Mock Trial Winner Announced

by Peter Jetton

The Moot Court Board at the Washington and Lee University School of Law continued its busy fall schedule on Friday, November 13, 2009 as the Mock Trial competition drew to a close. Top honors went to Margaret Hannapel ‘11L. Bill Larson ‘11L was the Mock Trial runner-up. Hannapel was the runner-up at this year’s John W. Davis Appellate Advocacy competition.

Margaret Hannapel '11L

Professor Morgan E. Scott, Jr., of-counsel to Woods Rogers, LLP and the former first Assistant United States Attorney in the Western District of Virginia, judged the competition. Other students participating in the final round were Sara McManus ‘10L and Claire Morneau ‘11L. Victoria Corder ‘10L and Robert Dean ‘10L served as administrators for this year’s trial.

The Mock Trial Competition provides students the opportunity to plan litigation strategies, practice litigation techniques, prepare witnesses, and conduct a complete trial. Each competitor conducts one direct and one cross-examination and presents either an opening statement or closing argument. The competitors are also responsible for making and responding to objections while witnesses testify and presenting oral motions before trial.

Need Help With Your W&L Law Application?

Well, it’s that time of year again. We know a great many of you are currently hard at work on your W&L Law application, and, consequently, we thought it would be a good time to reprise a few of the application-related blog entries we’ve posted over the past few weeks. Need help with your personal statement? Wondering who you should ask to write your second letter of recommendation? Wondering if you should write our optional essay? Not sure if you need to report those moving violations? Our thoughts on/answers to these questions (and many more) can be found in the posts linked below. We also encourage all applicants to also review our webpage detailing our application process, as well as our Frequently Asked Questions webpage, for answers to other common applicant queries:

Personal Statement

Letters of Recommendation

Optional Essay

Inside Our Application – Section II, Question 1

Professionalism Expectation

Are you taking the December LSAT? February LSAT? Wondering when you should begin submitting your application materials? Check out our recent blog post on the subject.

Still have questions? Have other questions? Please feel free to send us an email at LawAdm@wlu.edu.

W&L Law ACS Named Chapter of the Week

The W&L Law American Constitution Society (ACS) chapter was recently recognized by the national ACS organization as “Chapter of the Week,” and this honor is certainly well-deserved. It may be only October, but our chapter has already sponsored a number of extremely successful campus events with even more slated for the coming weeks.

On October 13th, ACS hosted the always popular Supreme Court preview in which several W&L Law professors discussed a few of the compelling cases that will be before the Supreme Court of the United States in the upcoming term. To read more about this event, as well as listen to audio commentary from the participating professors, click here. Video of the event is available below:

Last Friday, the group sponsored two events including a drug policy panel discussion entitled, “Drugs: Science, Reality and Legality.” As part of the discussion, Dr. Stuart Finkelstein, M.D., a leading addiction specialist in the United States, explained the science and reality of drugs and addiction, and Washington and Lee Law Professor Erik Luna presented the legal aspects of drug policy. The speakers also contrasted the current legal and medical responses to drugs in the United States with approaches in the rest of the developed world. Later that evening, on a slightly more lighthearted note, the group hosted a Trivia Night at a downtown Lexington eatery that was open to all members of the W&L Law community.

Lastly, the group will be sponsoring two events next week that will allow W&L Law students to explore the relevance of story-telling to the effective practice of law. Next Wednesday, November 4th, noted storyteller, Noa Baum, an internationally known, professional storyteller who was born and raised in Jerusalem during the turmoil of the ’60s and ’70s, will tell the story of the friendship she developed with a Palestinian woman while living in America, a narrative entitled, “A Land Twice Promised.” In this one-woman theater production, Ms. Baum will weave together the story of their developing friendship and the experiences of their mothers–two generations of women living on opposite sides of a long-standing struggle.

The following day, Ms. Baum will lead a workshop, “Creative Lawyering – Storytelling to Develop Innovative Thinking” in which participating law students will have an opportunity to enhance their ability to hear and tell the stories of their clients, explore and expand their creative self-expression and thinking, examine the process of storytelling and its relation to facts and develop collaboration and team building skills.

We would like to congratulate our ACS chapter on its recent accolades. For a listing, as well as detailed descriptions, of our many student organizations, click here. If you are a prospective student who is interested in learning more about what our many student organizations have planned for the coming year, click here.

If Life Gives You the Lemon Test…

by Peter Jetton

Well, you know the rest. The three prongs of the Lemon test took center stage during the 2009 John W. Davis Appellate Advocacy competition, and Chief Judge Michael Luttig, formerly of the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals and now Executive Vice President of Boeing, was none too pleased.

The problem for the competition involved a war memorial on federal land featuring a cross, and all the competitors faced tough questioning from the three judge panel on the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment and just what case or test should guide the judges’ decision in the case. There seemed to be no clear answer for the panel, which included Irene M. Keeley of the Northern District of West Virginia and Colonel Mark Johnson of the Court of Military Appeals. Luckily, they didn’t have to decide the case, only who made the best argument. But that could not have been easy either.

In the end, Mike Gardner ‘10L was named Best Oralist of the competition, and Margaret Hannapel ‘11L was named Runner-up. Kiyomi Bolick ‘10L and Patrick Chamberlain ‘10L also argued in the final round. Bolick and her writing partner Marti McCaleb ‘10L took home Best Brief awards, and Chamberlain and Joshua Shaw were named Runner-up for their brief. Below, you can watch Gardner’s winning argument. A video of the entire competition is available on W&L Law’s YouTube channel.

W&L Law in Atlanta

Another week, another LSAC Forum. It’s just that time of year.

Today and tomorrow (October 23 and 24) mark the occasion of the annual Law School Admissions Council (LSAC) Forum in Atlanta, Georgia. This year’s Forum will be held at the Hyatt Regency Atlanta located at 265 Peachtree Street, NE in downtown Atlanta. We are Table #604, and W&L Law’s Assistant Director of Admissions, Brett Twitty, will be in attendance. If you will be in the Atlanta area this Friday or Saturday, we sincerely hope you will take time out of your day to stop by our table, pick up some admissions literature and ask any questions you might have about W&L Law, life in Lexington, Virginia or law school generally.

If you are thinking about law school, Law School Forums are an excellent resource for you. Most people spend anywhere from several hours up to an entire day at a Forum. If you plan ahead, you will get the most out of your forum experience. This allows time to attend live workshops as well as time to talk with law school representatives. Prelaw advisors and LSAC Candidate Services representatives are also available to answer your questions on site. Admission to all Law School Forums is free. By preregistering, you can save time at the forum, and receive reminders and updates about the forums, including other great things to do in the cities where forums are being held.

The LSAC Atlanta Forum schedule is as follows:

Friday – October 23 – Noon – 5:00 p.m.

Saturday – October 24 – 10:00 a.m. – 4:00 p.m.

To register for the Atlanta Forum, click here. We hope to see you on the road!

Inside Our Application…Section II Question 1

by Brett Twitty

Every year we receive a number of questions about different aspects of our application, but Section II, Question 1 seems to inspire the most emails, phone calls and general anxiety. This is the portion of our application that addresses prior arrests, citations, prosecutions, etc., and I thought it would be helpful to address a few of the most common queries here.

We know that we admissions officers don’t exactly make this whole application thing easy on you. It seems like every school asks for slightly different information. One school cares about moving violations. Another school doesn’t. What’s an applicant to do?

First and foremost, read closely. Before you even begin filling out our application, I would encourage you to read the questions and instructions once through. Every law school’s application is slightly different from the next, and we regularly receive applications that completely disregard our instructions and formatting requirements. Inattention to basic detail is a factor we consider in evaluating your application because lawyers are charged with enforcing rules (many of which are written in fine print). A demonstrated inability to heed simple instructions is cause for concern when we contemplate your potential as a member of the legal profession.

On to Section II, Question 1. It reads:

“Have you ever been cited, ticketed, taken into custody, arrested or prosecuted for, or charged with, any violation of law (other than (i) citations for parking violations and (ii) arrests, charges or convictions that have been expunged in accordance with statutory provisions on expungement in the applicable jurisdiction)?”

With respect to non-automotive issues, you are required to report an incident unless it has been expunged from your record in accordance with statutory provisions on expungement in the applicable jurisdiction.

In the automotive realm, we don’t care about parking tickets (a relief to a great many of you, no doubt), but we require that you disclose moving violations. I repeat: Disclose moving violations – speeding tickets (and all other types). We know this differs from some other law schools. To summarize: We want to know about everything EXCEPT parking tickets and any arrests, charges or convictions that have been expunged. Unless your particular infraction falls into either of the two aforementioned categories, you will need to disclose the offense on your application.

However, applicants are sometimes unsure about whether a particular violation was actually expunged. If you find yourself in such a predicament, I would encourage you to go ahead and report it. And this axiom extends beyond this Section II, Question 1. With respect to all the questions asked in Section II of our application, we recommend the following approach: When in doubt, disclose. Not quite sure if that open container violation was expunged? Disclose. Not sure if that reckless driving charge is still on your record? Disclose. You get the idea.

If you answer “yes” to any of the questions in Section II, you have an opportunity to explain in full detail the circumstances surrounding the infraction as well as its adjudication and resolution. (As our application instructions indicate, “If you answered ‘yes’ to Questions 1-9, please electronically attach a full, detailed explanation including all relevant, details.”) We prefer to have as much information as possible when making an admissions decision, and we encourage you to provide us with as detailed an explanation of the offense in question as you can. If exact details are unavailable, disclose as much as your records and your memory allow.

As you may already know, Boards of Bar Examiners may require submission of law school applications as part of your application for admission to the bar. Any incongruity between your bar application - which is likely to require far more information than our application - and the offenses, infractions, citations, arrests, etc. covered under the language of Section II, Question 1 will likely be cause for heightened scrutiny. If you decide that our application does not require disclosure of a particular event, give careful thought to the prospect of defending that decision before the Board of Bar Examiners.

We know, from the countless emails and phone calls we receive each year, there is a great deal of applicant anxiety about this portion of our application. While it is difficult to generalize in admissions matters (given their largely subjective nature), it is exceedingly rare that disclosure (even of multiple infractions) under Section II Question 1 of our application precludes an applicant from viable consideration for admission. We encourage you to conduct yourself with complete transparency in all aspects of the application process and disclose any and all such offenses, even if you think its a close call. From our standpoint, revealing infractions early in the process is infinitely preferable to waiting until late in the admissions cycle to offer the required disclosure. Eleventh hour revelations of prior citations or arrests are often cause for considerable concern.

At the risk of belaboring the point: We fear some students are advised to withhold disclosure until after receiving an offer of admission - we urge you in the strongest terms to disregard this erroneous, yet no doubt well-intentioned, guidance.  This strategy is much more transparent than you might think, and an applicant’s apparent willingness to “game the system” is a factor we weigh, along with the incident(s) disclosed, as we reconsider an augmented file.

If you’ve already submitted your application, please note that you have an ongoing duty to update your file. When you sign and submit your application, you acknowledge that you have “a continuing duty to inform the Office of Admissions (during the period between the date of the application submission and either your withdrawal of your candidacy, a final and adverse decision on your application or matriculation) or the Associate Dean for Student Services (between the period between my matriculation and graduation) of any fact, event or circumstance that would make any information provided no longer accurate and complete.”

And in conclusion, we urge you to consider the application process the beginning of your legal career, and we encourage all applicants to read our thoughts on professionalism and its critical role in the application process before applying to W&L Law. Best of luck with your application, and, as always, if you have any questions, please feel free to contact us at LawAdm@wlu.edu.

So you’ve received your LSAT score…

by Brett Twitty

We know that those of you who sat for the September LSAT administration have now received your score and while some of you are likely very happy with your result, some of you are not. So, what to do?

First and foremost, please know that, while LSAT scores are important, at W&L Law, we do not use an admissions formula, and applicants are not ranked by any numerical index. While a candidate’s LSAT and GPA are important components of our decision, our application review process extends beyond the numbers.

All applications are reviewed by members of the Admissions Committee which selects applicants for admission to the School of Law on the basis of a comparative evaluation of the credentials submitted by the applicants.  We consider undergraduate grades and transcripts, LSAT scores, recommendations, significant employment or post-graduate educational experience, extracurricular activities, special skills and talents, community service involvement and the personal statement, to name a few factors weighed when an admissions decision is rendered.

Even still, some of you may be considering re-taking the LSAT. Below are the answers to a number of questions students taking a later LSAT administration often have.

Which LSAT should I take? December? February?

If you elect to retake the LSAT, we strongly recommend you sit for the December test administration. Scores are not reported from the February administration until very late in our application cycle – while some seats typically remain available, we have extended many offers and the competition for the remaining spots can be exceptionally keen.

If I choose to take the December LSAT, should I go ahead and begin sending in my application materials?

Yes. I repeat: Yes. If you choose to take the December LSAT, we encourage you to submit an application now, and begin sending along the various constituent parts of your Credential Assembly Service (CAS) report (transcripts, letters of recommendation) to the LSAC. By doing this, your file will be complete (and therefore eligible for review) much sooner than if you wait until you receive your results to begin the application process or to submit other required documents to the LSAC.

But I took the September LSAT. If I apply, how can I make sure my application is not reviewed before my new LSAT score is available?

If you’ve previously taken the LSAT, do not worry that we might somehow review your (technically complete) file before we receive your new LSAT score. Simply provide us, in Section I, Item 8 of our application, the date of your future LSAT administration, and we’ll hold your file for review until we receive scores from that test.

If my file is not complete until late December, won’t I be really far behind?

No. We make admissions decisions on a rolling basis, and there is no early action program. Each year, we wait until we have a critical mass of applications to begin our review (so that we might have some perspective on the kinds of applications we’re seeing in a given cycle), and while each year is just a little different than its predecessors, we don’t typically achieve this volume until November or December. We usually mail out our first admissions decisions around the first of the year and will continue to make decisions over the next few months. We guarantee every applicant whose file is complete by March 1 a decision by no later than the end of March/first week in April.

How will the Admissions Committee look at my multiple LSAT scores?

In accordance with our policy of reviewing all the materials submitted with an application, we look at each of your LSAT scores as we consider your candidacy. Absent a compelling reason that persuades us otherwise, we place the greatest weight on your highest score because statistical analysis indicates that a student’s highest score is the best predictor of his/her success at W&L Law. In accordance with American Bar Association guidelines, the median LSAT score for an entering class is calculated using matriculants’ highest LSAT score.

What if I change my mind and choose not to sit for the December LSAT?

If you change your mind and decide not to sit for the test after all, or decide to sit for a later test administration, simply contact us so that we can either remove the “hold” on your file or change the date on which we’ll check for a new score.

Have other questions? Please feel free to send us an email at LawAdm@wlu.edu.

Symposia Coming to a Law School Near You?

by Brett Twitty

At W&L Law, we are fortunate to have a number of great lectures and events on campus each and every year, and this year, we will host a number of symposiums addressing a broad range of timely legal issues and topics.

On Friday, November 6, 2009, we will host a symposium exploring what psychology, medical science, and the law can teach us about school-related violence such as that witnessed at Columbine and Virginia Tech and the appropriate institutional responses to such events. Speakers will include Gary Pavela, a well-know authority on campus suicide, and Lucinda Roy, an English professor at Virginia Tech who served as Seung-Hui Cho’s tutor. Conference organizer and W&L Law professor Ann Massie has written extensively on this topic and developed a legal theory placing at least some responsibility on campus personnel to intervene when a student is in crisis. This event is co-sponsored by our Journal of Civil Rights and Social Justice (JCRSJ) and the Frances Lewis Law Center. For more about this event, click here.

Our law school has recently announced a new partnership with the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) to explore the prevention and efficient management of investment treaty disputes. A joint Symposium is currently being organized to foster dialogue and collaboration between international investment law and dispute resolution experts in order to provide government officials, investors, practitioners, arbitrators, scholars and other stakeholders with tools to approach issues associated with investment treaty disputes.  The effort culminates in a conference at Washington and Lee University School of Law in Lexington, Virginia on March 29, 2010. To read more about this event, click here.

The Washington and Lee Law Review and our Journal of Energy Climate and the Environment (JECE) will also host symposia in the coming months. For more information on our four journals, click here.

For content from last year’s JECE Symposium on Climate Policy for the Obama Administration, click here. For a complete listing of prior symposia sponsored by the Frances Lewis Law Center, click here. And lastly, watch video of the Tucker Lecture (featuring noted constitutional law and federal civil procedure scholar Erwin Chemerinsky) from last year’s Law and Media Symposium:

Appellate Advocacy Finalists Named…

By Brett Twitty

After many late hours, long brief drafting sessions, several highly competitive rounds of oral argument and even an appearance before a three judge panel consisting of members of our faculty, the finalists for the annual John W. Davis Moot Appellate Advocacy Moot Court competition have been named. The finalists are:

Kiyomi Bolick
Patrick Chamberlain
Mike Gardner
Margaret Hannapel

The Final Round of oral arguments is scheduled for October 23, 2009, and, during this round, the four finalists will argue before a three judge panel of federal judges that will include Judge Michael Luttig, a W&L undergraduate alum and former Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals judge who was on President Bush’s “short list” for the Supreme Court.  Judge Luttig now serves as Chief Counsel for the Boeing Corporation in Chicago. The other judges are Irene M. Keeley of the Northern District of West Virginia and Colonel Mark Johnson of the Court of Military Appeals.

This year’s problem centers upon a fascinating First Amendment issue, and the finals should be exciting. At the conclusion of the final round, awards will be presented to the top oralists, to the winner(s) for Best Brief, and to the first runner-up for Best Brief.

As previously noted, the Appellate Advocacy competition is unlike any other Moot Court event, and our finalists deserve to be commended for the job they’ve done. Video of this year’s final round will be available soon after the completion of the competition here, as well as on the W&L Law Admissions Facebook page and on W&L Law’s YouTube channel. Until then, check out video of last year’s winning oral argument by current Moot Court Board member and Mock Trial administrator, Victoria Corder.

W&L Law Comes to College Park, MD

This Tuesday, October 13th, W&L Law will be on the campus of the University of Maryland – College Park  for the University of Maryland Law School Fair. The fair will take place from 2:00 – 5:00 p.m. in the Colony Ballroom at the Stamp Student Union and will be attended by representatives from nearly 70 law schools. This event is open to University of Maryland students and alumni. W&L Law’s Assistant Director of Admissions, Brett Twitty, will be in attendance, and we sincerely hope you will take time out of your Tuesday to stop by our table, pick up some admissions literature and ask any questions you have about W&L Law, life in Lexington or law school generally.

For more information about this year’s University of Maryland Law School Fair, click here. We hope to see you on the road!