Congratulations to AWL Scholarship Winners Nimmer and Mills

nimmermillsOn Tuesday, September 10, 2013, the Milwaukee Association for Women Lawyers (AWL) Foundation honored two Marquette University Law School students with scholarships.

Amanda M. Nimmer, 2L (pictured above left), received the AWL Foundation scholarship.  The AWL Foundation Scholarship is awarded to a woman who has exhibited service to others, diversity, compelling financial need, academic achievement, unique life experiences (such as overcoming obstacles to attend or continue law school), and advancement of women in the profession. Nimmer said when she was 13 years old, she decided to become a lawyer. While she was growing up, she and her mother ran a school supplies drive every year at their church to benefit children in need in the greater Milwaukee area. She also volunteered at homeless shelters. She remains passionate about helping others, and this passion for public services shows. During the last presidential election, she volunteered as a legal observer. As an undergraduate at UW Madison, Nimmer worked for the state public defender’s office. She has also worked for the American Civil Liberties Union. She volunteers with the Milwaukee Volunteer Legal Clinic at Hillview and at the Milwaukee Justice Center. Although she’s yet to be inducted into the Pro Bono Society, she has already accumulated more than 120 volunteer hours. Nimmer was a PILS fellow last summer and is also the secretary of the student chapter of AWL.

Katheryn Mills, 2L (pictured above right), received the AWL Foundation’s Virginia A. Pomeroy scholarship.  This scholarship honors the late Virginia A. Pomeroy, a former deputy state public defender and a past president of AWL.  In addition to meeting the same criteria as for the AWL Foundation scholarship, the winner of this scholarship must also exhibit what the AWL Foundation calls “a special emphasis, through experience, employment, class work or clinical programs” in one of several particular areas:  appellate practice, civil rights law, public interest law, public policy, public service, or service to the vulnerable or disadvantaged. Mills’ interest in the law, particularly in public policy, sparked from her parents’ service as law enforcement officials in Wisconsin. Seeing her parents’ satisfaction in their public service jobs sparked her interest to follow a similar career path. This past summer, Mills worked at the Public Service Commission of Wisconsin. Currently, she is the secretary of the Student Bar Association, chair of the Student Issues Committee, and a member of the student chapter of AWL. Additionally, as a volunteer student ambassador for the Admission’s Office at Marquette University Law School, Mills regularly conducts law school tours and is a panelist at admission information sessions. Mills hopes to practice law in the Milwaukee area after graduation.

Congratulations to both women for outstanding service and for their representation of Marquette University Law School.

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Professor Greipp Receives AWL Community Involvement Award

pic3Professor Melissa Greipp received the Community Involvement Award from the Milwaukee chapter of the Association for Women Lawyers (AWL) at its annual luncheon on September 10. Professor Greipp received the award for her work with the Summer Youth Institute, which was held at Marquette University Law School this past July. (Professor Greipp blogged about the program here.)

Presenting the award was the Honorable Nancy Joseph. Judge Joseph praised Professor Greipp’s ability to take 23 diverse students between the ages of 13 and 16 and teach them, in five short days, about hierarchies of authority, reading and analyzing cases, professionalism, and becoming a lawyer. In addition, Professor Greipp gave students a legal problem and worked with them to prepare an appellate oral argument on that problem. Then, at the conclusion of the Institute, students participated in oral argument before actual lawyers and judges. Professor Greipp did all this, said Judge Joseph, “with grace, love, and passion for the law.”

Congratulations to Professor Greipp.

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Do Like a Lawyer

The start of the new academic year means a new group of first-year law students, ready for the three-year adventure that is law school. And each fall, those same students hear much about what they’re going to learn in law school. Usually the main thing they hear is that they will learn to “think like a lawyer.”

It’s certainly true that law school will teach students a particular way of thinking critically that will infuse all of their thinking from here forward. It’s also true that lawyers ought to be thinking critically. (So should everyone, in my view.) But law school should do more than teach students how to “think like a lawyer.” It should teach students how to “be” lawyers.

It is on this thought that I am reminded of Steven M. Radke, L’02.  The Law School invited Radke, vice president of government relations at Northwestern Mutual Insurance Co., to speak at its orientation event in fall 2006. Radke gave an entertaining and informative speech to that year’s entering class, the text of which can be found here. At one point, Radke discussed the often-stated law school goal of learning to “think like a lawyer,” a goal, he said, that is a bit troubling, particularly if it suggests that there is a single way lawyers think. He continued,

[I]f, God forbid, I someday find myself being wheeled into an emergency room, I hope the person preparing to operate on me doesn’t just think like a doctor.  I want him or her to be a doctor.

Radke’s point is spot on. Law school should not only teach students how to “think like a lawyer,” but it should also teach students how to be a lawyer. 

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