Attorney Priya Barnes Highlighted for Pro Bono Work

This month the State Bar of Wisconsin highlighted Attorney Priya Barnes, a 2013 Marquette Law School graduate, for her pro bono work. The State Bar’s Inside Track interviewed Barnes.  Barnes noted that while in law school, she volunteered with the Marquette Volunteer Legal Clinic (MVLC) and the Milwaukee Justice Center (MJC).  She now represents pro bono clients referred through the Volunteer Lawyers Project at Legal Action of Wisconsin, handling primarily Chapter 7 bankruptcy and domestic violence matters.  Barnes said that her pro bono work reinforces the work she does in her general practice and gives her “valuable practice experience” as a newer attorney.

As mentioned in the article, the State Bar Pro Bono Initiative “works to improve public access to the legal system by promoting solutions that eliminate barriers to effective access to the civil justice system.”

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Congratulations to the 2015 Jenkins Honors Moot Court Competitors

Jenkins 2The Jenkins Honors Moot Court Competition is an appellate moot court competition for Marquette law students and the capstone event of the intramural moot court program. Students are invited to participate based on their top performance in the fall Appellate Writing and Advocacy course at the Law School.

Congratulations to the participants in the 2015 Jenkins Honors Moot Court Competition:
Lindsey Anderson
Samuel Casson
Larissa Dallman
Alexandra Don
Mary Ellis
Olivia Fitzgerald
Christopher Guthrie
Tyler Helsel
Nolan Jensen
Ian Kalis
Jeremy Klang
Christopher Little
Lauren Maddente
Daniel Murphy
Averi Niemuth
Andrew Otto
Alexander Perwich
Natalie Schiferl
Jacob Shapiro
Kyle Thelen
Nicole Ways
Bryan Whitehead

Students will begin writing their appellate briefs in January with the rounds of oral argument commencing later this spring. The competition includes preliminary oral argument rounds (March 21 and 22) and a semifinal (March 26) and final round (April 1).

The Jenkins competitors are fortunate to have the opportunity to argue before distinguished members of the bench and bar from Wisconsin and beyond.

The competition is named after the James G. Jenkins, the first Marquette Law School dean.

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The Difficult Pursuit of a Cohesive Approach to the “Megacity” Economy

Metropolitan regional economies are “the most cohesive economies we have,” Charles L. Evans, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, says.

But what is it that gives cohesion to the metropolitan region that stretches from the Milwaukee area through Chicago and into northwestern Indiana? And how should the region move forwardMarquette Lawyer in a cohesive way?

It’s a tall order to change the way people think, but the Alliance for Regional Development, a non-profit co-chaired by major business figures from Indiana, Illinois, and Wisconsin, is trying to do that. On Dec. 19, it convened a “Summit on Regional Competitiveness” at the Federal Reserve Bank in Chicago.

The effort to foster more cooperation in building on regional strengths in pursuit of greater economic success was spurred in large part by a report released in 2012 by the Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) which concluded that the Chicago region was growing more slowly than many other economic hubs around the world. The report strongly urged more effort by all involved to work together as a region. It said regions that work together have flourished more than those that do not. The regional alliance was created in the aftermath of that.

The “megacity” effort has been of great interest to Marquette Law School, as well as Marquette University more broadly. In 2012, a conference at Eckstein Hall brought together leading experts and advocates, and that was followed by the Summer 2013 issue of Marquette Lawyer magazine which focused on the subject. Our interest in the regional effort has continued. Professor Charles Franklin, director of the Marquette Law School Poll, and I attended the Dec. 19 conference.

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