer and philosopher, he sees criminal law as an area “where some of our most deeply held moral judgments become realized.” Donelson joined Chicago-Kent from Pennsylvania State University Dickinson Law, where he was an associate professor of law.

Chicago-Kent College of Law Professor

William A. Birdthistle has been appointed director of the Division of Investment Management for the United States Securities and Exchange Commission. The Division of Investment Management “oversees mutual funds and

Mandy Lee , the Chicago-Kent Law Library’s head of research and instruction, has been elected to head the largest law librarian association in Illinois next year. Lee was elected vice president and president-elect of the Chicago Association of Law Libraries, a professional law librarian association with 216 members who work in Chicago-area law firms, law schools, courts, and government. CALL’s bylaws call for the organization’s next elected president to first serve as vice president for a year. Lee’s term as president will start in May 2023.

Last year Lee received the national American Association of Law Libraries’ 2021 Minority Leadership Development Award for her “significant work supporting diversity and inclusion in the workplace and profession,” according to an AALL statement. Lee became chair of the AALL’s Asian American Law Librarians Caucus, where she created two new committees, a social committee and a community service committee. The latter committee hosted a “bystander intervention training” for all AALL members that focused on anti-Asian hate incidents. Lee has gone out of her way to introduce Chicago-Kent students and visiting scholars from foreign countries to Chicago, hosting three Thanksgiving dinners in two years.

Act of 1940, “which includes developing regulatory policy for investment companies and investment advisers.” A member of the Chicago-Kent faculty since 2006, Birdthistle conducts research in the areas of investment funds, executive compensation, and corporate governance.

When it comes to teaching machines how to understand and utilize language, it turns out that the more legalese that they know, the better, according to a new paper co-authored by Chicago-Kent College of Law Professor and Law Lab Director Daniel Martin Katz. His paper, “LexGLUE: A Benchmark Dataset for Legal Language

Understanding in English,” explores how different large language models were used to solve a variety of tasks. The language models tested in Katz’s paper exposed machines to a large corpus of different words, and measured how effective those words were at getting the machines to solve various legal tasks. It turned out, of the seven different models that were tested, the model that taught legal language got the machines, on average, to perform tasks better.

Nicole Buonocore Porter has been appointed the new director of the renowned Martin H. Malin Institute for Law and the Workplace. Not only is Porter an accomplished academic, she worked for years at a large law firm and then in-house, representing employers. Her recent research explores the idea that “accommodations” shouldn’t just be for those with disabilities; workforce bureaucracies would be greatly eased if such benefits were explored for each and every employee. Porter began her academic career in 2004 at Saint Louis University School of Law, teaching employment discrimination and disability law. She landed at the University of Toledo in 2007 and took on ever-increasing responsibilities, starting as an assistant professor and working up to become the associate dean for academic affairs and later the associate dean for faculty research and development. Most recently, in 2021, she was honored as a

Distinguished University Professor. Her upcoming book, The Workplace Reimagined: Accommodating Our Bodies and Our Lives, is due to be published this year by Cambridge University Press.

The author of a book on the legality of foreign interference in the United States was the recipient of the 2021 Chicago-Kent College of Law Roy C. Palmer Civil Liberties Prize Jens David Ohlin, the Allan R. Tessler Dean and professor of law at Cornell Law School and a specialist in international law, wrote Election Interference: International Law and the Future of Democracy (published in 2020 by Cambridge University Press) to explore a seemingly simple question: is foreign election interference illegal? He believed it was, but not for the reasons everyone seemed to think. Rather than an attack on United States sovereignty, or a case of cyberwarfare, such interference was best understood as a violation of a crucial tenet of international law: self-determination, or the right of a country’s citizens to decide its own destiny.

Starting this year, Chicago-Kent College of Law is now offering a certificate program in cybersecurity unlike any other in the Chicago area. Designed for non-technical professionals in any field—from business executives to attorneys to risk management leaders—the program enables attendees to deepen their understanding of technology with accurate, up-to-date knowledge of what cybersecurity is and the risks it addresses. It allows members of the business, legal, and information technology communities to competently communicate with each other when addressing cybersecurity threats. The strength of the program lies in its instructors: a powerhouse of experienced executives who have assessed modern technological threats to major corporations and organizations.

Additionally this year, Chicago-Kent started a new online certification in privacy law for those working in jobs that involve the collection, management, or use of personal information—what has been called, “the new oil” of the digital economy.

Chicago-Kent Adjunct Professor Peter Hanna, who will oversee the program, notes that as consumers increasingly adopt digital technology and devices into their lives, the data they generate creates enormous opportunity—and risk—for companies, governments, and society as a whole. The program is designed to provide professionals with the fundamental knowledge and foundation needed to analyze and understand the evolving privacy landscape.

Chicago-Kent College of Law has been awarded a $300,000 grant to study how to best support alumni in preparing for the bar exam. The grant, entitled “One and Done: A Chicago-Kent Bar Study Support Program,” was awarded by AccessLex Institute, a nonprofit based in West Chester, Pennsylvania, that is dedicated to the enhancement of legal education. Erin Crist, director of Chicago-Kent’s bar success program, notes that the grant will focus on studying three aspects of participant preparation. Alumni who might need additional help preparing for the bar will meet in a small group and with a faculty mentor; alumni will also receive a stipend that will allow them to work less while preparing for the bar; and they will receive social and emotional support through the process. The grant program started in June 2022 and will last four bar cycles over a period of two years.

After months of development, Chicago-Kent College of Law has rolled out its new website, with a clean and modern style and efficient search optimization. Please give it a look!