Traffic Court experience drives home vital advocacy skills

My new tie felt like a noose tightening around my neck. The suit chafed against me. I couldn’t breathe. My hands shook. Cold nausea rolled over me. But there was no backing out now.

I shuffled my evidence, my notes, anything to keep busy, occasionally glancing to the podium, knowing I would be standing there any minute. I wiped the sweat off my forehead and took a breath. Just breathe. You’ve prepared. You’re a smart, first-year law student. You’ll get through this.

A booming and commanding voice suddenly filled the courtroom: “All rise!”

Standing, I tried my best to keep terror from spilling across my face as the three judges walked down the aisle, their robes flowing, their faces masked in authority. I glanced at my client, looked back at the judges taking their seats, and made eye contact with the chief justice. I breathed. It was time for Traffic Court.

The KU Court of Parking Appeals, informally known as Traffic Court, is an interweaving of the two most fundamental fields necessary for effective courtroom performance: trial advocacy and oral argument. The first portion of Traffic Court proceedings – the trial advocacy stage – involves direct and cross-examination, use of exhibits, and making timely objections. After questioning, proceedings move to closing argument, or the oral advocacy phase. There, 1L attorneys must use appellate-level skills to persuade judges to adopt their version of the events and the law.

Traffic Court attorneys who diligently train in both of these disciplines are not only rewarded with mastering the art of Traffic Court, but naturally prepare themselves for more advanced levels of trial advocacy and oral argument, such as Moot Court, Trial Advocacy, Advanced Litigation, and even actual courtrooms and appellate arguments.

The dust settled on my first Traffic Court appearance. I won the first case and lost the second. But I knew I was hooked. After my first appearance, I argued another 10 cases my 1L year and won the position of chief defense my 2L year.

Today, in my third and final year of law school, I am scanning through emails from the Parking Department, dean, 1L Traffic Court attorneys, and my board members. I am chief justice, and I love every second of it.

Jake Lowenthal is a third-year KU Law student and Traffic Court chief justice.

Bigger than law school: Getting involved with the American Bar Association

The people who know me know I enjoy discussing the many trips I’m lucky enough to have taken while in law school thanks to the American Bar Association. Las Vegas, Toronto, and Puerto Rico immediately spring to mind as memorable destinations.

Such trips, and others, have been to fulfill my duties as an officer with the Law Student Division of the American Bar Association. Just as the KU Student Bar Association is the voice of law students at KU, the ABA Law Student Division is the voice of all law students. For the past two years, I have served as a member of the division’s Board of Governors—first as the editor of Student Lawyer, the division’s magazine, and currently as the secretary-treasurer.

My experience with the ABA began during my 1L year at fall orientation, where everyone was introduced to the organizations KU Law students could join. That spring I applied for and was appointed to the student editor position, where my background as a journalist served me well.

And it was an amazing experience. From my first meeting as a member of the board—which was at the Aria Hotel and Casino in splendid Las Vegas—I realized KU Law was one piece of a larger law school environment, and the challenges faced by KU Law students are the same challenges faced by law students throughout the country.

In addition to reporting on division actions, I interviewed exceptional law students, assisted in distributing division funds back to schools through funding programs, and collaborated to create a resolution that streamlined the structure of the division. And when my term as student editor ended—in breathtaking Puerto Rico, of all places—I decided there was more work for me to do.

Therefore, I ran and was elected as the secretary-treasurer, which is one of eight officer positions in the division. As the title would suggest, my primary duties are to keep division records and manage its funding programs.

I am fortunate to have been allowed to serve as part of the division’s leadership team for two years. But the most important thing I have taken from working with the ABA is there is always room for someone who wants to get involved. There is an ABA group for everyone. And getting involved is the key.

The ABA is bigger than law school. It’s bigger than any one state, jurisdiction, or practice area. The ABA encompasses every aspect of the legal profession. Because I chose to get involved, I have cultivated friendships, developed a nationwide network of contacts, traversed the country, endeavored to improve the law school experience for all law students, and spent two years having an almost indescribable amount of fun.

It has been an honor to serve in each of these positions. When my term officially ends at the ABA Annual Meeting in August, it will be a bittersweet moment. The Law Student Division has taught me about the profession and how vast it truly is. But it is the friendships, networking and teamwork that will make me a better lawyer. The entire experience has been at times surprising and always remarkable.

— Matt Gorney is a third-year KU Law student.

Why I Teach: Quinton Lucas

Editor’s Note: Today marks a new feature on the blog: the “Why I Teach” series, which profiles KU Law professors and gives you the opportunity to learn more about their backgrounds and teaching philosophies.

Quinton Lucas has compiled an impressive resume in a relatively short time – he’s been educated at two prestigious schools, appeared on a death penalty case, clerked for a Court of Appeals judge, and practiced as an associate at a leading small firm in Kansas City. Along the way, he has maintained his focus on shaping policy and creating societal change, ultimately leading him to join KU Law as the school’s youngest faculty member.

“One thing that I thought was particularly exciting about law teaching is that we have this fantastic opportunity to train advocates in all types of areas, and also to look at the state of certain issues, and be a player in areas of public policy,” he said.

A Midwest native, Lucas lived in Hutchinson and Kansas City before pursuing an undergraduate degree at Washington University in St. Louis. Although his professors encouraged him to enter academia, he decided to follow his lifelong interest in the legal profession and attend law school at Cornell, where he engaged in-depth with a range of issues and sharpened his skills.

“I had a professor who would notice you, even in a class of 100, and that was special,” he said. “Despite the fact that the professors were brilliant, they tried to make the classes accessible and interesting.”

Lucas impressed his professors early on and was asked to get involved in a death penalty case during his second year. He spent his entire winter break researching in Atlanta, and appeared before the Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles. Although the case ultimately ended with an execution, it taught him the importance of clinical opportunities and sparked a new way of thinking about broader issues. After graduation and his clerkship, he spent some time practicing business law and working with white-collar clients who faced stiff penalties. Again, he realized the importance of familiarizing himself with broader trends and advocating consistency, and he decided that the best place to do that was in the academic world.

“As I visited with a number of different law schools, I thought, ‘Where can I get a mix of so many people who are expert in their fields, who are amazing scholars, a place that also really cherishes strong teachers?’” he said. “Beyond that, a place that is, frankly, a well-run law school with a strong alumni network and people who really seem to like it. There’s something special about the civility that still exists in this market.”

In the end, he was drawn back to Kansas and joined KU Law last fall as a visiting professor, converting to an associate professor in January. Currently he teaches Administrative Law and Contracts, and strives to engage his students through a question-and-answer format, the Socratic method, and focusing on an individual student each class period.

“Teaching is a lot like practicing law,” he said. “You take sophisticated concepts and explain them to your audience, getting them to think about new arguments or approaches. I hope my courses give students the substantive background and the legal reasoning to help their clients in the future.”

Although he’s still a first-year professor, Lucas has already found himself impressed with numerous aspects of his new work setting. He noted the congeniality and caliber of his students, the many extracurricular opportunities available, and the breadth of career choices by alumni.

“KU Law is a community of alumni, teachers and students who love the place and try to make it a better place every day,” Lucas said. “And I wanted to be a part of that.”

For more information on Quinton Lucas, visit his faculty profile page.

Biodiversity Law In Paradise (1/15/2013)

Every year, the students in Biodiversity Law travel with Professor Andrew W. Torrance to the Virgin Islands (U.S. and British) for an intensive week-long fieldtrip. This is the dispatch from January 15, which originally appeared on Torrance’s blog Lexvivo.

The Biodiversity Law class began its first full day in the Virgin Islands with a voyage across the channel from the United States Virgin Islands to Jost van Dyke, a small, but beautiful part of the British Virgin Islands.

After clearing British immigration, we met Foxy Callwood, the founder of the Jost van Dyke Preservation Society, and Susan Zaluski, who has heroically led the Society for the last six years. Foxy and Susan shared with the class their insights in how to establish national parks and marine protected areas; monitor seabird breeding islands, including some of the largest in the world; eradicate destruction invasive species, such as mongoose, rats, cats, and goats; and protect endangered species, such as sea turtles and the Virgin Islands Tree Boa. A highlight of the day was anchoring off Sandy Cay (a perfect tropical island that was formerly Laurance Rockefeller), swimming to its beach, and then hiking throughout the entire island, which is rapidly reestablishing its natural character after the Society eradicated all its invasive rats.

Tomorrow the class heads to Botany Bay, the most biodiverse part of Saint Thomas, to hike its rainforests and snorkel its healthy coral reefs.

— KU Law Professor Andrew W. Torrance

Recovering liberal arts major: Law school teaching me ‘how to actually be useful to people’

KU Law 1L Jordan Carter

Liberal arts majors are among the worst kinds of people. I can say that because I am one. We think we know so much because of our well-rounded education, and we “just love learning” and don’t really have a life goal but “definitely want to help people.” For four years, I perfected the ivory tower lifestyle: highlight text for hours, draft needlessly wordy papers analyzing social issues, and spend afternoons in class talking about my feelings about people and their problems.

For the most part, I enjoyed my classes and felt like I was doing the appropriate amount of collegiate thinking. And the one tangible pro I got from my liberal arts education is an endurance for reading. Textbooks, novels, Xeroxed handouts – I read and I read and I came to law school ready to tackle the sheer amount of pages we would be assigned. I mean, as prepared as one can be because the reading your 1L year is still a whole new level, like being an impressive college athlete and then trying to play your first pro game only to be destroyed and embarrassed by someone who actually knows what he’s doing. But compared to law students who spent their undergrad doing problem sets or labs or whatever non-liberal arts majors do in their buildings, I at least felt mildly prepared to sit down and read when I got here.

What I was not prepared for was feeling like every single drop of information was important. I’m just gonna put it out there: I doubled majored in psychology and women and gender studies. Psychology is a contender for the most useless major one can have. It is pretty easy and somewhat interesting, but unless you’re planning on getting a Ph.D., there is just no realistic point in getting the major. As for women and gender studies, well, let me just say I’ve endured my fair share of eye rolls and sexist jokes after revealing that factoid. The women and gender studies program at WashU was actually awesome, and I loved the professors and my fellow classmates. It was a quirky, liberal, intelligent cohort of people who genuinely cared about the injustices of the world and could speak extremely articulately about them.

But that’s about all we could do. I knew tons about the problems people faced and very little about any solutions. My senior year, I volunteered at a domestic violence court in St. Louis. The court process was a fascinating first-hand experience for me, as I expected. What I did not expect was how much the clients there would value me. I brought only two things: a binder full of phone numbers (clearly, I want to make a timely “binder full of women” quip here, but my brain is too fried from outlining to think of anything clever) and a super basic understanding of how the court process works. That is all I had to offer, and that is way more than what these women had before they got there. The legal system is confusing and intimidating and overwhelming, and that’s just how I felt as a privileged volunteer with relatively easy access to the court who spent a few hours a week there because I wanted to “help people.” Compare that to what the process is like for a single mom, an immigrant, a scared teenager, and the countless other people who find themselves in the courthouse with few resources and an insane amount of stress.

One of the reasons I came to law school was to figure out how to actually be useful to people. I’m not saying I want to save the world, because that’s such an annoying liberal arts thing to say. To be honest, I have no clue what I want to do. But for the first time in my educational career, I feel like every class I am taking is teaching me practical skills. Law school is way more useful than my undergrad experience. It’s also way harder and way less fun (can’t win ’em all). After spending hours in Green Hall slogging away and sipping surprisingly delicious hot chocolate from the vending machine, it is a real comfort to feel like no matter what job I end up doing, I will come equipped with a solid understanding of the law. When we are presented with a problem in class, we are also presented with a solution, or at least ways to start thinking of one. I am learning the real steps that real lawyers take to figure out real problems, and that’s empowering (and makes me feel better about these student loans).

I am loving law school, but I have fond memories of the liberal arts classes of days gone by. They instilled in me an endless curiosity and a desire to engage with people outside of my limited world. They helped me express myself and ask thoughtful questions. Clearly, they also allowed me to indulge a love for wordy, complex sentences, a love that Lawyering Skills is sadly trying to suck away from me. Legal writing may try to reduce my word count, but you better believe that my passion for adverbs and parenthetical asides won’t die so easily. After all, I am still, at my core, a liberal arts major.

— Jordan Carter is a KU Law 1L and Student Ambassador who attended Washington University in St. Louis. Email her at jaecarter@gmail.com.

Keeping it together: Surviving my first semester as a law school parent

angell and kids

When I made the decision to go back to school, I knew it wouldn’t be easy: I’m also the mother of two boys, ages four and six. Making the decision to head back into school is a huge one, and I am eternally grateful to those that shared advice with me, so here are a few things that have worked for my family:

Stay Organized

Google Calendar saves us on a daily basis. My husband and I share access to the same calendar through our Gmail accounts, and we sync it to our phones. He teaches music and keeps a busy schedule with PTA programs and concerts, while my life is consumed with study groups and law school events. Couple that with a first grader in after school activities – yeah, we’re busy. But the calendar keeps us organized so we always know where the other is…and who has the kids!

Find Your Tribe

I thank my lucky stars that I have found other first-year students in the same student-parent boat. Having someone truly understand the daily struggles is amazing. We’ve all bailed each other out with emergency childcare and our kids love playing together. We share our small victories and vent when we need to.

Ask for Recommendations

Relocating is stressful, but you can take away some of the unknowns. Before I arrived in Lawrence, I asked for and received great recs for daycares, schools, and pediatricians. Other parents are usually happy to give recommendations, so just ask.

Plan the Week

Nothing satisfies my Type-A, over-organized self more than having everything for the week planned out on Sunday night. Now, this doesn’t always happen, but when it does it makes the week suck less. Meal planning keeps us from eating too much Pizza Shuttle (thought the kids think that’s quite alright.) Picking out clothes for the kids for the week prevents my six-year-old from coming downstairs in shorts on a 40-degree day.

Let Things Go

I’m not gonna lie, I’m terrible at this. Laundry piles eat away at my soul, but yesterday I resisted the urge to fold and I let it go. Now, rest assured that if you knock on my door I will manage to hide it all in the basement before you walk in. But, as my husband was quick to point out, at least it’s clean.

Amanda Angell, 1L, is a KU Law student ambassador. Reach out to her at amanda.angell@ku.edu.