Access Restricted to Northwestern Law Community
Spring 2007
Envision: Spring 2007
Cover story
Moving on up: Clinic and clinic alumni on the rise
Featured: Kathy Spear (JD ’79), Josh Levin (JD ’86), Andrew Stroth (JD
’99), Sue Fisher Yellen (JD ’77), Carol Lynn Green (JD ’71), Dalveer
Bhandari (LLM ’72)
Law School Update
Pipeline to the Supreme Court: Three more law school graduates prepare
for clerkships
Featured: Kate Shaw (JD ’06), Annie Kastanek (JD ’05), Jessica Phillips
(JD ’06)
Alumni in the News
Featured: Joseph Margulies (JD ’88), Carlos F. Gonzalez (JD ’00)
Envision also available as a pdf | View all Class Notes and submit your own.
Moving on up: Clinic and clinic alumni on the rise
The legal clinic at Northwestern Law has come a long way since its humble beginnings in the basement of Thorne Hall almost four decades ago. Although clinical education at Northwestern Law dates back to Dean John Henry Wigmore in the early 1900s, the modern version of the Law School’s in-house legal clinic first opened its doors in 1969 — with two staff attorneys and 12 students. Today, more than 30 clinical professors combine classroom instruction with hands-on experience for the more than 120 students who take live client clinical practice courses each year.
In celebration of the recent grand opening of the new Bluhm Legal Clinic facility — a 23,000-square foot facility on the eighth floor of the Arthur Rubloff Building — we reflect on the prominent yet diverse careers of several Northwestern Law alumni who credit the Clinic for implanting the skills and values that helped them succeed. As Clinic alum Josh Levin (JD ’86) said: “Good law training is good law training that can be applied any number of ways.”
Climbing the corporate ladder
Kathy Spear (JD ’79) says that coming out of law school, she didn’t expect to spend more than 20 years with a Fortune 500 company. The crucial realization motivating her switch from litigation (at Kirkland & Ellis) to corporate law was that for her “preventing disputes, creating something, building something would be more satisfying personally and professionally than taking depositions, arguing motions, and examining witnesses.”
Spear recently observed her 23rd anniversary with Kraft Foods, the world’s second-largest food company. As senior vice president and deputy general counsel for compliance and litigation, she leads the compliance and litigation group and also works with the corporate affairs, government relations, and scientific relations staffs on a variety of public policy issues.
She joined the company’s legal department in 1984 and was a vice president within five years. She hasn’t felt a need to change employers since.
“I’ve done lots of different things, had lots of different responsibilities within the company,” she says. Those include counsel for business development and venture and the frozen food group. She also served a term as chair of a major trade association.
The key to Kraft’s keeping her happy, Spear says, is “that this has always been a place where lawyers are part of the business team, where lawyers’ contributions are recognized as critical to business success.”
Along with her demanding job, Spear has maintained a commitment to pro bono work since her Legal Clinic days working with Professor John Elson. At Kirkland & Ellis she worked on voting rights pro bono cases. At Kraft she’s helped organize relationships between the law department and several local nonprofit legal aid organizations, creating ways for in-house lawyers to do “office hours” for the clients of these organizations. Active on the boards of two charitable organizations, Spear also provides pro bono corporate advice and services, and has served on the Northwestern Law Board since 1998.
Representing the nation
Working for the government “is a very exciting and satisfying way for someone who is passionate about public service to be of service,” believes Josh Levin (JD ’86). Levin has worked for the U.S. Department of Justice in Washington, D.C., since
1991 and is a senior attorney with the Environment and Natural Resources Division’s Environmental Defense Section.
“Most people in our office get pleasure out of successfully representing the United States in court,” says Levin. Levin’s office represents the nation in both civil enforcement measures, which involve violations of the Clean Water Act, and in defensive cases, when EPA regulations are challenged or the government has allegedly violated environmental laws.
Levin was back at Northwestern last year for the class of 1986’s 20th reunion and was impressed with the “exciting new programs” at the Law School and the Bluhm Legal Clinic, where he was very active as a student.
“The Clinic is a great exposure to real-life issues faced by people in need. The work is gratifying and rewarding for any lawyer, let alone a young law student,” he says. “I was involved with both individual cases and the larger intellectual issues that the clinic worked on. The opportunities provided by the Clinic reinforced my commitment to law and reminded me that I could apply my law training in fulfilling and beneficial ways.”
At the top of the game
A professional athlete earning a multimillion dollar salary might seem to have little in common with an indigent person accused of a crime, but Andrew Stroth (JD ’99) says his transition from working with one to the other was smooth. And his role in either case is the same: advocate.
“I gained a lot of skills in the Clinic that have helped me in my career as a sports and entertainment attorney,” says Stroth, executive vice president of talent marketing at CSMG Inc. “I learned how to be a more effective advocate for clients and their interests.”
Stroth joined CSMG in Chicago in 2005 after operating his own sports management business, Impact Talent Associates, which he began while still in law school. He realized he had a talent for counseling and advising athletes when, as a University of Illinois undergraduate, he was hired by the athletic department to tutor the school’s football and basketball players. Working as a senior advertising executive at Leo Burnett out of college, he gained the background to represent players as a marketing agent. “Then I decided in order to compete at the highest level in this business, I needed to become a sports attorney,” he says.
CSMG Sports represents more than 200 athletes. Stroth specializes in negotiating endorsement contracts for clients such as Dwyane Wade of the Miami Heat (T-Mobile, Gatorade, and Lincoln Navigator) and Donovan McNabb of the Philadelphia Eagles (Vitamin Water and Novartis).
“The Clinic helped teach me how to represent and manage clients and difficult situations,” Stroth says. “In the sports business, our success depends on how we manage and counsel our clients.”
Serving for a greater good
Although Sue Fisher Yellen (JD ’77) has done many things in her professional life,
it’s accurate to say she’s had one career:
public service.
Yellen — then Sue Fisher — arrived at Northwestern already experienced in social service. She had served as an intern on the Governor’s Commission to Revise the Illinois Mental Health Code and on Sen. Adlai E. Stevenson’s migratory labor subcommittee and had been a Spanish-language counselor at Planned Parenthood.
At the Legal Clinic, her experience counseling and representing clients took her a step further. “It was incredibly motivating,” Yellen says, “because we learned how to help the neediest, most helpless and underserved people in our community.”
After law school, she worked for the Legal Center for Battered Women at the Legal Assistance Foundation in Chicago. She and her husband, Larry Yellen (JD ’77), moved to the District of Columbia, and there she wrote the city’s first domestic violence legislation and worked for Planned Parenthood.
When she returned to Chicago, Yellen continued advocacy work as a volunteer while teaching music and art to toddlers for her paying jobs. She served on the boards of Planned Parenthood of Chicago, SGA Youth and Family Services, the National Runaway Hotline, and the ARCS Foundation and volunteered at the Francis Parker School in Chicago, which her daughter, Maggie, attended. She and her husband hosted students from Thailand and Russia through AFS Intercultural Programs, and she continues to volunteer for AFS as well as SGA, Care International, and the admissions office at the University of Vermont, which her daughter attends.
“The most rewarding experiences in my life, other than marriage and motherhood, have been those that allowed me to help others,” Yellen says.
Bridging the gap
Many people see environmental interests and business interests as opposed. Carol Lynn Green (JD ’71) sees it differently — and has the background to support her opinion.
Heading her own firm in the Maryland suburbs of the District of Columbia since 1999, Green is an environmental lawyer representing companies and trade associations nationwide. For 12 years previously she did similar work in the Washington, D.C., office of a large law firm. Before then, however, she worked for the U.S. Justice Department for 8 years. As the first assistant chief for environmental enforcement, she headed the team that began the enforcement of the Clear Air and Clean Water Acts, formulated the plans for Superfund enforcement, and eventually handled all EPA enforcement — enforcement programs that are still in use today.
Having worked in environmental law from two different sides, Green thinks that government (representing the public interest) and business share common ground. “I have found that companies now see environmental compliance in the same way as compliance with the tax laws. It is a cost of doing business,” she says.
But the complexity of environmental regulations makes it difficult for business to achieve compliance — so that’s where Green comes in. She helps her clients understand what the federal, state, or local government intended when it enacted an environmental statute, what the law requires, and what is needed to achieve compliance. Green says that commitment to clients was one of the big lessons she took from work at the Legal Clinic. “My clinical experience taught me what client service and representation mean,” she says. “The practice of law requires diligent and careful representation of one’s clients.” Client service continues to be her guiding principle today: “One of the most rewarding aspects of my practice is having the satisfaction of solving my clients’ problems.”
Sitting on India’s highest bench
Dalveer Bhandari (LLM ’72) is one of India’s most powerful citizens. A chief justice of India’s Supreme Court, he is in a position to have a profound impact on the country’s 1.1 billion people.
“Courts have given significant directions regarding right to life and liberty, preservation of ecology and environment, forests and wildlife, crime against women, gender equality, custodial reforms, releasing of bonded labor, to mention a few,” says Bhandari, who was appointed to India’s highest court in October 2005.
In particular, Bhandari singles out the Supreme Court’s “innovative interpretations of various provisions of the constitution” that represent “a serious endeavor to provide access to justice to every segment of society. The evolution of the concept of public interest litigation has been the most significant development in the history of Indian jurisprudence.”
Bhandari has done his share to promote equal access to legal services. Returning to India to practice after leaving Northwestern with a master of laws, he organized the first legal aid society in the Rajasthan High Court at Jodhpur. An international fellowship allowed him to travel throughout Southeast Asia to observe and lecture to legal aid and clinical legal education programs. During his years of practicing as a lawyer, he also worked on a UN project on criminal justice delays in India and served as chairperson of the Delhi High Court legal services committee. As chief justice of the High Court at Mumbai, he was patron-in-chief of the state of Maharashtra’s legal services authority. It was at Northwestern’s Legal Clinic that Bhandari says he was first exposed to “the legal problems of real clients.” Inspired to stay on at the Clinic for two years after receiving his LLM, he “developed the great advantage of sensitivity and genuine concern for the problems of the indigent.”
In 1973 he returned to India to practice law at Jodhpur and Delhi until 1991. Then he was appointed to the Indian High Courts at Delhi and Mumbai. Now one of 26 chief justices on the Supreme Court, he is keenly aware of its influence: “Of the three organs of the state — legislature, executive, and judiciary — presently the judiciary enjoys the greatest trust, faith, and confidence of the people of this country.”
Pipeline to the Supreme Court: Three more law school graduates prepare for clerkships
By Pat Vaughan Tremmel
When the new U.S. Supreme Court term opens this fall one-third of its justices will begin working closely with Northwestern Law alumni.
That is when Kate Shaw (JD ’06), Annie Kastanek (JD ’05), and Jessica Phillips (JD ’06) take off for Washington, D.C., as newly appointed Supreme Court clerks and begin earning one of the golden credentials of early legal careers.
Kastanek, currently at Mayer, Brown, Rowe & Maw LLP, in Chicago, had been having dreams about getting the coveted clerkship when she got the phone call. After hanging up, she actually wondered if she was still dreaming. “I don’t get that many phone calls at my job, and you can imagine how I felt when I picked up the phone and heard ‘This is Justice Anthony Kennedy.’”
Not only will Kastanek, Phillips (Justice Samuel Alito), and Shaw (Justice John Paul Stevens) realize a dream in working with justices whose decisions play such a pivotal role in our nation’s history, but their presence at the court during the same time period also will give the justices a strong sense of what Northwestern has to offer.
Including the three new clerkships, Northwestern Law will now have the sixth highest number of Supreme Court clerks on a per capita basis, according to an analysis extrapolated from rankings on Supreme Court clerkship placements in Leiter Reports, a blog about law schools.
“I would be hard pressed to find better representatives of what we value at the Law School than Annie, Jessica, and Kate,” said Dean David Van Zandt. “All of us who have seen them in action know that each will stand out in whatever they do in their careers, and we’re thrilled that their considerable talents will be concentrated at the court next term.”
The Law School’s success in increasing Supreme Court clerkships validates the educational model that Van Zandt put into place shortly after becoming dean in 1995. Great value is placed on interpersonal and communication skills, sound judgment and maturity as well as on intellectual dexterity. The model starts with an unusual admissions program that stresses post college work experience and relies heavily on interviews in assessing applicants’ potential to succeed both in law school and what will be for most graduates multi-job careers.
All three soon-to-be Supreme Court law clerks made law review, a highly sought after credential in law school. They served on the Northwestern Law Review board, and Shaw was editor-in-chief during her tenure. Law review editors choose the articles to publish from hundreds of law school faculty manuscripts. The intense writing, research, and editing experience is an invaluable stepping-stone to the upper rungs of legal careers.
Shaw currently is clerking for Richard Posner, the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals judge who is widely known for his prolific and provocative writing. Before working at Mayer Brown, Kastanek clerked for Kenneth Ripple, another judge on the 7th Circuit, and Phillips is working for the 7th Circuit’s Judge, Joel Flaum (JD ’63, LLM ’64).
In recent years an appellate court clerkship has become a prerequisite for becoming a Supreme Court clerk. (Northwestern’s new Appellate Advocacy Clinic offers students the opportunity to advocate before the 7th Circuit and even the Supreme Court while in law school.)
Phillips originally was hired to work for Alito on the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals but lost the job when Alito was promoted to the Supreme Court. That loss turned into a win of a lifetime when he asked Phillips to update her resume and throw her hat into the ring for a Supreme Court clerkship.
“I am elated at the opportunity to work with Justice Alito,” said Phillips. “As the most junior member of the court, he will be learning the ropes along with his law clerks, and I hope that 20 or 30 years from now I can look back and say that I played some small role in shaping his legacy.”
The stellar academic achievement reflected in the short legal careers of Shaw, Kastanek and Phillips is a definite prerequisite to becoming a Supreme Court clerk. Among Kastanek’s academic aerobics, she co-wrote a University of Chicago Law Review article on class action issues with Martin Redish, the Louis and Harriet Ancel Professor of Law and Public Policy at Northwestern.
Just as important, Shaw, Phillips, and Kastanek exemplify the intangibles central to the Law School’s education model. “Dynamic,” “articulate,” “well-liked,” and “collaborative” are words that keep coming up in conversations about each of them.
“Kate Shaw is extremely bright, dynamic and poised,” said John McGinnis, a professor of law and Law Review adviser at Northwestern. “She ran the Law Review in a very professional way.”
McGinnis, who worked with Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts when they both were with the U.S. Department of Justice, pointed out that Roberts is the premier example of a former Supreme Court clerk with such intellectual dexterity and sharp communication skills. As many learned during Roberts’ 2005 televised confirmation hearings, Roberts was a Supreme Court clerk to his predecessor on the court, the late former chief justice William Rehnquist.
Steven Calabresi, the George C. Dix Professor of Constitutional Law at Northwestern, got to know Shaw, Kastanek, and Phillips through his classes and through his work on the Supreme Court placement committee.
Their excellent communication skills likely held great sway in the interview process, he said. “Everyone at the Law School is incredibly proud of Kate, Annie, and Jessica, and we are all very excited for them.” (Calabresi is a former Supreme Court clerk for Justice Antonin Scalia and co-founder of the Federalist Society.)
Such support from faculty and students alike at Northwestern made a difference for Phillips. “Maybe it is the admissions process of choosing students who are interpersonally capable of communicating and expressing their thoughts in a cogent manner,” she said. “When I talk to friends who went to law school with me, we realize, in looking back, how special the people were. There truly is something special about Northwestern.”
Shaw too stressed the Law School’s collaborative environment. “The Law School does a great job of facilitating close collaboration between students and faculty,” she said. “That allows professors to really get to know students in a way that’s impossible in a large lecture course.
“The relationships themselves are invaluable, but they also mean that when it comes time for professors to write letters of recommendation, they’re not just recycling resumes. They actually know what kind of person you are, what you’re interested in, what you’re passionate about, and that’s reflected in the letters they write.”
What are Phillips, Kastanek, and Shaw most looking forward to in their new jobs at the Supreme Court? Of course, working on history-making cases with justices who are at the top of their game.
Phillips is eager to start working on decisions about which cases will be heard (or granted cert). The law clerks divide up the thousands of petitions that come in annually and write bench memos to the justices and the other clerks with recommendations about whether or not to grant or deny cert. Once cases are granted cert, the clerks read briefs and do the necessary research and writing to advise their respective justices about the facts and issues in the cases.
Those who know Phillips, Shaw, and Kastanek also are looking forward to the opening of the Supreme Court’s next term, and when the decisions are finally handed down for posterity, they are likely to read about them with particular pride.
Margulies receives ABA award for book on Guantánamo
Joseph Margulies (JD ’88), associate clinical professor and attorney with the Bluhm Legal Clinic’s MacArthur Justice Center, has received critical acclaim for his book Guantánamo and the Abuse of Presidential Power (Simon and Schuster, 2006). Most recently honored with the Silver Gavel Award, one of the American Bar Association’s most prestigious awards, his book was also named one of the best books of 2006 by The Economist magazine and has garnered praise in reviews from the New York Times, the New York Review of Books, and Publisher’s Weekly.
In Guantánamo and the Abuse of Presidential Power, Margulies provides a concise and fast-paced narrative about the litigation in Rasul, including an account of the administration’s detention policy from Guantánamo to Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan and from secret CIA black sites to extraordinary renditions.
Internationally recognized for his civil liberties work in the wake of September 11, Margulies plays a leading role in coordinating the nationwide litigation challenging the Bush administration’s post-9/11 detention policy. Margulies was the lead counsel in Rasul v. Bush, involving the detentions at the Guantánamo Bay Naval Station, and in Habib v. Bush, involving the rendition of Mamdouh Habib from Pakistan to Egypt.
Margulies joined the MacArthur Justice Center in 2004. The center is funded by the J. Roderick MacArthur Foundation of Niles, Illinois. Formerly affiliated with the University of Chicago, the center joined Northwestern Law’s Bluhm Legal Clinic in 2006. The center operates as a nonprofit public-interest law firm and litigates issues of significance for the criminal justice system, including prisoner rights, the death penalty, and gun control.
Gonzalez argues case for homeless man before Florida Supreme Court
When Carlos F. Gonzalez (JD ’00) presented his case before the Florida Supreme Court on May 9, 2007, it marked an event five years in the making. Convicted in 2002, his client, Gary Polite, was sentenced to seven and a half years in prison after being found guilty of resisting an officer with violence.
In downtown Miami, an undercover police officer saw Polite, a homeless man, trying to take money out of parking meters. When the plainclothes officer approached and attempted to arrest Polite, he flailed, broke away, and fled. The officer’s police gear was hidden, and whether he immediately showed his badge is under dispute. Gonzalez argued before the Court, “When someone in plainclothes, who you do not think or have reason to believe is a police officer, grabs you, what do you do?”
After a series of appeals, rehearings, and reversed decisions, this case has become a labor of love for Gonzalez. The legal question left now for the courts to decide is whether the State of Florida must prove that Polite, charged with resisting a law enforcement officer with violence, knew of the officer’s official status. In the case of Gonzalez’s client, when a uniformed bicycle officer stopped him a few blocks away, Polite cooperated.
While a Supreme Court opinion has yet to be made, Gonzalez credits his experience at the Bluhm Legal Clinic with developing his interest in appellate practice. “The lessons and experiences I gained as a Clinic student have helped me represent a wide variety of clients charged with very serious criminal offenses.”
After graduating from Northwestern Law in 2000, Gonzalez served as an Assistant Public Defender in the Miami-Dade County Public Defender’s Office. He also worked as an associate attorney in the Miami offices of two major law firms before joining his current firm, Diaz, Reus, Rolff and Targ, LLP.
Gonzalez praises Tom Geraghty and the clinic team “for teaching me the importance of representing the criminally accused, and
for giving me the tools to do that work.”
