Access Restricted to Northwestern Law CommunityVol. 1, Issue 1: Spring 2005
Envision: Spring 2005
The cover story for Envision's inaugural issue looks at whether the law's allure for students and practitioners has changed in recent years along with the legal marketplace. One conclusion is that attorneys still have a double opportunity for fulfillment: As lawyers they can make a difference in their communities and in the lives of their clients while still earning a respectable, stable, comfortable living.
Making both a living and a difference is a recurring theme in this issue, as Envision spotlights alumni like Allison Davis (JD '64), a real estate developer who takes on mixed-income projects in urban neighborhoods; Earl Pollock (JD '53), who wrote the brief for Brown v. Board of Education (1954) less than a year out of law school; and Julie Jacobs Menin (JD '92), who founded a non-profit dedicated to revitalizing Lower Manhattan after 9/11.
Editor: Steve Hendershot
Contributing writers: Steve Hendershot, Sarah Thomas (JD '06)
Contributing photographers: Andrew Campbell, Jim Ziv
Making a difference—and a living: The market is changing, but the law's allure endures
Featured: Jack Heinz (faculty), Johann Lee (admissions staff), Catherine Ryan (JD ‘72), Cherie Song (JD '05), John Paul Stevens (JD ‘47)
Alumni in the News: Northwestern Law alumni comment on their appearances in the headlines
Featured: Morgan O'Brien (JD '69), Earl Pollock (JD '53), Catherine Ryan (JD '72), Richard Sander (JD '88)
Alumni Profiles
Allison Davis (JD '64): Saving the world while turning a profit
Remembering Michael Lefkow (JD '66)
Julie Jacobs Menin (JD '92): Giving a lift to Lower Manhattan
Student Profile: Too old for this? A.J. Sharp's winding path to law school
Featured: A.J. Sharp (JD '07)
Program Feature: Problem-solving seminars teach skills for practical lawyering
Featured: Uma Amuluru (JD '05), Lynn Cohn (JD '87, faculty), Chris Grogan (JD-MBA '07), Monica Llorente (JD '00, faculty), Jeffrey Urdangen (faculty)
Judging by the signs — from our support for one another as mentors and friends to our fantastic reunion celebrations and regional events — it is clear that our strong alumni community is among Northwestern Law’s greatest assets. This is why I am pleased to introduce Envision, a new semiannual publication dedicated to showcasing and serving that community.
Already nearly 10,000 strong, our alumni community continues to grow. The increasing diversity of our graduates — geographically, in terms of ethnic and gender ratio, and in the ways that our alumni choose to practice law — is making our reach broader than ever. I urge you to connect with your classmates, with fellow alumni at your firm or business, and with those who share your interests. I hope Envision assists you in making those connections.
After reading Envision, take steps to get involved. Start by visiting the alumni web site at www.law.northwestern.edu/alumni to learn more about the people and programs featured in this issue, locate friends, find out about alumni events and societies in Chicago and worldwide, and update your alumni directory information. (Tell us what you’re up to, and you may find yourself in next issue’s class notes.)
Thank you for all you do to make our alumni community so special.
David Van Zandt
Making a difference—and a living: The market is changing, but the law’s allure endures
 Johann Lee (second from right) greets prospective students at an informational dinner in March. With Lee are admittee Nathan Knobloch (far left) and alumni couple Sunil Harjani (JD '00) and Priya Jenveja Harjani (JD '00). |
In the Beginning There Were Tea Carts “You get away with doing business that way only if you are, in effect, running a cartel,” says Jack Heinz, Owen L. Coon Professor of Law at Northwestern and a leading expert on the history of the bar. “Firms can no longer operate that way, and the principal reason is competition.” These days, lawyers who want tea probably have to visit their firm’s vending machine. Many attorneys don’t even work at law firms: They’re investors, corporate counsels, entrepreneurs, and community activists. Market forces have required lawyers and the legal profession to adapt and evolve. Yet even as times change, there’s something about the law that still draws people to its study and practice. |
Why Are You A Lawyer?
Johann Lee, director of admissions for the Law School’s JD programs and a lawyer himself, says the law’s enduring selling point is the promise of achieving simultaneous intellectual, emotional, and financial fulfillment.
Take John Paul Stevens (JD '47), for example. While serving as a code-breaker for the Navy during World War II, he planned to become an English teacher upon his return to civilian life —until he got a letter from his older brother, an attorney, describing “the intangible rewards of the legal profession” and extolling “the many opportunities to help people who need help and can only benefit from the skills you receive as a lawyer.”
Stevens was sold. He headed to Northwestern and found that his brother had been right. “I just enjoyed the law and found it challenging and stimulating,” Stevens says, “and it has indeed given me an opportunity to do useful work.”
That’s an understatement. In December Stevens will celebrate his 30th anniversary as an associate justice on the United States Supreme Court.
The allure of the law as Stevens describes it resonates with Cherie Song (JD '05). She used to be a stockbroker in Manhattan with an office in the south tower of the World Trade Center. One September morning four years ago, at home from work after calling in sick, she was awakened by an explosion.
For months after 9/11 she kept asking herself, “Do I want to be a stockbroker for the rest of my life? Is that my dream?” The answer was no.
“I realized that the law would afford me more resources and meaningful ways to help people,” says Song, who graduated in May. “I felt like I had to go after what I wanted with more vigor and more haste.”
An Enduring Promise, A Changing Marketplace
Jack Heinz says demand for attorneys’ services has shifted dramatically toward corporate law, away from personal services. Firms act more like businesses, often multinational ones. Loyalty has taken a hit along with job security. Lawyers may be working harder to achieve professional fulfillment, but Heinz isn’t sure that’s a negative.
“It’s much more dog-eat-dog, and it’s clear that lawyers have to work very hard, with competitive pressure remaining on them much further into their careers than before,” he says. “But competition generally is very good for the consumer. These days clients shop around, and firms have to work very hard to attract and keep them.”
It also means Northwestern evaluates its prospective law students more carefully, examining both their academic credentials and their reasons for choosing law school. Ninety-two percent of admitted students have had at least one year of relevant full-time work experience before they apply. Why place such a premium on work experience?
“Most of the students with work experience have started along a particular career path with a sense of calling, and they’re getting their law degree as a means to that end,” says Lee. “Most of them stick with what they came here to do, whether it’s transactional law, public interest, or litigation.”
Some of Lee’s favorite stories come from alumni like Sister Catherine Ryan (JD '72). As a young nun volunteering at legal aid clinics in the 1960s, she was impressed by the positive impact of the attorneys working there, and she asked her supervising sisters if she could go to law school.
“Those attorneys cared about the people — not just as customers for whom they could do a job and then leave, but they cared about who these persons were, and they wanted to make a real contribution to bettering their lives. That was the image I had seen, and that was what I wanted to participate in.”
Ryan’s three-decade legal career has included private practice and two terms with the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office, most recently as head of the Juvenile Justice Bureau. She joined Illinois’s Maryville Academy as executive director in December 2004 (see page 3).
“A lot of our students are trying to find that career satisfaction,” says Lee, “and the law is a great place for that. You can do a lot of things with a law degree, and hopefully our students are able to find what they’re looking for.” — SH
Note: Professor Jack Heinz’ new update of his book, Urban Lawyers: The New Social Structure of the Bar (co-authored with Robert L. Nelson, Rebecca L. Sandefur, and Edward O. Laumann) is scheduled for release in July by University of Chicago Press.
Northwestern Law alumni comment on their appearances in the headlines
Nextel founder O’Brien watches merger with Sprint “With my head, I was absolutely positive this merger made tremendous good sense for our shareholders,” says O’Brien. “With my heart, considering how much I have put into this company, it couldn’t help but be bittersweet.” O’Brien retired from Nextel’s day-to-day operations in 2003 but stayed on as a director. The merged company has not announced its board. O’Brien is considering another start-up, one in the wireless industry that might partner with Nextel or its interests. |
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Pollock celebrates Brown v. Board of Education legacy
Earl Pollock (JD '53) was less than a year out of law school
when the brief he wrote for Chief Justice Earl Warren accompanied the May 1954
U.S. Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education to strike down the “separate but equal” doctrine in America’s schools. With the decision’s 50th anniversary in 2004, Pollock — who wrote the brief as a clerk for Chief Justice Warren — reflected on a milestone achievement in his first year as a lawyer.
“I don’t recall feeling ill equipped,” says Pollock. “I had served as editor in chief of the Northwestern University Law Review, and that probably had a role in preparing me for the kind of work that I was doing.” As for his brief’s impact, “I don’t think I fully appreciated all the ramifications of the decision. I don’t think anybody could have, because there were so many consequences.”
Pollock is retired and lives in Florida.
Ryan takes reins as Maryville restructures
Sister Catherine Ryan (JD '72) takes over as executive director at Maryville Academy as part of a restructuring that follows the state of Illinois’s decision to remove wards of the state from Maryville’s Des Plaines campus.
“I have been working with young people who are abused, neglected, and mistreated, often with developmental disabilities, and these are the very young people that we care for at Maryville,” says Ryan, who has 30 years of experience in the juvenile justice and child welfare arenas, most recently as head of the Juvenile Justice Bureau of the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office. “I start off knowing that there is a great need for the kinds of services we can provide, a higher degree of specialized services that meet the needs of young people and their families.”
Sander’s study turns affirmative action debate
UCLA Law Professor Richard Sander (JD '88) published a study in the Stanford Law Review suggesting that affirmative action admissions practices are having an adverse effect on the careers of minority law students. The study, released in January and based on data gathered by the Law School Admissions Council, suggests that by helping students gain admission into law schools at which they would otherwise not qualify, preferences hinder minority students by putting them in situations where they have a built-in disadvantage in competing for class rank. And since students with bad grades are both more likely to drop out of law school and to fail bar examinations, Sanders argues that preferences may even depress the number of minority attorneys.
The study is already the subject of much debate, with the architects of the University of Michigan’s affirmative action policy functioning as lead critics. After Sander’s study was featured in media including the Wall Street Journal, the Stanford Law Review printed a larger than normal run of the issue to accommodate demand.
Considering the controversy of the subject matter, Sander may be the ideal scholar to present the study: he describes himself as a lifelong democrat who's very sympathetic to the goals of affirmative action. Sander, who has both a JD and PhD in Economics from Northwestern, acquired his academic interest in affirmative action while studying the legal profession under Professor Jack Heinz, and examining race issues with Professor Len Rubinowitz.
Sander expects that, as his study is debated, the first result may be an increase in disclosure to law school applicants.
“You could argue that there is no reason for minorities not to make these decisions for themselves,” says Sander. “Well, okay, but they at least deserve complete information to help them make that decision. Law schools can help by giving applicants more information about what their prospects are.” — SH
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Saving the world while turning a profit Davis’s customers see his reasoning. “If you’ve got a great location,” he says, “people seem able to accommodate their social views in order to make money.” By developing properties that generally combine market-rate and subsidized housing, sometimes along with public housing, Davis is being true to his family legacy. His father, William Allison Davis, was an advocate for integration and the first African American scholar offered tenure at the University of Chicago. (The elder Davis also received an honorary degree from Northwestern.) |
In 1999, when Davis bid on land at the corner of Michigan and Roosevelt in Chicago’s South Loop, he was picturing a mixed-income project like his others. But six years later the South Loop is a red-hot real estate market, and “I look like a genius,” says Davis. The Columbian, the 46-story residential tower he’s building there, will be his first project not to include an affordable-housing component.
That’s not to say he’s losing focus. “The mission is to make money,” says Davis. “We have investors who are interested in a return on their investment. The good news is that they choose to invest in what we’re doing rather than in somebody building in Schaumburg.”
Before turning to real estate in 1997, Davis practiced law for 26 years with the Chicago firm he cofounded, Davis, Miner & Barnhill (now Miner, Barnhill & Galland). His practice focused largely on housing. Davis’s son Cullen (JD '98), also a Northwestern Law alumnus, works closely with his father as president of Urban Property Advisors. — SH
SIDEBAR: At the Movies
Allison Davis's friend Tom Rosenberg produced the 2003 movie The Human Stain, starring Anthony Hopkins as a light-skinned African American. Figuring that Davis, who is also a light-skinned African American, could relate to Hopkins’s character, Rosenberg sent Davis both the screenplay and the Philip Roth novel that inspired it. Davis loved the story, and Rosenberg gave him a small role in the movie — as a bigot, no less. Rosenberg wanted to make sure Davis’s appearance wasn’t edited out of the movie, so he arranged for Davis to appear in a scene where a key character dies.
Had he been interested in a career change, Davis should have lobbied for a part in one of Rosenberg’s next films, Million Dollar Baby, which won the Oscar for Best Picture last February.
Caption: “If you’ve got a great location,” says developer Allison Davis (JD '64), pictured here in his North Loop office, “people seem able to accommodate their social views in order to make money.”
Giving a lift to Lower Manhattan
As an attorney and small-business owner based in Manhattan, Julie Jacobs Menin (JD '92) felt she was in a unique position to help other businesses in the area get back on their feet in the aftermath of 9/11.
Her response was to found Wall Street Rising, a not-for-profit organization dedicated to rebuilding Lower Manhattan’s vibrancy and vitality. The organization provides local business owners access to information and resources through various projects, including the Downtown Information Center, a large public art project called Art Downtown, and the Corridor of Light, a lighting-design initiative that illuminates building facades in the Financial District. Menin, who also served as a juror for the Ground Zero Memorial, says the goal is to restore Lower Manhattan’s image as a vibrant, secure place to live, work, and visit 24 hours a day, seven days a week. To date, Wall Street Rising has brought together more than 30,000 members and has raised more than $9 million for various projects.
Prior to starting Wall Street Rising, Menin owned Vine, a restaurant in Lower Manhattan. She and her husband, fellow law school alum Bruce Menin (JD '89), live in the Financial District with their three children, including twins born in February. Bruce Menin is a real estate developer. — ST
Longtime legal services champion slain
Michael Lefkow (JD '66) was fatally shot February 28 in the Chicago home he shared with Joan Humphrey Lefkow (JD '71), his wife of 30 years. Joan’s mother, Donna Grace Humphrey, was also killed. She was visiting from Colorado. Mike Lefkow was a stalwart of the early legal services movement and was a highly respected expert in the fields of federal employment law and welfare law. He and Joan shared a passion for providing legal services to the poor. Both worked in legal services for many years after graduating from Northwestern. Joan is now a U.S. district judge for the Northern District of Illinois, and Mike was an attorney in private practice. He is survived by Joan and his five daughters. Mike was an inspiration to the many young legal services lawyers who worked with him and to the many members of Chicago’s legal community who shared his vision for improvements in the justice system. Mike worked tirelessly for his clients and for the many causes that he and Joan supported. He was also an enthusiastic alumnus of the Law School, and he and Joan attended many Law School events over the years. |
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The Lefkow family asks that contributions in Mike’s memory be made to the Law School’s Public Service Fellowships Program. Gifts made by check (payable to Northwestern University, with “Public Service Fellowships/Lefkow memorial” on the memo line) may be sent to Northwestern University School of Law, Office of Alumni Relations and Development, 357 East Chicago Avenue, Chicago, IL 60611-3069.
Too old for this? A.J. Sharp’s winding path to law school
A.J. Sharp (JD '07) says he always wanted to go to law school
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But after college, he went to seminary. When he found it too practical, without enough theory or room for creativity, he left. He became a stockbroker. He did well, got bored, and quit. He still wanted a law degree, but also a PhD, so he enrolled in the political science program at Michigan State University. When he found it too theoretical, without enough practicality or structure, he headed for California to try a similar program at the University of California, Los Angeles. Same story. Suddenly Sharp was 35 years old and feeling pressed for time. His path thus far had included two high points: While at UCLA, he taught constitutional law at a local community college and loved it. He also worked for a 90-something attorney named Glen McDaniel as a fact-checker and transcriber while McDaniel wrote his memoirs. |
“[McDaniel] was still practicing in ways large and small, still very active, and it put a lot of things in perspective for me,” says Sharp. “By that point I was kind of feeling like, ‘I am too old to get on with my life.’ I had gone to school for a long time, didn’t have a whole lot to show for it, and didn’t know where I was going. But he kept saying, ‘You’re so young,’ and I guess when you’re a 92-year-old, 35 doesn’t sound so bad. He had more energy than I did.”
Inspired, Sharp got ready to face the LSAT...sort of. He and a friend started an LSAT preparation company. They developed a curriculum, attracted investors, and opened their doors to students in early 2003. Sharp was pleased with the business’s early growth, but the spring and summer of 2003 dealt a triple whammy: First, Sharp and his business partner were in a car accident that left Sharp temporarily blind and his friend near death. Then a rival company sued, alleging curricular theft. Then, while Sharp prepared to fight the lawsuit, his key capital investor backed out.
Sharp agreed to close the business in exchange for the rival dropping the lawsuit. And he started thinking again about law school.
“One night I sat down and read Northwestern Law’s strategic plan, and I realized that this law school was basically tailor-made for me: an older student body, a high value placed on work experience, a close community, and a lot of people who’ve been to grad school,” says Sharp, who completed his first year at Northwestern this spring. “I am, as far as I know, the oldest in my class, but it doesn’t really seem to matter. I don’t feel out of place at all here.”
He finally feels at home — not only with his fellow students but also with the subject matter.“ In the law there’s room for creativity and originality, but within a structure that sets boundaries.”
Welcome to Northwestern Law, A.J. Better late than never. — SH
Problem-solver seminars teach skills for practical lawyering
“My clients give me a great excuse,” says Monica Llorente (JD '00), as many of the first-year law students listening to her pause in their note taking, waiting for clarification. Llorente, director of the Children’s Pro Bono Project at the Law School’s Children and Family Justice Center, continues, “It’s the perfect excuse to watch MTV and VH1, because I have to be able to talk about Tupac and Britney Spears, or else the relationships just aren’t going to work.”
Several students nod, and the scribbling resumes. Llorente is coteaching Client Counseling, a new track in the Law School’s Lawyer as Problem Solver program, a mandatory seminar for first-year students. The program is designed to teach law students the practical day-to-day skills and strategies their relationships with clients and other on-the-job situations will demand.
 Cohn (JD '87) tells students that “great negotiators get to the true interests, the unstated positions, and they find integrative ‘win-win’ opportunities there.” |
“Even though you’re the authority figure, it’s nice to involve and engage your client,” adds Jeffrey Urdangen, also a clinical faculty member and Llorente’s partner in leading the track. “It’s important to respect their ideas, even if they’re off base.” All first-year students participate in at least two of the Lawyer as Problem Solver program’s tracks. Topics include negotiation and conflict management and understanding financial data; the teaching style is interactive. In the Client Counseling track, for example, Llorente begins a class meeting by conducting a mock interview with a client, in this case third-year student Uma Amuluru (JD '05). Later, the role playing continues as the students break up into legal teams that interview Amuluru, who plays a landlord worried about liability after someone slipped on an icy sidewalk in front of her building. The goal is not only to gather information but to put the client at ease. Chris Grogan (JD-MBA '07) learned the hard way when he said the “L” word.
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Lynn Cohn (JD '87) developed the Lawyer as Problem Solver program, which debuted in 2002. Cohn, also a member of the Law School’s clinical faculty and director of the Program on Negotiation and Mediation, says, “We are responding to the changing needs of lawyers. We are seeing attorneys in a broader perspective, as people who are taking on all kinds of challenges, and who really benefit from problem-solving skills.”
Grogan agrees. “It’s part and parcel with what I perceive as Northwestern’s mission to prepare students who are more mature and more seasoned when they get into the marketplace. These are good introductory lessons to things we need to continue to think about and work on.” — SH
