Client Skills Board Students Excel in Competitions

Marquette

It was a busy weekend for the Marquette University Law School Clients Skills Board, the organization focused on building client-focused practice skills.

Cassie Van Gompel and Zach Geren finished 3rd, and Megan Marqusee and David Karp finished 4th, at the ABA Regional Representation in Mediation Competition at Quinnipiac School of Law on Saturday, February 27th. Cassie and Zach had initially tied for 2nd place, missing the semi-final round in the tiebreaker by less than 4 points.

Closer to home, 1st-year students Cody Hallowell, Keegan Girodo, Kelsey Schanke, and Ben Lucarelli beat out ten other 1L and 2L teams to win the Marquette University Law School Intramural Negotiation Competition, also on Saturday, February 27th. Local attorneys, many of them MULS alums, came to Eckstein Hall to judge the competition, providing great feedback to all the teams working to enhance their negotiation abilities.  Cody, Keegan, Kelsey, and Ben will represent Marquette in the ABA Regional Negotiation Competition next fall.

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State Bar’s Appellate Practice Section Hosts Outstanding Brief Competition

The Appellate Practice Section of the State Bar of Wisconsin is hosting its first Outstanding Brief Competition for members of the bar. Any appellate opening or response brief from a case decided in the last year may be entered in the competition. Entries are due by March 31. As noted on the state bar’s website:

The brief writers (and their firms or agencies) will be publicly recognized, and the briefs will be posted to the Appellate Practice Section’s website to serve as models for appellate practitioners. Anyone can nominate a brief – author, colleague, friend, judge, clerk, or other admirer of great legal writing. Nominations will be kept confidential.

The website provides additional details about how to nominate a brief and other qualifications.  Here is a link to use to nominate briefs and to ask questions.  The Appellate Practice Section seeks through this competition to promote excellent brief writing among Wisconsin practitioners.

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Address Evictions to Address Poverty, Author Tells Law School Audience

When he was a graduate student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Matthew Desmond searched for research on the impact of evictions on low-income people. He found close to nothing written by academics, policy makers, or journalists.

No more. Almost a decade later, Desmond has written a book that is already attracting major attention nationwide and changing the conversation about evictions and related housing issues for low-income people.

The book, which was officially released on Tuesday, is set in Milwaukee and is based on Desmond’s emersion in the lives of renters and landlords in 2008 and 2009 and on his research into tens of thousands of records on evictions.

And he chose an “On the Issues with Mike Gousha” program at Marquette Law School on Tuesday as the first event on a national book tour.

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