This article originally appeared in the Spring/Summer 2019 issue of Carolina Law magazine.

Collaborations with students and alumni show how truly committed Carolina Law's faculty is to scholarship, research, service and educating the next generation of the legal profession.

In researching a book about mass incarceration, Joe Kennedy, the Martha Brandis Professor of Law, tapped Kasi Wahlers '17, then a second-year law student at Carolina Law, to do a literature review for the drug chapter. A data set from the National Incident-Based Reporting System harbored some stats about arrests by local law enforcement agencies, but neither Kennedy nor Wahlers had worked with big data before.

Professor Joe Kennedy and Kasi Wahlers '17 worked together on a research article about the overrepresentation of people of color in felony arrests for small amounts of drugs.

They discovered information about the race of those arrested for drug offenses and the quantity of drugs involved that no one else had written about. All three are listed as co-authors on the resulting research article that re-thinks felony liability for low-level drug offenders and documents the overrepresentation of people of color in felony arrests for small amounts of drugs.

Writing the research article, published in UC Davis Law Review in January, “was a chance to do something that would have more impact than just a grade,” Wahlers said. Many days, the paper is among the top 10 downloads, which suggests it will be cited in other research yet to come.

“To see that my work was valuable had a big impact on me,” Wahlers said. “I’m fortunate to have had professors who believed in me and took the time to mentor me.”

Connections and collaborations among faculty and students, across disciplines, around the world and even back in time, enrich the Carolina Law experience. Faculty create opportunities for hands-on learning through pro bono clinics, presenting Continuing Legal Education programs, international exchanges and reading the original law tracts used by lawyers practicing centuries ago. Professors at Carolina Law are valued for their teaching, and they produce excellent legal scholarship.

“Those two reputations don’t always go hand-in-hand,” Kennedy said, “but they do here.”

Professors Joan Krause and Rich Saver, co-faculty advisers for the Carolina Health Law Organization (CHLO), worked with members Alec Mercolino 2L, Nur Kara 2L and Nicole Angelica 1L on a grant to increase low-income access to medical resources.

Physical proximity proved a boon in the expanding curriculum of the health law program at UNC. The medical school, law school and school of public health make their home on South Campus. Research Triangle Park has many biotechnology stakeholders; some of the major health employers in the country are headquartered in the Triangle; and NorthCarolina is transforming its Medicaid system.

Richard Saver, Arch T. Allen Distinguished Professor of Law, considers this “an exciting time in health law, because things are constantly changing in the highly regulated and politicized health care sector.”

He and Joan Krause, the Dan K. Moore Distinguished Professor in Ethics and Jurisprudence, teach a course at the medical school in which law students and medical students work on projects in interdisciplinary groups. Law students also work pro bono at UNC Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center, preparing advanced directives for patients.

Saver serves as co-faculty adviser to the student-run Carolina Health Law Organization. He knew that the N.C. Bar Association’s Health Law Section (he’s on its executive council) had taken on a project to provide information to state residents looking for free or discounted medical care. Saver connected CHLO’s president, Nur Kara, a second-year law student, with the N.C. Society of Health Care Attorneys, which had grant funding available. Kara successfully applied for a $1,500 grant and developed important pragmatic skills in project administration, including how to handle “the less-than-thrilling aspects of fundraising and the bureaucratic minefields you have to navigate to get a grant through the university system,” Saver said. The project has helped CHLO students move beyond the classroom by connecting them with health lawyers in practice.

With funding in hand, the CHLO students have been compiling and will distribute a resource for finding clinics and providers that offer free or discounted medical care.

Kara, who has a master’s in health policy, chose Carolina Law in part because of the benefit of collaborating with faculty partners at the medical and public health schools and because UNC’s health system is the largest nonprofit provider of health care in the state.

“Carolina Law is small enough to have very invested faculty,” she said. “Professors here come with diverse experience across private practice, public interest and international law. They are more than willing to mentor students inside the classroom and outside.”

Semester exchange students from Germany, Spain, Argentina and the Netherlands visited the N.C. Supreme Court in Raleigh in October to observe oral arguments as part of their Introduction to U.S. Law class with Professor Donna Nixon, center.

Those inside and outside experiences have an international mix. Donna Nixon, a clinical assistant professor of law and the electronic resources librarian, was until recently the faculty coordinator of the International Exchange Programs. Carolina Law has partnerships with 10 institutions, many in Europe, as well as Argentina and Mexico. Tar Heel JD students may study abroad for six months to a year, and students from the partner institutions may come to Carolina, often to earn an LLM. The school frequently welcomes scholars from Asia as well. Faculty, too, participate in international exchanges and scholarship and have been known to go as far afield as Australia.

“We get the opportunity for intellectual and cultural exchanges and to learn the differences in legal systems around the world,” Nixon said. Carolina Law’s participation in international moot court competitions adds another global layer.Nixon also takes students, foreign and domestic, to hear cases argued before the N.C.Supreme Court.

“Students get to see how lawyers handle themselves in court in high-stakes cases,” she said.

John Brooker '03 guest lectures in Professor Tom Kelley's public international law class.

Tom Kelley, Paul B. Eaton Distinguished Professor of Law, invited alumni with international public law experience as guest lecturers to the public international law course he began teaching this spring. He Skyped in Dan MacGuire '07, who works in Geneva for the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, and Rachel Braden '13, who works on women’s health issues with an NGO in Central and West Africa and now in India. He walked down the hall to the office of John Brooker '03, who spent much of his Army career living in interesting, difficult and dangerous places as he practiced humanitarian law and the law of armed conflict and now supervises Carolina Law’s Military and Veterans Law Clinic.

The three alumni talk about the interpretation and application of international law, as well as their career paths.

“If you want to be a corporate litigator, the path is clear,” Kelley said. “Finding the path to a career in public international law is much more challenging. You don’t just bump into people practicing international law, particularly public international law.”

Kelley has taken students to Rwanda for study abroad excursions, and he points to pivotal efforts by his colleagues on the faculty: Holning Lau’s work on human rights in Africa and Asia, and Deborah Weissman’s work on torture in the international realm.

“We have excellent scholarly and research faculty,” Kelley said, “and we care, maybe more than our peer schools, about classroom teaching and guiding and mentoring the next generation of leaders in law. We want to spark students’ imaginations, because we want them to have high-impact and enjoyable careers.”

Elizabeth Fisher 3L co-authors an article with law professor and Associate Dean for Strategy Andy Hessick to be published in the Alabama Law Review.

Third-year law student Elizabeth Fisher got a jump on her career by co-authoring an article with law professor and Associate Dean for Strategy Andy Hessick that will be published in Alabama Law Review. She had been published last year in North Carolina Law Review, but, she said, “it’s different to get published in a journal with a professor.”

When Hessick asked her to work with him on writing up a theory that provides justification for not incorporating the 5th, 6th and 7th Amendment jury rights, she hesitated before saying yes.

“I wanted to make sure I could do a good job and still manage school and other responsibilities,” she said. “It was very time-consuming and challenging working on something so unfamiliar.”

Fisher credits her good writing skills to Melissa Jacoby, the Graham Kenan Professor of Law, whose feedback was instrumental in shaping how Fisher thought, researched and wrote.

“The faculty here are very approachable,” Fisher said, “always willing to listen and help.

Resident Superior Court Judge Allen Baddour '97, Clinical Assistant Professor and Assistant Director for Collection and Technology Services Stacey Rowland and Jonathan Zator 3L present a CLE session on technology at the Susie Sharp Inn of Court.

Being part of the Susie Sharp Inn of Court helped third-year law student Jonathan Zator learn that judges can be approachable, too. Carolina Law pays the membership fee for a handful of students annually. The Inn meets a half-dozen times a year for dinner and a CLE presentation, enabling students to connect with lawyers and judges informally and learn about topical issues in the law field, while longtime practitioners are reinvigorated by the students’ energy and passion for law.

This year, the Carolina Law student contingent planned and presented a CLE session on technology. Resident Superior Court Judge Allen Baddour '97 advised the students on making the session relevant to practitioners from a wide range of career experience.

Zator, as the chief planner among the presenters, learned how to build a CLE from the ground up, recruit talent and interact with others in the field. He and his team chose Clinical Assistant Professor Stacey Rowland, who is also the assistant director for Collection and Technology Services for the Kathrine R. Everett Law Library, to present on the hidden powers of Word that save lawyers time and boost their efficiency.

Automating page suppression in a digital filing or autogenerating a table of authorities are useful skills for lawyers. “Since the economic downturn, professional services have been cut at law firms,” Rowland said. “Clients are not willing to pay for some of those services. Automating will help if you can’t charge for those services.”

North Carolina adopted a duty of technology competence in 2014, becoming the second state to require an hour of CLE training in technology, such as using reasonable security methods on- and offline. Rowland cites Paul Manafort, whose legal problems were compounded because he didn’t redact his court filings properly. Failing to correctly redact sensitive information is a common technical oversight and a breach of the required duty of technology competence. “Saying, ‘My secretary did it,’ is not a valid excuse,” Rowland said.

John Coyle, the Reef C. Ivey II Term Professor of Law, presents his research on choice-of-law clauses at law firms around North Carolina.

Practitioners become better lawyers through the research conducted by professors and their students.

John Coyle, the Reef C. Ivey II Term Professor of Law, has presented his research on choice-of-law and forum selection clauses to law firms around the state, helping transactional lawyers write better contracts.

“I have read hundreds upon hundreds of cases in an attempt to show how courts have interpreted specific words and phrases in these clauses,” he said. “Having done so, I wanted to pass these insights along to the lawyers tasked with contract drafting.”

In reviewing cases that may date back 130 years, Coyle finds the inflection point of when words or phrases changed or went out of fashion. He understands not only how contract language changes over time, but what forces drive that evolution. His work reveals common misperceptions and offers a roadmap to help lawyers avoid unintended consequences. Coyle’s goal is to continue presenting his choice-of-law clause work to new audiences in North Carolina and beyond.

Clinical Assistant Professor Melissa Hyland '13, the reference and faculty research services librarian, with items from the rare books collection (1) Cane – from the UNC Law Class of 1890, engraved with names of students and faculty; (2) Chitty on Pleading – an 1809 edition containing the signature of Thomas Ruffian, former Chief Justice of the NC Supreme Court; (3) a first edition (1759) of Blackstone’s The Great Charter and Charter of the Forest; (4) a 1965 miniature edition of Magna Carta.

Law students learn from history through the Kathrine R. Everett Law Library’s Rare Book Collection. Clinical Assistant Professor Melissa Hyland '13, the reference and faculty research services librarian, brings rare books to the legal history class taught by John Orth, the William Rand Kenan Jr. Professor of Law. History comes alive for students asthey interact with law texts dating back to the mid-1500s or titles originally owned by prominent North Carolina attorneys such as William Hooper, the state’s representative to the Continental Congress and a signer of the Declaration of Independence.

“That gets students excited,” Hyland said. “They see physical evidence of how the law was used by attorneys practicing at the time, and discuss how lawyers influenced the development of American jurisprudence.”

With more than 500,000 print volumes in the law library and her own experience as a practicing attorney, Hyland helps teach the next generation of lawyers how to conduct legal research in practice.

“I watch students grow in their confidence as legal researchers,” she said. “A solid foundation of legal research skills will help students succeed in any practice area.”

Jenny Cofer 2L and Professor Carissa Hessick published an op-ed about their research on prosecutor campaign contributions in The Kansas City Star in February.

One final example of how student/faculty collaborations impact the legal profession and society’s understanding of how it works: Carissa Hessick’s Prosecutors and Politics Project. Hessick, the Anne Shea Ransdell & William Garland Ransdell Jr. Distinguished Professor of Law and associate dean for faculty development, leads students in a new initiative to discover how prosecutors are affected by and participate in the political process.

Courts typically decline to oversee or limit the discretion and power prosecutors have, because elected or appointed prosecutors are politically accountable. Prosecutors decide who is charged and with what. Over the past few decades, the criminal justice system has grown increasingly punitive. Hessick and her students conducted a study of every prosecutor election held in the country. The results showed that incumbency is one reason those elections are so rarely contested.Her research team also identified a supply problem of not enough lawyers willing and able to serve as prosecutors. Her article based on this study will come out soon.

Carolina Law also received a major donation for Hessick’s students to research prosecutors accepting political campaign contributions. They found that some district attorneys, sheriffs and judges contributed to one another’s campaigns.

“Those donations can get in the way of the separation of powers and functions,” Hessick said.

Hessick has co-authored with students a series of op-eds that have appeared in major newspapers across the country. Her students learn how to make public records requests in different places with different laws; how to distill data down to laymen’s terms; and how to write op-eds that argue for policy changes.

“These are things that lawyers do, but it’s not easy to teach,” she said. Hessick finds students at Carolina Law to mirror faculty — “really thoughtful, nice people who ask hard questions and spend a lot of time trying to be well-informed.

“People at Carolina Law work really hard, and they do it without glory.”

And the world is a better place because of it.

--Nancy E. Oates

-May 28, 2019

LeAnn Nease Brown '84, right, with outgoing NCBA President Jackie
Grant '95. Photo courtesy of Russell Rawlings/NCBA.

Ten UNC School of Law alumni and one faculty member received awards at the North Carolina Bar Association’s 121st annual meeting in Asheville, June 20-23, and six alumni were recognized for their new leadership roles within the organization.

LeAnn Nease Brown ’84 Sworn in as NCBA President

LeAnn Nease Brown ’84, a member/manager of Brown & Bunch in Chapel Hill, was installed as the 125th president of the NCBA. She will also serve as president of the North Carolina Bar Foundation. She has served as chair of three specialty practice sections (Antitrust & Complex Business Disputes, Zoning, Planning & Land Use and Dispute Resolution), as chair of the Membership Committee and CLE Committee, and as co-chair of the Legislative Advisory Committee. She served on the NCBA Board of Governors and the NCBF Board of Directors and the Audit and Finance Committee in 2010-13. Brown is a three-time graduate of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, earning a bachelor’s degree in psychology and history in 1977, a master’s degree in rehabilitation counseling from the School of Medical Allied Health Sciences in 1981, and a juris doctor from the UNC School of Law in 1984.

C. Mark Holt ’87 Will Serve as NCBA President-Elect

C. Mark Holt ’87 of Raleigh is the new president-elect of the North Carolina Bar Association. Holt is a partner in Holt Sherlin LLP, which he co-founded in 2013. He will serve as president of the North Carolina Bar Association and the North Carolina Bar Foundation in 2020-21.

New Vice Presidents and Board Members Elected

Katherine Wilkerson ’92, of Lynch and Eatman in Raleigh, was elected to a three-year term on the NCBA Board of Governors. New vice presidents, who were elected at the spring meeting of the Board of Governors and will serve a one-year term, include

• Justice Mark Davis ’91, N.C. Supreme Court in Raleigh
• Judge Richard Allen Baddour Jr. ’97, N.C. Superior Court in Pittsboro
• Andrew Foster ’00, Duke Law School Director of the Community Enterprise Clinic and Clinical Professor of Law in Durham

Howard E. Manning Jr. ’68 Receives Judge John J. Parker Award

Retired Superior Court Judge Howard E. Manning Jr. ’68 of Raleigh is the 39th recipient of the Judge John J. Parker Award, considered the highest award bestowed by the NCBA. Manning’s great-grandfather, John Manning, was the first professor of law on the UNC faculty.

Robert “Bob” Orr ’75 Receives H. Brent McKnight Renaissance Lawyer Award

Former N.C. Supreme Court Justice Robert “Bob” Orr is the 2019 recipient of the H. Brent McKnight Renaissance Lawyer Award. Orr lives in Raleigh and is an adjunct professor in NC State Constitutional Law at Carolina.

Lisa Arthur ’12 Receives Charles F. Blanchard Young Lawyer of the Year Award

Lisa Arthur ’12 of Fox Rothschild in Greensboro is the 2019 recipient of the Charles F. Blanchard Young Lawyer of the Year Award. Arthur is a member of the NCBA’s Young Lawyers Division.

Charles Daye and Julius Chambers ’62 Receive Legal Legends of Color Award

The fourth installment of the Minorities in the Profession Committee’s Legal Legends of Color Awards recognized diverse attorneys of color who have made a significant impact in North Carolina.

Two of the five awards were presented to Charles Daye, Henry Brandis Professor of Law emeritus, and the late civil rights lawyer Julius Chambers ’62, who served as founding director of the UNC Center for Civil Rights. This is the first year the committee chose to honor someone posthumously.

Three Inducted into Legal Practice Hall of Fame

The General Practice Hall of Fame seeks to recognize exemplary service and high ethical and professional standards as a general legal practitioner in North Carolina. Three alumni were inducted at the meeting.

• Dan Hartzog ’73, of Cranfill Sumner & Hartzog in Raleigh
• R. Anderson “Andy” Haynes ’73, in Tryon
• L.P. “Tony” Hornthal ’63, of Hornthal, Riley, Ellis & Maland in Elizabeth City

Three Named as Citizen Lawyer Award Recipients

The NCBA announced three Carolina Law alumni as recipients of the 2019 Citizen Lawyer Award. The award was established in 2007 to recognize lawyers who provide exemplary public service to their communities.

• Joel Harbinson ’79, of Harbinson, Brzykcy & Corbett in Taylorsville
• Henry “Hank” Van Hoy II ’74, of Martin & Van Hoy in Mocksville
• Rep. W. “Lee” Zachary Jr. ’73, of Zachary Law Offices in Yadkinville

-June 27, 2019

The President recently announced his intent to nominate Richard E. Myers ’98, Henry P. Brandis Distinguished Professor of Law, to be a Judge of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of North Carolina. Myers is being nominated to fill the longest standing vacancy in the federal courts.

A native of Kingston, Jamaica, Myers came to UNC School of Law as a student in 1995 after a career as a journalist in Wilmington, N.C. He was a Chancellors Scholar and graduated with high honors in 1998. He served as a law clerk to Chief Judge David B. Sentelle ’68 of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit and practiced for two years with the Los Angeles firm of O'Melveny & Myers, LLP. 

From 2002 through 2004, Myers was an Assistant United States Attorney in the Central District of California and the Eastern District of North Carolina, where he prosecuted white collar and violent crimes. He joined the UNC School of Law faculty in 2004.

He has taught Criminal Law, Criminal Procedure, Professional Responsibility and a seminar on White Collar Crime, in addition to supervising Trial Advocacy courses. He served as Associate Dean for Student Affairs under Dean John Charles Boger and has been faculty adviser to both the Christian Legal Society and the Federalist Society. In the larger University, he has been an advisor to chancellors and is currently serving on the Campus Safety Commission.

“I am particularly proud that this honor goes not just to one of our great faculty members, but to a most devoted graduate of Carolina Law,” says Martin H. Brinkley ’92, dean and Arch T. Allen Distinguished Professor of Law. “Although we will miss him sorely in Chapel Hill, we rejoice in the rich contributions he will make on the Eastern District bench.”

-August 23, 2019

This article originally appeared in the Spring/Summer 2019 issue of Carolina Law magazine.

What’s the appropriate balance between access to information and individual privacy? It’s an evolving, controversial issue with no consensus or clear standards in the United States.

As librarians around the country digitize content for the web, UNC privacy law professor and Kathrine R. Everett Law Library Director Anne Klinefelter will broaden her expertise in the international arena. She has been selected for the Fulbright-Nokia Distinguished Chair in Information and Communications Technologies and plans to spend the fall in Finland researching how Helsinki libraries approach digitizing information while complying with European Union privacy law.

“I’m interested in how we develop law and policy in a very changing environment where technology is shifting the way we interact with information. It’s also making the legal boundaries porous, especially in terms of privacy,” says Klinefelter, the commencement speaker this spring for UNC’s School of Information and Library Science.

The U.S. and EU view privacy in this context differently. The EU “has deemed U.S. law officially inadequate in terms of data protection,” Klinefelter says. “Privacy approaches of the United States and countries in the European Union are critically important to harmonize if we want to encourage data flow across boundaries.”

Klinefelter will be hosted by the University of Helsinki Faculty of Law, as the law school is called, and will teach a course on U.S. privacy law. By making connections with students and faculty there, she wants to better understand comparative privacy law. “It may change the way I teach and what I teach, too. I hope my scholarship will have an impact on how libraries in the U.S. make choices,” she says.

As a city with a strong commitment to libraries in a very technologically advanced country, Helsinki is a fitting location for Klinefelter’s research. She will conduct a field analysis of how the digital content that libraries make available, particularly on the web, is indexed and managed.

Klinefelter will study how libraries provide access to digital content while complying with the new EU General Data Protection Regulation, which includes a “right to be forgotten” that gives people legal grounds to request restrictions on access to information about them. “I expect to identify some best practices and use these insights to reflect on how the law and policy of both the EU and the U.S. should balance information access and individual privacy,” she says.

With both U.S. and EU law abstract, “I want to be part of the discussion about what the law means when you apply vague principles to actionable tasks and design,” Klinefelter says. “We’re still trying to figure out what is good and what is bad and how to balance these different interests.”

That U.S. laws related to the issue are piecemeal and vary by state further complicates the matter as librarians manage digitization projects with an added editorial role.

“Privacy is a form of power, control, personal integrity, and dignity, but information is also power for good or for bad,” Klinefelter says. “The first commitment of librarians is to access to information, but librarians are struggling with what to do about the privacy of people who are in the content in their collections.”

— Jessica Clarke

-May 28, 2019

The UNC School of Law has received the largest single cash gift in the school’s history from North Carolina business icon Jerry Wordsworth. The unrestricted gift supports the school’s mission to prepare outstanding lawyer-leaders. Like all gifts to Carolina Law, it is an investment in the future of North Carolina and the nation.

Wordsworth is a Rocky Mount, North Carolina native. Over nearly 40 years, he and his siblings built MBM Corporation into a multibillion dollar customized foodservice distributor serving restaurant chains nationwide. At the time of its sale in 2018, Jerry and his brother Steve were co-owners of the Carolina Panthers football franchise.

Wordsworth made his gift to the law school in recognition that lawyers trained at Carolina played critical roles in the growth of his business. Carolina Law Dean Martin H. Brinkley '92 served as MBM Corporation’s lead outside counsel for more than two decades.

“Although I am not a lawyer and did not graduate from UNC, I believe that lawyers who hold to the highest ethical standards, are committed to public service, and understand business are critical to the future of our country. I wanted to play a part in making sure other business entrepreneurs and communities have access to the best legal counsel,” said Wordsworth.

“Jerry is a wonderful steward of our state. As his devoted friend and admirer for the best part of 30 years, it is inspiring to me that he recognizes the importance of the rule of law and the roles that lawyers play in American communities. Jerry’s gift is a vote of confidence that Carolina Law is producing the caliber of lawyers North Carolina and the nation need,” said Brinkley, who is also Arch T. Allen Distinguished Professor of Law.

Private gifts like Wordsworth’s enable the law school to pursue opportunities quickly as they arise, in support of thriving professional development programs and experiential learning opportunities.

“Jerry’s generosity will allow Carolina Law to recruit the strongest teachers and students in the country. We will use his gift to educate excellent lawyers who will work in private practice, public service, nonprofit work and public interest practice,” said Brinkley. “It takes resources to produce great lawyers. With private gifts enhancing the generous support we receive from the state legislature, the return on these investments will benefit North Carolina.”

Together, philanthropy and the dean’s leadership are propelling the school forward, both in rankings and impact.

UNC School of Law is ranked No. 34 out of the 192 law schools ranked in U.S. News & World Report’s 2020 edition of “America’s Best Graduate Schools.” Of the 26 public law schools in the top 50, UNC School of Law is No. 14.

In 2018, Carolina Law also ranked No. 1 among North Carolina law schools for first-time bar takers passing the exam.

And law students are giving back. For two years running, 100% of the graduating class have participated in pro bono projects over the course of their three years at Carolina Law. Students have contributed to cases that range from helping cancer patients complete complex legal forms to securing humanitarian aid for refugee children.

Graduates of Carolina Law have gone on to illustrious careers, including many in the service of North Carolina. Twelve of the state’s past 25 governors graduated from the law school, as did four sitting justices of the N.C. Supreme Court and numerous legislators.

As the oldest professional school in North Carolina, UNC School of Law will celebrate its 175^th anniversary in the 2019-2020 academic year.

-June 18, 2019

Rob Birrenkott joins UNC School of Law from the University of Florida Levin College of Law as head of the Career Development Office (CDO).

After twelve years as the assistant dean for career development at UNC School of Law, Brian Lewis is retiring this month, and Rob Birrenkott begins today as his successor. Birrenkott joins Carolina from the University of Florida Levin College of Law, where he spent a decade serving as the director and then as assistant dean for career development.

Prior to his tenure at UF, Birrenkott practiced law in Tampa with a focus on environmental (water resource) law and taught as an adjunct professor. Birrenkott earned his bachelor’s degree (magna cum laude) in government and world affairs from the University of Tampa and his law degree (cum laude) from the University of Florida Levin College of Law.

“Rob is joining a great CDO team whose work with our Class of 2018 helped UNC School of Law to achieve a rank of 17th in the country, up 14 spots from last year, in the latest Above the Law rankings,” says Kelly Podger Smith ’02, associate dean for student affairs.

The CDO’s eight counselors and staff provide individual counseling services geared toward helping students identify career goals and develop strategies to achieve them. The office hosts 80 programs per year, in addition to on- and off-campus interviews.

-July 29, 2019

The UNC-Chapel Hill community is invited to celebrate Constitution Day on Tuesday, Sept. 20, with guest speaker Lieutenant General Flora D. Darpino, USA (Ret.).

Darpino will speak at UNC School of Law in the Rotunda at noon. The event is open to the public. Light refreshments will be served.

Darpino is a retired Army general officer and military lawyer who served as the 39th Judge Advocate General (TJAG), U.S. Army. Darpino was appointed as TJAG on September 4, 2013, and served until July 14, 2017, where she was responsible for the Army Judge Advocate General’s Corps, an organization with approximately 10,000 personnel. She was also the senior military legal advisor to both the Secretary of the Army and the Chief of Staff of the Army. She is the first woman appointed TJAG since the establishment of the Army in 1775. Prior to being selected as the 39th TJAG, Darpino served as the Commander, The Judge Advocate General’s Legal Center and School, Charlottesville, VA, Commander, The United States Army Legal Services Agency, Fort Belvoir, VA and, Chief Judge, United States Army Court of Criminal Appeals.

Directly commissioned into the Army JAG Corps in 1987, she served in a variety of developmental assignments both in Germany and the Washington, DC area, including litigating in both military criminal courts and Federal civil courts. Upon completing her L.L.M, Darpino was sent to be the Chief, Administrative Law, 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault), Fort Campbell, Kentucky. Following a tour at the Office of The Judge Advocate General (OTJAG) in the Washington, D.C. area as the Assistant Executive Officer and Chief, Judge Advocate Recruiting Office, she served as the Staff Judge Advocate, 4th Infantry Division (Mechanized), Fort Hood, Texas, deploying with her unit to Kuwait and Iraq in 2003. Subsequently, she served as the Deputy Staff Judge Advocate, III Corps at Fort Hood, Chief, Criminal Law Division, OTJAG, and Staff Judge Advocate, V Corps, in Heidelberg, Germany. Darpino then deployed to Iraq to serve as the Staff Judge Advocate, United States Forces – Iraq, in Baghdad, Iraq, where she was the senior military attorney in the country working with both the military and State Department.

Darpino graduated from Gettysburg College (B.A. with Honors, 1983) and Rutgers University (J.D. 1986). She has an L.L.M. in Military Law from The Judge Advocate General’s School, U.S. Army, and served as an Army War College Fellow at the Department of Justice. She is a member of the Pennsylvania and New Jersey Bars. Her military awards and decorations include the Distinguished Service Medal, Defense Superior Service Medal, the Bronze Star Medal, the Legion of Merit, and the Meritorious Service Medal. She is a graduate of Air Assault School.

About Constitution Day

For the past several years, UNC School of Law has served as the host of the campus-wide UNC-Chapel Hill Constitution Day celebration. Each year on September 17, pursuant to a 2004 federal statute, U.S. schools and colleges take time to celebrate and commemorate the day on which the Constitution of the United States was signed. Constitution Day presents an opportunity to reflect upon the deeper meanings of the Constitution and the hopes it embodies for the future of the country and the world.

-September 6, 2019

Carolina students visit the Court of Justice of the European Union in Luxembourg, accompanied by Dean Brinkley and Professor Broome.

Many law students spend their summers working at a firm or doing research with a professor, but five students were selected to spend two weeks in Tübingen, Germany, with UNC School of Law Dean Martin H. Brinkley ’92, Professor Lissa L. Broome and Professor John F. Coyle as part of a new study abroad program.

Through research workshops and courses, the Tübingen-Chapel Hill Law Program facilitates trans-Atlantic collaboration among students through a strong teaching component designed to promote mutual understanding of each other’s legal systems and cultures.

Anna Huffman 2L, M-K McKinney 2L, Shay Potter 2L, Andrew Wisniewsky 2L and Carleigh Zeman 2L visited the Eberhard Karls University Faculty of Law July 1-12 to take courses—taught in English—alongside German students. They studied issues relating to corporate law, antitrust, and banking law, and participated in excursions to institutions like the Court of Justice of the European Union in Luxembourg and the European Central Bank headquarters in Frankfurt. The UNC students also had the opportunity to explain U.S. law and legal institutions to German law students.

Anna Huffman

M-K McKinney

Shay Potter

Andrew Wisniewsky

Carleigh Zeman

Brinkley taught Law and Legal Institutions of the U.S. as well as U.S. Competition Law and participated in a symposium on competition law, Coyle taught U.S. Corporation Law, and Broome participated in a symposium reflecting on the financial crisis.

After the program ended, Huffman worked for two weeks at international law firm White & Case in Frankfurt, and Zeman stayed another month in Stuttgart for a paid internship with Gleiss Lutz, a top-tier global law firm, working in their central office with more than 100 lawyers.

“I knew when I applied to Carolina Law that I wanted to go into international law, so this internship has been right up my alley,” says Zeman. “I was interested in pursuing a career in international arbitration before I came to Gleiss Lutz and this internship has given me a lot of helpful experience and insight into international arbitral tribunals and how they operate.”

Zeman has reviewed the German attorneys’ English publications including submissions for law journals, legal dictionaries and treatises.

“My biggest project has been working on an ongoing international arbitration dispute,” says Zeman. “All of the proceedings, rules and precedent are in English, so it helps to have a native speaker on hand.”

Professor Jonas Monast, director of Carolina Law’s environmental law center, also visited Tübingen in June to cohost a workshop on energy transitions in federal legal systems with scholars from Germany, Switzerland, Austria, South Africa, Australia and the U.S.

“International partnerships provide law students with the opportunity to develop a global mindset,” says Stephanie Schantz, director of global opportunities at Carolina Law. “Students learn about legal issues and institutions that are different than what they study in law school.”

The UNC Center for Banking and Finance, of which Broome serves as director, offered each student a stipend to defray the costs of travel and housing. One of those stipends was funded through an endowment for the center established by the law firm Williams Mullen, which was supplemented by a personal gift from Williams Mullen attorney Camden Webb ’95. Students will speak about their Tübingen experience at the August meeting of the center’s board of directors.

-July 24, 2019

UNC School of Law Professor Michael Gerhardt has been selected to serve as the 2020 Distinguished Coif Visitor by the national office of the Order of the Coif. Gerhardt will visit law schools with Coif chapters, participating in classroom lectures and seminars, meeting informally with faculty and student groups, and giving one address open to the entire academic community. The purpose of the program is to contribute to the intellectual life of the campus by fostering an exchange of ideas with individuals whose experiences and ideas may be expected to stimulate discussion about important issues confronting the legal profession. Gerhardt is the first Carolina Law professor selected for this national distinction.

The Order of the Coif is an honorary society that that recognizes outstanding law student scholarship and lawyers, judges and teachers who attain high distinction for their scholarly or professional accomplishments. The society originated in England and the first chapter in the United States was established in 1902. There are now 75 chapters in U.S. law schools.

Gerhardt is the Burton Craige Distinguished Professor of Jurisprudence at UNC and a scholar in residence at the National Constitutional Center. He is the first independent scholar to be selected by the Library of Congress to serve as its principal advisor in the updating of the official United States Constitution Annotated. He has served as Special Counsel to the Clinton White House on the nomination of Stephen Breyer to the Supreme Court and as Special Counsel to the Senate Judiciary Committee on the nominations of six other sitting justices on the Supreme Court. During President Clinton’s impeachment, he testified as the only joint witness before the House Judiciary Committee in its hearing on the history and scope of impeachment 

An expert on constitutional law, Gerhardt has written dozens of law review articles and several books, including The Forgotten Presidents: Their Untold Constitutional Legacy, which was selected by The Financial Times as one of the best non-fiction books of 2013; The Power of Precedent; The Federal Appointments Process: A Constitutional and Historical Analysis; Impeachment: What Everyone Needs to Know; and a treatise on impeachment, The Federal Impeachment Process: A Constitutional and Historical Analysis, which is widely regarded as the leading modern treatise on the subject.

The 2019 Distinguished Coif Visitor is James Forman Jr., of Yale Law School, who won the Pulitzer Prize in 2018 for his book Locking Up Our Own: Crime and Punishment in Black America. Previous Distinguished Coif Visitors include Jesse Choper (UC Berkeley Law School), John Coffee (Columbia Law School), Jane Ginsburg (Columbia Law School), and Abbe Gluck (Yale Law School).

Chapters interested in hosting Gerhardt at their school during the 2020-2021 academic year should apply at orderofthecoif.org.

-July 30, 2019

For the third time in a row, Carolina Law held the top spot for overall bar passage rate among North Carolina law schools.

North Carolina administered the Uniform Bar Exam (UBE) in July 2019, and UNC School of Law had the highest-ranking overall bar passage rate among the state’s six law schools. This is the third time in a row that UNC ranked No. 1 among North Carolina law schools for total test takers of the North Carolina bar exam.

Ninety-three percent (93%) of the 126 Carolina Law graduates who took the bar exam in July passed, according to results released by the state’s Board of Law Examiners. The school’s passage rate for total test takers exceeded the overall state passage rate for total test takers by 20%.

First time test takers also performed well with a 94% passage rate for the 124 Carolina Law graduates who took the North Carolina bar exam. The school’s passage rate for first time test takers exceeded the overall state passage rate of 83% for first time test takers by 11%.

"Measuring success in higher education is often somewhat difficult, but bar exam passage for law students is about as specific a measurement as you can get,” says Richard Stevens ’74, chair of the UNC Board of Trustees. “North Carolina is fortunate to have a law school like Carolina Law preparing students for careers that impact the economy and communities of North Carolina and beyond."

Among North Carolina’s law schools, the overall state passage rate for first time test takers was up 10 points from last July.

The UBE was administered for the first time in North Carolina in February 2019. It offers law school graduates a portable score that can be used to apply for admission in other UBE jurisdictions, such as New York, Washington, D.C., and Boston, therefore maximizing job opportunities and reducing the cost of taking multiple exams. Passing UBE scores vary by jurisdiction – North Carolina has one of the higher passing scores at 270.

The school’s Academic Excellence Program (AEP) provides all students with resources to aid their legal study, including one-on-one bar preparation for 3L students. “This year we continued our summer bar support, held bar workshops focused on the UBE, and further increased enrollment in our restructured bar preparation courses,” says O.J. Salinas, AEP director and clinical associate professor of law. “I am pleased to see such outstanding numbers for our Class of 2019, and I look forward to helping prepare the Class of 2020.”

The law school’s Research, Reasoning, Writing and Advocacy (RRWA) program ranks No. 8 in legal writing by U.S. News & World Report’s 2020 edition of “America’s Best Graduate Schools.” During two intensive semesters in RRWA, first year students work in small sections taught by full-time faculty members to develop key skills for legal practice, including legal research, writing and analysis.

“Starting the first day students enter our school, our committed faculty and staff are preparing them to think and write so that when they graduate, they have the skills to be successful taking the bar and in whatever career path they choose,” says Martin H. Brinkley ’92, dean and Arch T. Allen Distinguished Professor of Law. “I want to thank O.J. Salinas for his unwavering pursuit of excellence in preparing our students for the bar and I would also like to congratulate our graduates for putting in the hard work necessary to achieve these results.”

-September 13, 2019

Research Supported by Charles Koch Foundation Grant

UNC School of Law’s Prosecutors and Politics Project, which was established in 2018, is commencing an empirical study of district attorneys associations to determine their influence on state criminal justice policy. The results of the study, which are expected to be published in 2020, will be available to the general public and other researchers using the University of North Carolina’s Dataverse. The research project is made possible with a grant from the Charles Koch Foundation.

The Project will conduct a content analysis of state legislative materials and media archives to develop a comprehensive picture of the criminal justice issues on which these associations took a position, whether that position was expressed through formal legislative testimony, and the ultimate outcome of proposed state legislation. The study will cover the years 2015-2018.

“The conventional wisdom is that these associations of prosecutors wield significant power in the state legislative process,” says Carissa Byrne Hessick, director of the Prosecutors and Politics Project and the Anne Shea Randsdell and William Garland “Buck” Randsdell, Jr. Distinguished Professor of Law. “While media accounts and academic scholarship often assume these associations’ activities play a decisive role in the passage or defeat of criminal justice legislation, there is surprisingly little factual information available to either support or disprove that assumption.”

A $55,000 gift from the Charles Koch Foundation will support the study. The gift will allow for ten Carolina Law student research associates who will assist Hessick in gathering and analyzing the data for this study. The gift also reinforces UNC School of Law’s commitment to recruit, retain and reward world-renowned faculty who create meaningful learning experiences for our future lawyer-leaders.

“Reforms to our criminal justice system have opened new opportunities for thousands of individuals and hundreds of communities,” said Charles Koch Foundation executive director Ryan Stowers. “We’re excited to support the UNC researchers who have the chance to build on this progress by studying the incentives and relationships that shape the law and how its applied.”

The Foundation supports students and scholars pursuing research and expanding educational programs that help people reach their full potential.

The Prosecutors and Politics Project allows Carolina Law faculty and students to work with community partners to study the political and democratic checks in the American criminal justice system.  The Project’s ongoing study of campaign contributions in prosecutor elections has garnered national media attention. Hessick and her students have published editorials about the project in the Los Angeles Times, Philadelphia Inquirer, and other news outlets across the country.

“We are grateful to the Charles Koch Foundation for this gift that will help us expand the research of the project and provide hands-on learning experiences for our student research associates,” says Hessick. 

The grant supports For All Kind: the Campaign for Carolina, the most ambitious fundraising campaign in the University’s history.

-September 17, 2019