Chicago-Kent Magazine Fall 2022

Chicago-Kent Magazine

The Equalizers

Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in the Legal Arena

Pushing Past the Performative

Chicago-Kent’s Legacy of Equity

Studying the Edge of “Standard Deviations”

From “Generalist” to Groundbreaker

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

Catherine Arnprieste

Sandra Khouri

Jenny Jung

Jennifer Dickey Claire Bullington

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.

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.

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

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.

Ricardo Santiago ’22 won the Mary Rose Strubbe Labor & Employment Law Writing Prize for his paper

Kelby Roth

Andrew White

Elizabeth Horwitz

Evan Turcotte

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.

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.

William A. Birdthistle

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!

Peter Hanna

BALANCING THE SCALES

Diversity, equity and inclusion law is more than just a specialty. In fact, DEI work branches into numerous legal fields, from labor and employment law to government work to public interest law, to name just a few. There is not a specific J.D. certificate for it, and yet—as you will see in the alumni profiles that follow— legal issues relating to DEI are growing both more frequent and more prevalent. And often, these issues garner national attention.

An Agent of Change

Jessica Muench ’04 notes that it was tough having the flagship program of the diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) strategy she built at United Airlines be criticized by both Tucker Carlson and Trevor Noah. Depending on the pundit, the program was either too risky or too performative. But she knew they wouldn’t be talking about it if the change weren’t real.

It was the first time a major airline had done something like it: taken material steps to remedy the remarkable demographic homogeneity among United States pilots. Only 6 percent of U.S. pilots are women, and only 7 percent are people of color.

In the wake of the murder of George Floyd that catalyzed protests across the country and conversations about equity and opportunity for Black Americans, United launched its United Aviate Academy. The only flight school operated by a major U.S. airline, its goal was to address the lack of awareness and access to the profession by attracting more diversity into the pipeline, thus addressing the pilot shortage.

Muench, the company’s chief diversity, equity, and inclusion officer, notes that the academy was launched with the goal of having at least 50 percent of the program’s enrollees be women or people of color. The first class exceeded that, reaching 80 percent.

During a broadcast, Carlson characterized the program’s diversity goal as dangerous and life-threatening. Noah called it a “perfectly sensible step,” but criticized United for “wanting to get a pat on the back, for [expletive] they should have been doing all along.”

Of the national pundit dialog, Muench says, “I was upset initially, but it actually helped by raising awareness and attracting more applicants.” She also countered that Carlson ignored the program’s high admittance and training standards.

Awareness within the company itself started, as it often does, with internal discussions.

Just months before Floyd’s murder in May 2020, Muench had another tough job. She was working as managing director in United’s human resources department at the height of the COVID19 pandemic, when demand for air travel had dropped to zero. She helped the company negotiate with labor unions and employees to find the best way to reduce labor costs through as many voluntary leaves and separations as possible, and to minimize the involuntary separations that were inevitable.

While in the thick of that difficult decision-making, she also volunteered her time to lead United’s business resource group for women, advocating for gender equity issues within the company.

After Floyd’s murder, United’s executive leadership selected her to lead the company’s reimagined diversity, equity, and inclusion strategy. And that, she says, is when her most meaningful work started.

She also asked questions.

“In some organizations, especially in the past, DEI leaders have been figureheads and not empowered to make real change,” Muench says. “I didn’t want to take it on unless I had the ability to make change where we can see measurable progress and hold people accountable for their behaviors and performance.”

The answers she received, she says, let her know “the appetite for

change was there.” In transforming the company’s DEI approach, Muench says she and other leaders grappled with finding the right mix of dialogue and taking action quickly.

“Both are important,” Muench notes. “It’s important to clearly articulate our vision for how we want to shape the future, to put action plans in place to get there, and to hold ourselves accountable as we progress along the path toward that vision.”

As one example, part of United’s vision, Muench says, is to have, at every level of the organization, a workforce that “better reflects the diversity of the communities it serves.” To understand its “baseline,” United began regularly reporting its demographic representation data, including gender, race, and ethnicity. The company set goals, starting with the inclusion of underrepresented groups on interview slates and increased accountability by tying outcomes to executive compensation.

Now, two years in, the strategy that Muench built has impacted not only hiring and promoting talent from underrepresented backgrounds, but also in prioritizing contracting with businesses owned by underrepresented groups. She’s worked to ensure “inclusive customer experiences,” such as meals culturally relevant to global destinations, and has implemented a cultural awareness training for crews that resulted in greater customer and employee satisfaction. She’s also influenced investment in new community partnerships, including a strategic approach to relationships with Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs).

“We have a very powerful role to play in creating economic opportunity as a major employer and a huge purchaser of goods and services, and we can lead the way for others as we shape the future,” Muench says.

Increasing the enrollment of women and people of color in the flight school was one way of using that power, and Muench is now focused on doing the same thing for aviation maintenance technician careers with United’s recently launched technician apprenticeship program. The need to diversify that area of the workforce is apparent particularly for women, Muench notes, as technicians are currently 97 percent men.

Muench thinks back to her time growing up in Gary, Indiana, when it wasn’t clear what career paths were viable and most likely to lead to more opportunity. Now she wants to pay it forward. 

“I never thought about working for an airline. In my community the most readily available paths were jobs at the steel mill or casino or as a teacher. Now, I’m in a position where I am able to open doors to spaces where people who look like me have been intentionally or unintentionally excluded,” she says.

As the daughter of steel workers, Muench grew up accompanying her parents to labor protests, picket lines, and long nights at union meetings. Her mother, intent on parents like herself being active in her union, introduced on-site child care at their union hall. Since childhood her father, who represented his coworkers as union griever, encouraged her to be a civil rights attorney.

Watching them advocate for themselves and their coworkers in the workplace is what inspired Muench to pursue her law degree with a labor and employment certification from Chicago-Kent College of Law. When she decided to take her first job representing management, her parents had questions.

“It doesn’t matter what side you’re on, you can do justice and find a balance of power and interests between union, employer, and employee,” she told her parents. They came around.

Muench has taken a unique path from law school to corporate leadership. She started her career representing the City of Chicago. During law school, she earned her 711 license and built her courtroom experience arguing administrative hearings. After graduation, she moved to the law department’s labor division, representing city departments, like police, fire, and water, in labor arbitrations to resolve discipline, discharge, and contractual disputes. She also defended the

“The word power, I’ll acknowledge, is a complicated one. Because power itself is not inherently good or bad. It can be a force of dominance and oppression, or it can be a way of leading in a way that empowers others.…Your ethics and judgment, together with an understanding of our justice system— that is powerful. And how will you use that power to shape politics, economics, criminal and civil law? To find the common ground in compromises that will heal this divided world, you will need to be bold about addressing the injustices that you find in it.”

city against harassment and discrimination claims. She later was promoted to deputy general counsel in the city’s procurement department, resolving contractual disputes and debarring vendors who falsely claimed minority-owned status.

Muench was then recruited to work for former Illinois Governor Pat Quinn as his associate general counsel, and was subsequently appointed to the Illinois Labor Relations Board in 2010.

At that time, one of her Chicago-Kent professors, Marty Malin, offered Muench a tip: United was looking for a labor and employment attorney. Muench was intrigued by the opportunity to lead in a corporate setting. In the midst of the merger of United and Continental Airlines, she was hired on as counsel for labor and employment.

Her success there led to a promotion to lead a team of arbitration lawyers as a managing director in human resources and labor relations. She says these experiences made her the perfect fit to lead in her current role as head of DEI.

She’s now had some time to reflect on that role, and what it’s meant to both her and the company. Recently, as she got ready to report to the company’s Board of Directors for the fourth time, Muench kept coming back to how the values of corporations are now highly scrutinized by investors, customers, and employees. She’s confident, she says, that she’s “helped United live more fully into its purpose and values.”

“DEI will be how we will appeal to future talent and customers, and meet many of our businesses’ goals including hiring 50,000 people over five years,” Muench says.

“Leading with our purpose and values is good for the business, and it’s what’s right.”

—Jessica Muench ’04

Chicago-Kent 2022 Commencement

A Legacy of Equity

Some described it as an awakening, a way for aspiring attorneys from poor or underrepresented backgrounds to envision themselves in the realm of the law.

“Looking back on it now, I probably wouldn’t have been in law school without the PLUS program,” says Cristina McNeiley, who graduated from Chicago-Kent College of Law in 2020. “That program changed my life. I think a lot of diverse students just really need someone to believe in us and our ability as lawyers. And Chicago-Kent did that.”

The national Pre-Law Undergraduate Scholars (PLUS) program was created at a time when questions about race permeated law school admissions offices across the country. Now, decades later—as discussions about race have only grown in importance—the program is getting unprecedented interest.

And of the dozens of PLUS programs across the country, Chicago-Kent’s is the oldest.

With 20 years, three directors, and numerous fundraising efforts since it kicked off in 2002, Chicago-Kent’s PLUS program still operates as a place where undergraduates can try out the law school experience. Targeting students who are underrepresented in the profession, it consists mostly of minorities who live with each other for days, debating and encouraging the spark of an idea that is law school.

“It’s way more intense than what most undergrads are used to. You get down to the nitty gritty of it,” says Michael McGee, who attended Chicago-Kent’s PLUS program in 2016 and graduated

from Chicago-Kent in 2020. He’s now an assistant district attorney for Kings County, New York.

“I don’t know if I’d be where I am without it.”

“If you can’t see it, you can’t be it,” says Chicago-Kent’s current PLUS program Director Marsha Ross-Jackson. “I just want to make sure we don’t lose people who are right at the door.”

A Program Birthed Out of National Debate

The idea for the PLUS program came to Camille deJorna while she was working in admissions at the University of Iowa College of Law in the late 1990s.

At the time, there was some pushback against affirmative action, particularly following Hopwood v. Texas, a 1996 United States appeals court decision that held that the University of Texas School of Law could not use race as a factor when measuring applicants.

“At the height of affirmative action, law schools were thinking about becoming more diverse. Clearly there was pushback against that, and still is today,” says deJorna, who is currently deputy for legal education at the Law School Admission Council

DeJorna, who, at that time,chaired the LSAC’s volunteer minority affairs committee, wanted to come up with a way to boost minority enrollment in law schools—one that avoided students having to “check a box on race,” she says. That way, they could avoid the ramifications set by the Hopwood case.

It wasn’t difficult to see that there weren’t many Black applicants at Iowa, deJorna adds. And so, “We wanted students in the sophomore year (of college) to begin thinking about the [Law School Admission Test], and courses that might enhance their critical thinking skills,” deJorna says. To address inequities in their background, “We really wanted to introduce students of color to a graduate and professional-level education.”

She brought her idea to the LSAC board, which took interest.

“It was a realization that we needed to go back further in the educational experience, because many of the candidates were disadvantaged from day one,” says Kent Lollis, who headed LSAC’s initial effort to institute the program. “The earlier the pipeline started, the better.”

Normally pushing such an ambitious program might be difficult, no matter which agency attempted it. But Lollis notes that the push for PLUS had a big advantage: The year that it was proposed, there had been a big drop in admissions at law schools nationwide.

“Many of the board members were admissions directors, and the bottom fell out of the application process. It was a significant drop,” says Lollis, who was an admissions director at the time. “That was when the board unanimously voted in favor of the PLUS program.”

They chose two schools to take on the experiment, each getting $100,000 a year for at least three years.

Chicago-Kent was one of them.

Creating a Space

“We made a space,” says Francine Soliunas, who took over the fledgling program in 2003.

For the next decade or so as director, Soliunas worked hard to connect to students.

“These were young people making definitive decisions about

their lives. Young and unexposed. They were literally forced to confront some of their issues (from their backgrounds),” Soliunas says. “I said, ‘You are all students of color, you will always be in the minority. And quite frankly, you will be in the minority in your profession. You better start by learning how to, if nothing else, get along with one another.’”

Says PLUS graduate McNeiley, “Just being around other diverse students made me feel really comfortable, and at home.”

In a recent LSAC survey of roughly 200 PLUS students, more than 90 percent of the respondents—half of whom were African American and roughly 20 percent of whom were Latinx—said they were “comfortable being myself” in the program and “felt a sense of community” to a great or moderate extent.

“It was a realization that we needed to go back further in the educational experience, because many of the candidates were disadvantaged from day one. The earlier the pipeline started, the better.”— Kent Lollis

The same survey determined that the students reported huge gains in knowledge about the law school environment, admission tests, career options, legal structures, and the legal profession in general.

Directors noticed, and encouraged, big bursts of self-confidence among students. But the other half of developing the program was, well, programming. Who would the students see, hear from, talk to, learn from—besides themselves? Professors, judges, and practitioners, many of them minorities and all of whom would enforce a singular idea: you could do this, if you work at it.

“One of my favorite memories was going to see (U.S. District Court) Judge Ann Claire Williams,” says McNeiley, referring to the first judge of color to sit on the U.S. Court of Appeals for

High school students enrolled in Chicago-Kent’s PLUS program engage in mock trial arguments.

the Seventh Circuit. “We were in her chambers, and she told us how important it was for diverse law students to keep going. To keep going.”

“Professional identity doesn’t start in law school, it starts before law school. You have to envision yourself in the profession,” says Liz Bodamer, LSAC’s diversity, equity, and inclusion policy and research analyst and senior program manager. She is also a 2008 Chicago-Kent PLUS program graduate, and remembers visiting Williams. “I had her sign my certificate,” she laughs.

“You cannot overestimate the power of planting the idea in people’s minds that this might be a career for you,” says Kari Johnson, a Chicago-Kent professor who has been teaching a research and writing course within the PLUS program since 2002. “You build their confidence, and it comes to encompass their career in the law.”

LSAC deemed Chicago-Kent’s program so successful that it offered a rare extension of its initial $100,000-a-year grant. Instead of three years, Chicago-Kent got enough money for six.

But the biggest challenge, Bodamer notes, is sustainability: What happens after those grants run out?

When Chicago-Kent’s money ran out, then-Chicago-Kent Dean Hal Krent offered $5,000 in seed money, and Soliunas canvassed Chicago law firms to try to match it.

“I talked about the poor showing in terms of numbers of students of color in law schools, period. I talked about the discipline in the program, the leadership skills. All of these things were attractive to the firms,” Soliunas says.

A couple of large firms put in a few thousand dollars, and others followed, enough to keep the program running.

Of the 35 or so schools that received PLUS grants from the LSAC, only five continued their programs once the grant funding ran out. Chicago-Kent is the oldest of them.

“It did accomplish what we wanted to accomplish: Minority enrollment went up when law school enrollment went down,” Lollis says.

An Unfaltering Look Forward

Ross-Jackson, who took over the program from Soliunas in 2012, wishes she’d had something like the PLUS program when she was thinking about law school. It would have saved her years of self-doubt.

After growing up on Chicago’s South Side, attending Chicago Public Schools, and attaining her undergraduate degree in biology from Hampton University, she worked in the Chicago Police Department’s crime lab. There, during the times she was called to testify in court, she met plenty of attorneys—and she realized many of them weren’t any smarter than she was.

“But I just didn’t feel like I was ready yet,” Ross-Jackson says. Rather than take the leap to law school, she got a master’s degree first. She looks back on that decision now and shakes her head.

“I was intimidated about applying; I continued to stumble into different things,” Ross-Jackson says. “When you don’t have people in your family and in your community in these roles, even if you see somebody else in that role, they didn’t come from your space. I didn’t view myself as being a lawyer, didn’t think I was prepared, but I was.

“And I don’t want to see other people do that.”

It turned out she was more than prepared: She graded onto the law review, graduated in the top 10 percent of her class, and landed a job at a large Chicago law firm.

Students repeatedly credit Ross-Jackson as a mentor: someone who tells them yes, they can. She sees herself as a coach, “a driver,” as much as a nurturer.

Johnson, the PLUS instructor, credits Ross-Jackson and Soliunas for keeping the program running so long. “It’s an administrative feat to pull off,” she says.

Over time, Ross-Jackson has added more overview courses to the PLUS curriculum. The courses are about the entire law school experience, giving students a better taste of what they’ll be in for. She asks for weekly reflections. And she follows up.

“It’s not just a ‘one and done.’ These students stay connected with their cohort, and hopefully with me,” she says.

Ross-Jackson laments that enrollment numbers still haven’t moved enough for her liking; in the end, the legal profession is still 86 percent non-Hispanic white, according to the American Bar Association’s 2020 demographic report.

“The last year and a half, if it’s taught us nothing else, it has shown us that there are still so many inequities impacting communities of color that result from system barriers that were created by the law. Who better to understand the impact and advocate for change than people from these communities, who are still missing?” she asks.

For those who wish to help Chicago-Kent’s PLUS program continue, follow this link, and specify “PLUS program” as the designated recipient. 

Marsha Ross-Jackson

Hal Krent [left] and Marsha Ross-Jackson pose with a 2019 PLUS graduate

DIVERSITY By the Numbers

Michael Wilder ’06 wasn’t much of a numbers man in high school. He wanted to be an artist; then—after a few years in the working world—a lawyer. Neither profession requires one to be a whiz at math.

But Wilder branched into diversity, equity, and inclusion law—working for more than a decade assisting companies with affirmative action audits—by embracing the numbers: searching for standard deviations from the mean, red flags in hiring and firing, and talking to people about how to address them.

And recently, he forged a number he’s proud of: membership in an organization he founded, which has skyrocketed from two to more than 650 members globally in just two years. It’s the kind of growth that has deviated far above what once seemed plausible.

“We marvel at Michael’s boundless energy. I told him, ‘There’s 24 hours in a day for everybody, including you,’” says Paul Bateman, chief inclusion, equity, and diversity officer at Littler Mendelson’s Chicago office, where Wilder now works. “You ask, ‘What comes off the plate in order to make everything happen?’ And from what I could tell, nothing.”

Born and raised in Detroit, Wilder’s first passion was art. After high school he considered working for Disney for a time, but when he noticed the company was leaning toward computer-generated art, he decided to go to college.

He grew up watching courtroom dramas on TV—the glory of getting a jury verdict—and remembers telling his parents he either wanted to be a lawyer or an artist.

“I don’t know many starving lawyers, but I know quite a few starving artists,” his mother told him.

Wilder received a bachelor’s degree from Michigan State University in social relations, a degree that emphasizes writing skills. While there, he also clerked at a small labor law firm in East Lansing, Michigan.

As he was studying for the LSAT and looking at colleges, Wilder’s father approached him and told him that he was worried about losing his job. Lots of pink slips were being handed out at his father’s insurance sales firm. Wilder did some research, and offered some advice; in the end, his father kept his job.

That experience led him to seek out good labor and employment law programs—and Chicago-Kent College of Law stood out. Wilder received his certificate in labor and employment law from the law school in 2006.

After graduation, he took a job at Littler Mendelson, P.C., where he had worked as a summer associate during law school. After a few weeks, one of the partners reached out and asked him if he was any good at math.

“I love math,” Wilder replied.

He soon sated his thirst for numbers after being introduced to the extensive auditing processes used by the United States Department of Labor’s Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs.

That’s also how Wilder branched into the diversity, equity, and inclusion realm,

reviewing the affirmative action plans of federal contractors. For the next 10 years, Wilder flew around the country, casting a critical eye on the hiring, firing, and compensation practices of companies, to see if there were any red flags, mathematically speaking.

“I looked for a standard deviation of more than two in a racial, gender, or age category. Then you have to dig deeper to see what’s going on, if it was something that could be corrected,” Wilder says. “There were companies that had heard of me, that came to me proactively.”

Out of the hundreds of audits he reviewed, Wilder says he actually only saw one where a violation was blatantly intentional. A male manager had only been hiring women in a retail manufacturing job. Wilder contacted him and interviewed him in person.

“You literally rejected all the men,” Wilder told him.

of the Civil Rights Act of 1964—which prohibits employment discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, and national origin—Wilder advises clients that such programs can’t exclude non-minorities, though they can still be marketed toward diverse candidates. Wilder also sat on the firm’s diversity and inclusion council for more than five years.

“Michael makes every committee and team he is a part of better. His optimism and can-do attitude elevates everyone else who is involved,” says Erin Webber, president and managing director of Littler Mendelson, P.C.

In 2017 Wilder was named one of the Most Influential Minority Lawyers in Chicago by Crain’s Chicago Business.

But more importantly, that same year Wilder co-founded his organization. He started the Black Men Lawyers’ Association to provide resources and peer support to Black male lawyers, judges, law professors, law students, paralegals, and law clerks.

“I realized there were no other such associations in the country, and there are already Black women law associations,” Wilder says. “After getting into law school, I just didn’t see many Black men [students].”

“I like working with the ladies,” the man replied.

In other audits, Wilder says, “honestly, people weren’t thinking. If you’re hiring in rural America, you have to be proactive about hiring diverse people. I had one audit where the applicant pool had zero minorities. They weren’t actively recruiting from a nearby college. I told them, ‘You need to go to their job fairs.’ And they did. And their applicant pool became much more diverse.

“They were used to doing things a certain way, and they had a blind spot.”

Sometimes those blind spots were inside the house. Wilder notes that while OFCCP auditing work is a great opportunity, “when I was doing it, I was the only African-American male that I was aware of doing it. I went to conferences, and I was pretty much it. So, it’s an area that could certainly use more diversity.”

After years of audits, Wilder— now a senior shareholder at Littler Mendelson, P.C. and core member of the firm’s complex trial and litigation practice group —has also joined Littler’s diversity and inclusion services practice group, advising clients on how to create more diverse applicant pools.

To avoid getting sued under Title VII

“We need to talk about breaking into corporate spaces and law firm spaces that don’t look like us. And once you are in there, being successful and not feeling isolated,” Wilder adds. “There are mental health issues, and we’re not talking about it. A lot of us don’t come from money. Once we do get money, now we’re supporting families, extended families. How do I manage money when I don’t come from money?”

The offer of peer support was taken up, in big numbers. With the backing of major firms like Baker McKenzie, Kirkland & Ellis, Littler Mendelson, P.C., and Quarels & Brady, BMLA now holds an annual conference whose recent summit had a 125 attendee cap. It hosted 150.

“For these kinds of nascent organizations, often they last one or two years, because they don’t have individuals who are committed to getting them past the sophomore year,” says Bateman. “He’s been able to help keep it going, increase what the organization does, put on events that are easy for our law firm to get behind.”

“I call him Batman,” says the organization’s co-founder, Sunga Mkwezalamba, who is a corporate counsel at Amazon. “He sends out emails late at night, at 2 a.m., and he’d respond within 10 minutes. He’s extremely responsible. I just don’t think he sleeps.” 

“I looked for a standard deviation of more than two in a racial, gender, or age category. Then you have to dig deeper to see what’s going on, if it was something that could be corrected.”— Michael Wilder

The “Generalist” at DEI’s Forefront

TO THIS DAY, Nicholas Cummings ’08 speaks against what he sees as an anti-generalist prejudice in the legal industry.

“There’s a belief that certain skills are not transferable. But the same rules of evidence apply regardless of the area of law you practice. We all go by the same rules, depending on the level of court you’re in,” Cummings says.

Out of law school, Cummings felt the prejudice of the specialized: recruiters wanted years of practice and education in particular areas before they would glance at a resume. But after plenty of trial work, addressing numerous areas of law, Cummings soon found himself advising for a highly specialized area: diversity, equity, and inclusion law.

And not just advising. Just last year Cummings was thrust into the national spotlight, responsible for vetting and defending a municipal reparations program that was the first of its kind in the country.

“Every city attorney is not up for this challenge, the potential and likely legal challenge. Nick could have easily said there’s no precedent, it hasn’t happened before,” says former Evanston Alderman Robin Rue Simmons, who worked with Cummings on the program.

“But he didn’t.”

Born and raised in Columbus, Ohio, Cummings grew up “a big Law and Order fan.” He was the first in his family to go to college, receiving a bachelor’s degree in computer science from DePaul University—a degree he chose solely to secure a good-paying job when he graduated.

But the economics of that decision offered little in the way of satisfaction.

“Just because I was good at it, there was no specific passion,” he says. And soon the economics faltered: the dot-com bubble burst just after Cummings graduated, and he was laid off from his job, just months into his career.

There was a silver lining: now he had an economic argument to go to law school as well. He’d taken a political science course during his undergraduate years.

“It dealt a lot with constitutional law, and I was hooked,” Cummings says.

He received his J.D. certificate in intellectual property law “to try to give me some flexibility.” During school he continued to work full-time in information technology, first for a car dealership and then for an insurance company.

But as soon as he graduated, the United States housing bubble burst.

“Any time I go to school, there’s immediately a recession,” Cummings jokes.

He continued to work in information technology until 2010, when he took a job with the Cook County State’s Attorney’s office as an assistant state’s attorney. Cummings started his career in child support cases, then criminal misdemeanors; he later worked for the

real estate and transactions unit of the Civil Actions Bureau where he focused on contracts and real estate closings for the Bureau of Economic Development, working on United States Housing and Urban Development programs.

“It was almost a training ground to start your own practice,” Cummings says. “You have some lawyers that take a lot of pride in being a trial lawyer. But I want to be good at all of those [other] things; I just want to be a good lawyer. I want to be that guy you can trust to do it all.”

Still, Cummings did his share of trial work.

From his time as an assistant state’s attorney, through his time working for the Chicago Transit Authority as a chief attorney in tort litigation, Cummings got his share of trial time, in many cases before juries. He also assisted in federal civil rights cases, picking juries multiple times in federal court.

He eventually applied to corporate firms who, he felt, looked down on his broad range.

displaced a group of mostly Black residents from their homes, moving them from one part of the city to another, ostensibly to tackle urban blight. Other policies made purchasing property more difficult in that particular area, and fledgling attempts at homeownership and wealth generation by the Black community were halted in their tracks.

“We wanted to move beyond apology and ceremony,” says Simmons, who represented one of the affected wards and still sits on the reparations committee.

How could they address it? And, the aldermen asked Cummings, how could they craft a law that would survive legal challenges?

“People misunderstand the point of reparations,” Cummings says. “Reparations for slavery is a common idea. I will not debate that, I think there should be. But local governments and state governments don’t have the authority to do that.

“[Cities] have to limit [their ordinances] to what local actions have happened. They cannot provide restitu-

narrowly tailoring the ordinance to ensure that it addressed those specific actions.

The ordinance eventually allotted $400,000 from the city’s 2020 cannabis tax for claims of up to $25,000, to go toward a down payment on a home, repairing a current home, or paying down the principal on a current mortgage.

But who had standing to claim they were harmed? In the end, Cummings urged the aldermen to limit the ordinance to Black residents who had lived in the city of Evanston from 1919— the first year that the city started working on a comprehensive plan that prompted the actions of the clearance commision— to 1969, when its fair housing ordinance became effective. It also applied to the residents’ direct descendents.

Within a year, the city awarded claims to 16 people, tapping out the fund. It was officially the first publicly funded municipal reparation program in the country.

Though there have been numerous information requests—from as far away as Utah—relating to the task force’s correspondence, to date there have been no legal claims filed to challenge the ordinance.

But there was one area where being a generalist was a boon. In 2020 Cummings was hired as the deputy city attorney for the City of Evanston, Illinois, where his range of work was seen as an asset.

“I like the government work and specifically what I do, because I’m much more of a generalist than I ever have been in my career,” Cummings says.

But that same year, Cummings was pulled into working on an ordinance that made national headlines as the the first of its kind to delve into a particular realm of equity work: reparations.

Former Evanston Alderman Simmons remembers when Cummings was hired as a deputy city attorney.

“His first words to me were his excitement to be able to work on reparations,” Simmons says. “I was equally thrilled to see him, as a Black man, feeling quite confident that he would bring some lived experience to the work of racial justice.”

Cummings arrived just as a subcommittee of three aldermen—those representing the majority-minority wards in the city—started to research a historic issue that they believed still had ramifications today. They’d looked at how Evanston’s land clearance commission had, largely in the 1930s and 1940s,

tion based on private action—the only people with authority to remedy private action is the federal government.”

“We could say with good faith that the city was no longer deliberately indifferent to discrimination going on the city, in the area of housing,” Cummings adds, noting that in 1968 the city passed a fair housing ordinance, making it illegal to discriminate based on race in the area of housing. Though it initially had no teeth in terms of an enforcement mechanism, a year later it did, and was actively levied against banks and realtors operating in Evanston.

But, like most diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts, the aldermen sought to address historic ramifications: the loss of wealth and stability to the city’s Black community in the decades since.

“Always on the forefront of my mind was that the program had to pass constitutional muster,” Cummings says. “Any time you focus your efforts on a suspect class (based on gender, race, or religion), then you have to survive strict scrutiny. It has to have ‘compelling governmental interest,’ and has to be narrowly tailored to address that interest.”

The “compelling interest” part is an “easy hurdle,” Cummings believes, confident in the legal argument that the past actions of the city were harmful, and should be addressed. The trick was

“Once people realized it had nothing to do with slavery, it calmed down,” Cummings says.

“Nick is very matter-of-fact. He is all about the business and the outcomes, with a hilarious, dry sense of humor,” Simmons says. “The dry humor is something I appreciate, because the work is so heavy.”

Renewing the fund remains another matter: Cummings is hesitant to directly tap the city’s general fund, out of a concern that might open the ordinance up to legal challenges.

In the meantime, Cummings— now promoted to Evanston’s top city attorney—has used his position to promote equity in the city in other ways. His office is more diverse than most: at one point, the law department of seven included six non-white members and five women.

“When I hire outside counsel, I look into their diversity efforts—how diverse is their firm?” Cummings says. “How diverse is their leadership? Do they have women as partners? LGBTQ partners? Someone who’s not white as a partner?”

He’s also advocating, with the support of the city’s council, manager, and human resources department, for implicit bias training for staff.

Even though he’s not a DEI specialist, Cummings says, his work as a “generalist” hasn’t been bad in that area at all. 

“You have some lawyers that take a lot of pride in being a trial lawyer. But I want to be good at all of those [other] things; I just want to be a good lawyer. I want to be that guy you can trust to do it all.”

— Nicolas Cummings

Juries, Race, and Peremptory Challenges

The vitality of the American jury system depends on having jurors who come from different backgrounds and experiences so that the jury can view the trial, whether civil or criminal, from multiple perspectives. Although the jury has been drawn from a broader swath of the citizenry over time, there are still vestiges of past discrimination.

The most visible barrier to diverse juries is the peremptory challenge, which takes place in the courtroom. This challenge, which allows lawyers on each side to remove a certain number of prospective jurors without having to give a reason, also provides a mechanism for lawyers to discriminate. Although the United States Supreme Court has said that lawyers cannot exercise peremptory challenges based on race, ethnicity, or gender, the test that the court devised is ineffective. Recently, several state courts have begun to respond; other state courts need to follow their lead.

The test used today is one that the Supreme Court created more than 35 years ago in a case called Batson v. Kentucky. In that case, James Batson, who was being tried for burglary, noticed that the prosecutor struck all the Black prospective jurors using his peremptory challenges. Batson thought this was unfair and told his lawyer to object. His lawyer said that he had no basis to object, but Batson told him to “object anyway,” and he did.

Although Batson was convicted by an all-white jury, his case was eventually heard by the Supreme Court. The court tried to preserve peremptory challenges because they were part of our jury tradition and were thought to help seat an impartial jury, but the court also tried to eliminate discriminatory peremptory challenges. According to the Batson test, a Black criminal defendant could challenge the prosecutor’s exercise of peremptory challenges if they seemed to discriminate against Black prospective jurors, but if the prosecutor gave a race-neutral reason for the peremptory challenge then the criminal defendant had to show that the prosecutor had engaged in purposeful discrimination. This was not easy to show.

Even though the Supreme Court eventually expanded the protection of Batson so that all lawyers, whether in civil or criminal cases, could not discriminate against prospective jurors based on their race, ethnicity, or gender, Batson proved difficult to enforce. Lawyers learned to give reasons that did not refer to race, gender, or ethnicity, and judges accepted those reasons without much scrutiny. In addition, Batson addressed only explicit bias, not implicit bias. In several states, lawyers did not even try to bring Batson challenges because they knew that such challenges would always be unsuccessful. Even in the most serious cases—those involving the death penalty—the court often found Batson violations, but it was unwilling to alter the test.

Recently, some state courts have recognized the deficiencies of Batson and have experimented with different ways to address them. Washington took the lead in 2018. The Washington Supreme Court convened a task force to examine jury selection and peremptory challenges; it created a rule change to make the Batson test more objective and include implicit bias. The rule change also provided that certain reasons that had been accepted in the past, even though they were applied disproportionately to Black prospective jurors, would be “presumptively invalid.” Examples of such reasons include “having prior contact with law enforcement officers” or “living in a high-crime neighborhood.” In California, the state supreme court also convened a task force to examine discrimination during jury selection, but the California Legislature acted before the task force issued its report. California followed the path taken by Washington and tried to create a Batson test that would be more objective; in doing so it protected more groups than Washington’s rule change.

In August 2021 Arizona became the first state in the U.S. to eliminate peremptory challenges effective January 1, 2022. Arizona had the example of Canada, which eliminated peremptory challenges in 2019, and which I will study by observing jury selection in Canada this semester. Justice Thurgood Marshall, who had joined the court’s opinion in Batson back in 1986, had also written separately to explain that as long as peremptory challenges existed, they would continue to be used to discriminate and only with their elimination could jury selection be free from discrimination. Arizona took Justice Marshall’s words seriously. Now it remains for other states to do so.

—By Nancy S. Marder, Professor of Law and Director of the Justice John Paul Stevens Jury Center

Class Notes

1967

Frank J. Klosik Jr., Atlanta, recently received acknowledgement for 50-plus years of active practice of the law in Georgia.

1976

Emil L. Hunter, Missouri City, Texas, is enjoying her retirement in Missouri City, just 20 miles southwest of Houston.

1978

Jack J. Carriglio, Glenview, Ill., was recently named to the Judiciary Committee of the American College of Trial Lawyers—the preeminent organization dedicated to maintaining and improving the standards of trial practice, professionalism, ethics, and the administration of justice. Carriglio is a member of Cozen O’Connor’s Commercial Litigation practice.

1979

Jeffery M. Leving, Chicago, published an op-ed in the Chicago Sun-Times in May 2022: “Child Welfare Decisions Should Not be Made by Computer Algorithms.” Leving also spoke on behalf of his good friend, United States Congressman Danny Davis (D-Illinois), at an event in May 2022 with U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-California) and U.S. Senator Dick Durbin (D-Illinois). Leving is the owner of his own law firm and specializes in family law.

1982

Michael M. Marick, Chicago, was recognized in the 2022 edition of Chambers USA: Leading Lawyers for Business in the practice area of Insurance Dispute Resolution:

Insurer-Illinois. Chambers USA reported that Marick “draws widespread praise for his successful representations of domestic and international insurance companies in complex, high-value disputes.” Marick, a partner at Skarzynski Marick & Black LLP, is widely regarded as one of the leading attorneys in the United States representing liability insurers in coverage and bad faith matters.

1983

Nancy E. Paridy, Evanston, Ill., was named president and chief administrative officer of Shirley Ryan AbilityLab in September 2021. Paridy has held various roles at Shirley Ryan AbilityLab (formerly the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago) since 1995.

1984

Margherita M. Albarello, Arlington Heights, Ill., was hired as partner at Golan Christie Taglia LLP’s Chicago office. Albarello concentrates her practice in all areas of employment law, regularly counseling clients in matters pertaining to the Fair Labor Standards Act and Illinois wage and hour violations, Equal Pay Act violations and misclassifications, trade secret litigation, non-compete/ non-solicitation restrictive covenant agreements and litigation, and False Claim Act and Whistleblower Act violations.

1987

Andrea Lubelfeld Urdangen, Evanston, Ill., was promoted to chief of the juvenile justice division for the Law Office of the Cook County Public Defender, where she will continue to represent indigent people accused of crimes.

1989

Michael Bertucci, Chicago, was installed as treasurer of the Justinian Society of Lawyers in September 2022.

Amy R. Blumenfeld Bogost, Madison, Wis., was appointed vice president of the University of Wisconsin System Board of Regents in June 2022. Blumenfeld Bogost has her own practice focused on representation of victims of sensitive crimes and federal Title IX violations.

1993

Carlos R. Olarte, Bogota, Colombia, is celebrating the 20th anniversary of the firm that he founded in 2003, OlarteMoure. OlarteMoure now has more than 200 employees, including six partners and 70-plus professionals, spread over five offices in Colombia and Asia. The firm is focused on intellectual property and competition, but has built strong platforms in other areas such as compliance and data privacy. One of the things that Olarte most enjoys about his work is always meeting classmates and Chicago-Kent grads during his travels.

1995

Keith D. Picher, Elmwood Park, Ill., joined the Chicago office of Faegre Drinker in May 2022 as a pursuits and proposals manager.

1996

Lara B. Pennington, Mapelwood, N.J., was recently promoted to the director of the appellate advocacy program at Seton Hall University School of Law in Newark, New Jersey. She has been teaching appellate advocacy and introduction to lawyering courses at Seton Hall since 2004.

Krista S. Schwartz, Lafayette, Calif., has joined Willkie Farr & Gallager LLP’s San Francisco office as a partner in the Intellectual Property Department.

1997

Jorge Ramirez, Lemont, Ill., was appointed to the National Infrastructure Advisory Council (NIAC) by United States President Joe Biden. The NIAC advises the White House on how to reduce physical and cyber risks

and improve the security and resilience of the nation’s critical infrastructure sectors. Ramirez is a managing director at GCM Grosvenor, where he focuses on labor and government strategies and initiatives and serves on the ESG Committee and the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Committee.

2000

Jason J. Friedl, Chicago, was named in the 2023 edition of the Best Lawyers in America. He is a senior attorney at Romanucci & Blandin, LLC.

2001

Melanie B. Pell, Louisville, Ky., was promoted to chief field operations officer for the American Jewish Committee (AJC), a global Jewish advocacy organization. In this role she oversees AJC’s 24 regional United States offices and creates strategies to expand AJC’s advocacy footprint across all 50 states.

Jeremy R. Thompson, Round Rock, Texas, has joined Latitude as director of legal recruiting and placement in the Austin, Texas, area. Latitude is a high-end legal services company that specializes in providing experienced attorneys and paralegals to legal departments and law firms nationwide on an engagement (short- and long-term) basis and for permanent, direct-hire positions. Latitude serves a range of clients, including Fortune 500 corporations and Global 50 law firms.

2002

Gina M. Arquilla Deboni, Glenview, Ill., was named in the 2023 Edition of the Best Lawyers in America. She is a managing partner at Romanucci & Blandin, LLC.

2007

Kristen E. Prinz, River Forest, Ill., was named one of Crain’s Chicago Business’ 2022 Notable Women in Law. Prinz is founder and managing partner at The Prinz Law Firm.

2008

Margaret Battersby Black, Elmhurst, Ill., obtained a $20 million jury verdict in a birth injury case in June 2022 and was recently named a Notable Woman in Law by Crain’s Chicago Business. She was also appointed as a managing partner at Levin & Perconti, and will now share responsibility for the strategic leadership of the firm.

Michael E. Holden, Park Ridge, Ill., was elevated to partner at Romanucci & Blandin, LLC. Holden was also named in the 2023 edition of the Best Lawyers in America

2009

Ruth B. Lopez-McCarthy, Oak Park, Ill., was honored with the International Award of Merit at the Illinois Institute of Technology Alumni Awards in September 2022. LopezMcCarthy was chosen for her significant impact on immigrant and refugee communities on a local, national, and international level. Lopez-McCarthy currently serves as senior immigration fellow for the State of Illinois.

Sulema Medrano Novak, Chicago, was appointed to the Chicago Board of Education. Medrano Novak currently serves on Chicago’s Human Resource board, but will step away from this role to serve on the Board of Education. She also serves on the Board of Directors for Mujeres Latinas en Accion, the Board of Directors for Latino Justice, the Board of Trustees for Cristo Rey St. Martin College Prep, and the Latin School of Chicago’s Risk Management Committee.

2010

David R. Doyle, La Grange, Ill., contributed a chapter to the 2022 edition of the Business Bankruptcy Practice Handbook, an annual publication by the Illinois Institute of Continuing Education. In chapter six, titled “Advising Business Debtors: Alternatives to Bankruptcy,” Doyle explores strategic alternatives available to a distressed company outside of formal bankruptcy proceedings. Doyle is a member at Cozen O’Connor who is focused on creditor’s rights, insolvency matters, and commercial litigation.

2012

Lindsay M. Gephardt, Phoenix, was promoted to assistant bureau chief of the family violence bureau at the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office. Gephardt also celebrated her 10-year milestone as a prosecutor in the fall.

Chris B. Grubb, Evanston, Ill., and his wife, Megan, welcomed their first child, Benjamin, on December 23, 2021. Mom and baby are doing great, and Chris is over the moon.

Bruno R. Marasso, Chicago, was elevated to partner at Romanucci & Blandin, LLC. Marasso was named in the 2023 edition of the Best Lawyers in America, and in September 2022 was installed as president of the Justinian Society of Lawyers.

2013

Angeline R. Babel, Middleton, Wis., was promoted to partner at the national law firm Quarles & Brady. Babel is a Madison-based member of the intellectual property team. Babel represents a broad range of clients in all aspects of patent law in the life sciences, pharmaceutical, and biotechnology fields, including patent prosecution, strategic management of patent portfolios, freedom-to-operate opinions, and due diligence and landscape analysis. She is familiar with preparing and prosecuting both United States and foreign patent applications.

Anni Safarloo, Glendale, Calif., has been selected to the 2022 Southern California Super Lawyers Rising Stars list for her continued, tireless work on behalf of her clients and her overall dedication to the practice of law. Safarloo is an associate in Liebert Cassidy Whitmore’s Los Angeles office where she provides representation and counsel to public agency and nonprofit clients in transactional, administrative, and pre-litigation and litigation matters.

2014

Daisy Ayllon, Chicago, was selected by the AAJ to join its Class of 2023 Leadership Academy, and was recognized at the annual AAJ convention. Each year 15 highly qualified and talented attorneys from around

the country are selected for the program. Ayllon is an associate attorney at Levin & Perconti.

Martin D. Gould, Chicago, was elevated to partner at Romanucci & Blandin, LLC. Gould was also named in the 2023 edition of the Best Lawyers in America: Ones to Watch

2015

Bei Yang, River Edge, N.J., was added to Goldberg Segalla’s Workers’ Compensation Group in Newark, New Jersey. Yang concentrates her practice on counseling and defending employers, insurers, and thirdparty administrators in workers’ compensation matters. She is involved in every stage of the litigation process from inception through resolution. Goldberg Segalla is a national civil litigation firm with more than 20 offices in 10 states spanning major metro markets across the United States, providing strategic coverage wherever our clients do business.

2016

Nicolette A. Ward, Chicago, was hired as associate attorney at Swanson, Martin & Bell, LLP

in July 2022. Ward focuses her practice on medical negligence and health care, product liability, general trial practice, and insurance.

2017

Bryce T. Hensley, Chicago, was elevated to senior attorney at Romanucci & Blandin, LLC. Hensley was also named in the 2023 edition of the Best Lawyers in America: Ones to Watch

2020

Isabela Bacidore, Riverside, Ill., was involved in a major birth injury lawsuit that obtained a $16 million settlement on behalf of a child who suffered preventable hypoxic ischemic encephalopathy and asphyxia injuries at birth, resulting in permanent cognitive and developmental impairments. She is also one of the attorneys handling dozens of cases filed against the State of Illinois after 36 veterans died from COVID-19 at the LaSalle Veterans Home. Bacidore joined Levin & Perconti as a law clerk in May 2018, and was hired as an associate attorney in January 2021.

In Memoriam

Olga M. Springer ’49

Harris W. Fawell ’52

Lajos Schmidt ’54

David J. Hayes ’60

William V. Johnson ’66

Richard D. Glickman ’69

Steven B. Bashaw ’76

Judith A. Griffin ’77

Lincoln V. Janus ’78

Larry J. Hagen ’80

Thomas L. Lockhart ’80

Lawrence J. Essig ’83

Carlos G. Rizowy ’83

Patrick J. Manning ’87

Mark T. Karner ’88

Mary A. Jachna ’89

Yasmeen E. Aidinejad ’98

Harry J. Jacobus ’03

Brian B. O’Donnell ’17

Andrew E. Hale ’21

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