Visit from Judge Weber

We enjoyed a visit to campus yesterday by Judge Herman J. Weber, U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Ohio.  Judge Weber has longstanding ties to ONU Law.  He was five years old in 1932 when his father, driving back to Ada from Columbus where he was cheerleading the ONUL grads who were taking the bar, and his mother — herself an ONUL grad — were killed in a car accident.  Judge Weber was in the car and survived. He can remember Ada and the Law School as they were in 1932.  Seeing the Law School through his eyes for the first time in eighty years was yet another reminder of what a special place this is.

Ohio Bar Ceremony

Congratulations to the ONU Law 2013 graduates who were sworn into the Ohio bar earlier this week!

Ohio Bar Results

The results of the July 2013 Ohio bar examination came out this morning, and ONU Law students once again excelled.  ONUL ranked second overall and third for first-time takers, with success rates of 90% in both categories.

ONU Law’s consistently high bar pass rate over the last several years reflects the strong work ethic and abilities of our students and the high caliber of legal education they receive here.  It’s yet another reason why I am proud to be part of ONU Law.

Meeting with ONUL Alums in NYC

I’m in Manhattan for a couple of days meeting with ONU Law alumni who live and work in the area.  One of them is Mitch Falber, General Counsel of ABC Carpet and Home.  Check out ABC’s website — it’s a lesson in cutting-edge branding.

Anderson Blogs on Vox Populii

Law library faculty member Brian Anderson posted today on Cornell’s Legal Information Institute’s Vox Populii. The blog features two authors per month writing about  emerging issues of law and technology.  Brian’s post is about online legal information systems and the rule of law in Rwanda and other developing states.

Pie in My Face

Yesterday, I got nailed, in front of the Law School, with three whipped-cream pies. This was the culmination of a fundraiser by the ONU Campus Chapter of the International Justice Mission  — an organization that educates faculty, students, and the community about modern-day slavery, human trafficking, and other human rights issues.  During the annual Justice Week, CCIJM collected “Loose Change to Loosen Chains” through a “penny war”. Students and faculty voted with their change for which faculty member they wanted to be pie-d in the face. I “won” (though I suspect I was sandbagged by a nefarious faculty member) and also agreed to auction the rights to two additional pies to raise more funds. CCIJM raised $524.51 in total which will provide 17 aftercare packages or 12 days of undercover investigations to rescue and restore victims of human trafficking, forced labor, illegal detention, child sexual assault, and domestic abuse throughout the world.

ABA Site Inspection Completed

As part of our every-seven-year re-accreditation process, the American Bar Association sent a site inspection team of law faculty, deans, and practitioners to spend three days at ONUL.  The inspection ended yesterday, and went very well.  I met with the team yesterday morning as they were completing their visit, and their message to me was very positive — they were very impressed by what they saw here.  Some of the particular strengths they singled out were:

• University support for the Law School
• Classroom teaching and student advising
• Summer Starter Program
• Curriculum
• LLM Program
• Academic Support
• Skills courses
• Bar pass statistics
• Service commitment of the Library faculty and staff
• Commitment to alumni development

Annual ABA-LSD Meeting

I’m in Chicago today for the annual meeting of the American Bar Association Law Student Division Competitions Committee.   I’m a huge believer in competitions as offering students experieintial learning opportunities in a competitive learning environment.  The ABA-LSD supports four competitions: the Negotiation Competition (I’m on the subcommittee that runs this competition), the Arbitration Competition (I have coached arbitration teams for several years), the Client Counseling Competition (I have coached a handful of client counseling teams), and the National Appellate Advocacy Competition.

Faculty & Staff Photo, ONUL

2013 faculty and staff of the Ohio Northern University Claude W. Pettit College of Law.

Visitors to ONU Law

A big ONU Law welcome to Judge Frederick Pepple and the three German law students he is hosting — Sarah Weiser, Lisa Rabouskaja, and Lisa Wienstroer.