Archive for the ‘Student News’ Category

A University of Michigan Law School student reported missing last month hanged himself, Washtenaw County sheriff’s deputies said.

The body of 35-year-old Casey Neil McGinnis was found Wednesday afternoon in a wooded area behind the Washtenaw County Recreation Center on Washtenaw Avenue, deputies said.
Recreation center employees contacted the sheriff’s department to report a car had been parked in the lot for a couple weeks, said Derrick Jackson, the sheriff’s department’s director of community engagement.

Deputies responded Wednesday and discovered it was McGinnis’ car, Jackson said. They searched the area and found the body about 80 yards behind the building, Jackson said.

It’s unclear when McGinnis died. The Washtenaw County Medical Examiner’s Office is investigating, Jackson said.

McGinnis’ family members contacted Ann Arbor police Nov. 12 to report him missing. McGinnis, who lived at an apartment on Prospect Street in Ann Arbor, hadn’t contacted family members since the previous day, and they were concerned for his well-being.

[Ann Arbor.com]

More than once, it would have been easy for Daryl Lowe to give up.

The mornings when he couldn’t wake his mom up in time to take him to school. The moves from shelter to shelter. Coming home to find the furniture had been sold for drug money.

College wasn’t even a faint option.

Today, however, the 23-year-old Mott Community College graduate is in law school.

“It’s been my dream since I was 15 years old,” said Lowe, who is in his first semester of Southern New England School of Law in Dartmouth, Mass. “I had a lot of problems at home when I was younger. I had very low self esteem. I didn’t like myself. I didn’t think I was the smartest or could do anything.

“But I got help. Now I have no choice. I can’t give up now.”

Lowe, who also holds a degree from the prestigious Southern institution Morehouse College said he was both intimidated and inspired by the high caliber students at Morehouse.

“I was a young black man and I needed to surround myself with other young black men who were doing well,” said Lowe whose legal guardians were a white couple who took him in as a teen because of his single mom’s heavy drug addiction.

“When you step onto the Morehouse campus there is a sense that you’re not stepping onto any campus because it’s where Martin Luther King Jr. graduated from,” Lowe said of the historically black college for men where he launched a student Republican club.

And the persistence that got him past his troubled childhood helped when applying to law school — he was rejected by 11 other law schools.

[M-Live]

The legal job market is dismal for third-year law students — even those at Harvard Law School. And so administrators at the school have created something of a job safety net in the form of a fellowship program for students who have exhausted other job options.

The Holmes Public Service Fellowship program, named for Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., will provide as many as one dozen 2010 graduates with stipends of up to $35,000 to work in public interest law for one year. The fellowships will be available only to students who have proven that their attempts to land a job or fellowship have failed, said assistant dean for public service Alexa Shabecoff. Students who have offers from firms but have deferred start dates will not qualify.

“This targets those students who have tried and tried and tried to get a job or fellowship and just weren’t able to,” Shabecoff said. “In the past year, the job market has been particularly difficult.”

Applicants will have to document their attempts to land a job, and the fellowships won’t be awarded until April or May to allow them plenty of time to exhaust their options, Shabecoff said.

The law school will contribute as much as $400,000 to the program. The fellowships will be available both to students on the public interest law track and to those who intend to work at law firms but have been unable to secure an offer. Law firm-track students must demonstrate that they have experience in the public interest area in which they intend to work.

[NLJ]

Students at the University of Virginia School of Law are learning how to represent some furry friends. A new class this fall is exploring issues surrounding animal law.

Mimi Riley is a professor at the law school and said animal law is a growing area in the legal field. “Animals are more valuable to people. In some cases animals have a different kind of value and so you are seeing cases that are testing the limits of what that value should be,” said Riley.

Part of the students’ curriculum looks at animal cruelty like a case in Orange County where a woman is facing criminal charges after 20 emaciated horses were seized from her farm in August.

“Just because the relationship people have with their own pets, you’re seeing prosecutions for animal cruelty that might not have existed because people weren’t aware of what the law was,” said Riley.

There are less sinister topics the students are discussing as well. “There are practical questions like you know how animals are treated as property or how you can leave things to animals or can you leave things to animals in your will,” said Corey Clay, third year UVA law student.

[NBC 29]

While Robert J. Peragine was commuting to law school, between 2003 and 2006, his first big case was coming to life, a case that could soon become a $8.7 million class action.

Peragine lived in Blue Point, on Long Island, and took the Bridgeport-Port Jefferson Ferry as he traveled to Southern New England School of Law, in North Dartmouth, Mass. Other passengers saw him studying his law books, and alerted him to a legal gripe they had.

Starting in 1993, the Bridgeport Port Authority, a quasi-public agency, tacked on a surcharge of $1 for foot passengers and $2 for vehicles. It didn’t appear that the money was being used to benefit passengers.

The Bridgeport and Port Jefferson Steamboat Co., which operated the boats, thought it deserved some of that money. Along with florist Greg Rose, who sued individually, the ferry company filed suit in federal court in 2003. U.S. District Judge Christopher Droney, in July 2008, ruled that the surcharge violated the Commerce Clause and the obscure Tonnage Clause of the U.S. Constitution in that the Port Authority was charging fees that were spent on projects that did not directly benefit those who paid the fees. (Peragine said the money was spent on feasibility studies for high-speed ferry service to New York and New Haven).

Droney declared that henceforth, “The Port Authority shall not be allowed to collect a Passenger Fee in an amount that exceeds what is necessary for their expenses that benefit ferry passengers and fairly approximate their use of the Port.”

The judge awarded Rose $494.63. The steamboat company received a nominal $1 award. Droney found that the passengers were entitled to the excess surcharge money, not the steamboat company.

[Connecticut Law Tribune]

Since its start in 1978, Regent University has seen its graduates elected as state legislators, district attorneys and judges. But nothing compares with the election Tuesday of Robert F. “Bob” McDonnell as governor of Virginia.

“It’s definitely a big deal for all Regent students and alumni,” said Bill Condon, a 2004 graduate who is an assistant attorney general in South Carolina. “A Regent alumnus serving as governor is going to get the name out.”

Around the country, Regent alumni agreed: McDonnell’s election is a shared achievement for their young, striving alma mater.

It’s a proud moment “no matter where you are on the political spectrum,” said Sharon Weston Broome, a Democrat and 1984 graduate who is president pro tempore of the Louisiana state Senate.

McDonnell, a Republican and former Virginia Beach resident, earned master’s and law degrees from Regent in 1989.

[Hampton Roads]

The University of Notre Dame has warned law school students about a man who has posed as a student this fall.

The man who identified himself as Gary Stearley isn’t enrolled at the university. His roommates say he disappeared over the weekend, taking with him only his laptop computer and a few belongings.

Justin Baker says Stearley said he’d graduated from the University of Michigan and left behind thousands of dollars worth of Notre Dame textbooks in his room. He gave his roommates a tour of the law school building, typing in an access code to open a door.

Notre Dame officials say they’re not actively looking for Stearley, but would issue a trespassing citation against him if he returns to campus.

[Fox 28]