The three major stories of 2020 — the COVID-19 pandemic, the heightened awareness of racial injustice and the election — have made this year one that we will remember. While we couldn’t have envisioned all that would happen at the beginning of the year, our faculty are producing useful and thought-provoking scholarship on all these topics.
A long-held dream, a handful of alumni and a student whose summer externship was scuttled all came together to create and launch the first intellectual property law clinic at Indiana University Robert H. McKinney School of Law.
The uncertainty of the times is heightening the worry and stress among law students and new lawyers, but career counselors say the people just entering the legal profession are doing more to confront the issues of the day. They are discussing ways to solve injustices and inequities, pursuing jobs in the public sector and carefully evaluating law firms to determine if they share the same values.
The following new lawyers were admitted to practice last month. Many of those listed below participated in virtual admission ceremonies Sept. 21. Here are Indiana’s newest lawyers.
Indiana University Maurer School of Law is part of a just-launched collaboration of law schools across the United States that are coming together to examine and address legal issues in policing and public safety.
When Indiana University decided to assemble a committee to reevaluate the naming of buildings and landmarks on the Bloomington campus after the school’s seventh president, David Starr Jordan, who afterward championed eugenics, the institution started by calling the law schools.
The late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg made many visits to Indiana during her tenure on the Supreme Court. She had friendships with the law professors and deans at the law schools in the Hoosier State, and she influenced law students, lawyers and judges across the state. “Imagine a young law student faced with the challenge by a Supreme Court Justice,” recalled a former IU Maruer law student who is now a federal judge.
President Donald Trump on Saturday nominated Hoosier Judge Amy Coney Barrett to the United States Supreme Court, capping a dramatic reshaping of the federal judiciary that will resonate for a generation and that he hopes will provide a needed boost to his reelection effort.
The fight over a teacher at Cathedral High School who was fired for being in a same-sex marriage is highlighting a split between conservative and progressive members of the Catholic faith with several members of the Indiana legal community — including a former 7th Circuit Court of Appeals Judge and an Indiana attorney prominent in Republican politics — now adding their voices in opposition to the Archdiocese of Indianapolis.
The overall passage rate for the Indiana August 2020 bar exam reached 74%, about 10 percentage points higher than the overall pass rate for the previous four July bar exams. Likewise, 84% of those taking the test for the first time passed while 53% of the repeat takers were successful, the highest rate for repeaters since 54% passed the February 2015 bar.
Bre Robinson’s final year of law school has been different in every way possible. Just a few weeks into a pandemic-stricken semester, the Indiana University Robert H. McKinney School of Law Student Bar Association president said classmates are sparse. Robinson isn’t alone in that sentiment. As students nationwide make their way into a new school year, social distancing guidelines and uncertainty are following them.
The Indiana University Maurer School of Law, Eli Lilly & Co. and Roche are partnering for a virtual discussion today, “Pharmaceutical Innovations: Patents and the Politics of COVID-19.”
Indiana’s unprecedented bar exam that was reformatted and delayed until August 2020 because of the coronavirus has turned in a pass rate that tops the previous four years. Almost three-quarters of those who took the remote test passed, according to the list released Tuesday.
Indiana’s law schools have enrolled diverse and academically solid 1L classes for the fall 2020 semester, indicating the COVID-19 pandemic did not adversely impact the recruitment of students by the institutions.
A recent survey of nearly 1,100 young lawyers found that many new attorneys are making major financial, personal and career sacrifices as a result of their student loans. That includes decisions ranging from marriage and children to making big purchases or taking vacations. The survey hits home for many young Indiana lawyers.
Although there are more than 1.3 million attorneys in the United States, “legal deserts” can be found across vast expanses of the country and all over Indiana, according to a recent report from the American Bar Association.
A new jobs report from National Association for Law Placement says law school graduates in 2019 enjoyed some of the best of times while nodding to fears that the 2020 graduates may experience the worst of times.
Despite the upheaval and uncertainty the pandemic has created for legal education, law school admissions officers are confident the first-year class entering in the fall of 2020 will be the same size, if not bigger, than the class that started in the fall of 2019.
After the COVID-19 outbreak upended the spring semester and forced everyone to shift to online learning, Indiana’s law schools are preparing to welcome students and faculty back into their buildings for a fall semester that will be unlike any other.
A second round of Indiana University Robert H. McKinney School of Law students have been dispatched across the state this summer to assist rural county judges through a judicial clerkship program, despite setbacks caused by the novel coronavirus pandemic.