News

New Bluhm Legal Clinic Advisory Board Members

September 25, 2017

We are pleased to announce the addition of five new members to the Bluhm Legal Clinic Advisory Board:

Stuart Chanen (JD ’85)
Stuart is a partner at Valorem Law Group, a boutique firm in Chicago focused on complex litigation using alternative fee agreements. Stuart was formerly a partner at Sachnoff & Weaver, Ltd. and later Katten Muchin Rosenman LLP, and also an Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois. Stuart works closely with the Clinic’s Center on Wrongful Convictions; he has played a part in the exonerations of 13 individuals who were convicted of crimes they did not commit, and is Chair of the CWC’s Advisory Board.

Kelly Deere (JD ’92)
Kelly is a part-time lecturer at Rutgers University School of Law, Newark.  She teaches the 5 credit full-year introductory legal research and writing course there as well as an advanced legal writing course.  She is also Of Counsel at Kates Nussman Rapone Ellis & Farhi LLP, based in New Jersey. Kelly and her husband, Lee Shavel, are longtime supporters of the Legal Clinic and played an integral role in launching the 2017 Bluhm Legal Clinic Challenge, in which a record 232 donors contributed $56,451 to the Legal Clinic. Kelly lives in Summit, NJ.

Melody Dernocoeur (JD LLM-IHR ’16)
Melody is an Assistant Public Defender at the Law Offices of the Shelby County Public Defender in Memphis, TN. Melody received a 2016 Jay A. Pritzker Fellowship to begin her career at the Shelby County Public Defender through the Gideon’s Promise program. During law school, Melody was a National Moot Court Team member and Vice President of Monitoring for the Northwestern University Human Rights Project.

Christina Egan (JD ’95)

Christina is Managing Partner of the McGuireWoods Chicago office. Previously, Christina served for 10 years as an Assistant U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Illinois. She is also a longtime adjunct at Northwestern Law, teaching a seminar on criminal RICO prosecutions yearly since 2012 and having taught trial advocacy from 2008 to 2011. Christina is McGuireWoods’ firm representative for the Law School’s Alumni Firm Challenge.

Carl P. Evans III (JD-MBA ’11)
Carl is Associate Division Manager at Neya Systems, a robotics/self-driving vehicle company and division of Applied Research Associates Inc. He was previously the Chief Operating Officer and General Counsel at Predictive Inc., an operations technology startup. Carl is currently a member of the Northwestern Law School Fund Board. He was a student in the Donald Pritzker Entrepreneurship Law Center and a member of the Law School’s Dean Search Committee in 2011. Carl lives in Pittsburgh.


- Juliet Sorensen, Harry R. Horrow Professor in International Law, Associate Dean for Clinical Education, Director, Bluhm Legal Clinic