Jenkins Honors Moot Court Competitors Advance to Quarterfinals

Congratulations to the students in the Jenkins Honors Moot Court Competition who have moved on to the quarterfinal round of the competition. The students will be competing on Saturday, March 27 to determine which teams will be advancing to the semifinal round on Sunday, March 28 at noon.

The following teams will be competing in the quarterfinals:

Zak Wroblewski & Alexandra (Sasha) Chepov
Morgan Minter & Taylor Van Zeeland
Ashleigh Dickey & Matt Rademacher
Charlie Hoffmann & Kevin Landgraf
Thomas Sucevic & Christopher Vandeventer
Ben Edelstein & Kyle Frank
Lauren Brasington & Carsyn Bushman
Alex Lux & Natalie Mulvey

Congratulations to all the participants in the competition. We also very much appreciate the alumni and other attorneys who volunteer to grade briefs and serve as judges in the preliminary rounds. We appreciate their time and assistance every year.

This year, an extra special thanks to Erik Atwell and the law school tech department for their assistance with managing three simultaneous virtual courtrooms with up to 24 people at eight different times over the weekend.

The final round of the Jenkins competition will take place on Tuesday, April 6 at 3:30 PM.

We’re honored to welcome the following distinguished jurists who will judge the final round:

Hon. Cynthia M. Davis (L’06), Milwaukee County Circuit Court
Hon. Michael Y. Scudder, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit
Hon. Paul Thissen, Minnesota Supreme Court

The final competition will be virtually on Zoom but will be livestreamed to the public.

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Adaptability & Resiliency: Moving to Online Teaching & Learning

dog at computer and dog sleeping
Hat tip to Natalie Sobierajski (2L)

We’re about to complete two weeks of teaching and learning in our new online environment, and it seems to have gone pretty well. Lots of sharing of pets, and no one has turned themselves into a potato.

The Law School, like the main university, supports the use of Microsoft Teams. While Teams doesn’t (yet) allow us to use fun background images, it also hasn’t been hacked during any class time.

Law School professors have found myriad ways to use Teams: they’ve been able to share their PowerPoints; demonstrate online researching in legal databases; create discussion rooms; and post notes, questions, and other files. Some professors record their classes and then post them, others go “live”; still others combine both methods. Natalie Sobierajski (2L) noted she likes the Teams function that allows the sharing of Powerpoints. “[T]he sharing option has made it easier to take notes than expected.”

We’ve learned how to mute and unmute our mics, use the chat bar, and even create spontaneous polls.

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