The Northern Kentucky University women’s basketball team isn’t the only one winning championships. Students at the Salmon P. Chase College of Law are also raking up awards.
This year, students at Chase have won two competitions, made it to the semi-finals in another and placed second in a student writing competition. Several other students have had articles published in various law reviews.
Chase faculty member and adviser for the Chase Moot Court Team, Lawrence Rosenthal, said the student’s willingness to work is one of the things that puts Chase above the rest. He said the team spent hours each week preparing for the competition and some of the students even wanted to stay even longer.
The Chase Moot Court Team swept every major category in the Robert F. Wagner Labor and Employment Law Moot Court Competition March 7 – 9, including best preliminary round team, best respondent brief and best final round oral advocate, given by student Scott Van Nice. Van Nice along with teammates Benjamin Lewis and Marci Palmieri, went on to become the national champions in the competition.
Rosenthal said Van Nice was the first deaf student in the history of the competition and traveled with two interpreters, one to sign for him and the other to speak for him, Rosenthal said. He added that Van Nice was one of the students who always wanted to work just a little bit longer.
Another Moot Court Team from Chase, the adoption law team, won the third annual Adoption and Child Welfare Law Moot Court Competition held March 14 and 15 in Columbus, Ohio.
Students Sara Caudill, Bethanie Chaney, Lindsay Lawrence and Tressa Milburn, coached by professor Emily Janoski, won the national championship. Sara Caudill won best brief and best final-round oral advocate.
Another team representing Chase and coached by Rosenthal at the competition included students Jordan Dallas, Becky Cull and Christopher Tapia. They won runner-up for best brief and were national quarter-finalists.
Representatives of Chase College of Law also did well at the American Association for Justice Student Trial Advocacy Competition. Two NKU teams of four people participated, and both of them made it to the semi-finals.
Ian Stegmaier, a fourth year part-time student, was on a team with Megan Mersch, Patrick Healy and Lindsay Lawrence. He said the teams owed their success to a good work ethic, ability to think on their feet and their coaches. “You can tell other teams haven’t been coached as well as we have,” he said.
At the competition, each team of four was sub-divided into groups of two and given a packet of information about their case. One group of two would act as the defendant; the other would be the plaintiff. The team would then prepare for and try the case as if it were real.
“The hardest part for me is preparation,” Stegmaier said. “After that you can start to have some fun with it.”
Chase students don’t just excel in the courtroom. Recently five students have had articles accepted for publication in various law reviews.
Student Lindsay Niehaus won second place in the 2007 – 08 Louis Jackson National Student Writing Competition in Employment and Labor Law. She wrote “The Fifth Amendment Disclosure Obilgations of Government Employers When Interrogating Publc Employees.
Sue Irion had an article accepted for publication in Gonzaga Law Review, Jamie Ireland in the Colorado Law Review, Candace Budy in the Tennessee Journal of Business Law and Dustin Riddle with co-author Rick Bales was published March 24 in 82 St. John’s Law Review 699.
