When one thinks of Chicago law schools, the big guys with the national reputations like the University of Chicago and Northwestern immediately come to mind, usually followed by De Paul, Loyola and John Marshall.
But when Reuben & Proctor recently decided to embark on an ambitious computer training program for its lawyers, the firm headed to a frequently forgotten member of the educational fraternity: Illinois Institute of Technology Chicago-Kent College of Law. It wasn`t necessarily a surprise.
”Kent,” as folks generally refer to this nearly 100-year-old institution, is shedding a certain obscurity as it wins significant plaudits from the city`s legal community, and from the likes of Supreme Court Chief Justice Warren Burger for instituting programs of national note.
For example, Reuben & Proctor cut a deal where it could use the school`s new computer laboratory equipped with 35 PC/XTs donated by International Business Machines Corp. at an estimated cost of $350,000. Says firm partner David Maher, ”It is the best computer training facility in the city–some would say of any law school–and the school has given a lot of seminars. It`s a magnificent physical facility and they have a very good staff.”
Kent`s Center for Law and Computers was established three years ago with IBM`s sponsorship. It was expanded to include courses for all entering freshman after a study showed that those who frequently used the lab to outline and analyze their legal materials performed up to one-third of a grade higher than was predicted by their extrance exams.
But computer instruction is not Kent`s only innovation. The law school is believed to be the only one in the country operating its own fee-generating law offices, with eight attorneys supervising some 60 students. The ”Law Offices of IIT/Chicago-Kent,” as it is called, has, in the past, represented mass murder John Wayne Gacy on his appeal; Jackie Wilson, one of two brothers convicted of killing two Chicago policemen; and inmates charged with murder in connection with the Pontiac prison riot.
It also was the first in Illinois to successfully use a novel and controversial defense, winning acquittal on attempted murder charges for Vietnam veteran Jearl Wood by arguing that he was suffering from delayed Vietnam stress syndrome when he shot his boss in the back with a 45-caliber automatic at Ford Motor Co.`s Far South Side plant.
Although it isn`t unusual for law schools to offer clinical education to students under the supervision of licensed attorneys, most law school clinics offer services only to qualified indigent or low-income people and restrict their practice to noncriminal matters like divorce or poverty law issues.
”We are the first, and I believe still the only one, to run an actual law firm within a law school,” said Dean Lewis Collens. ”We went out and found eight practicing attorneys and asked them to bring their practices into the law school. We pay them a faculty salary but the law offices handle fee-paying cases, which enables them to attract a broader range of cases.”
Students interview witnesses and clients, prepare research memos and sit beside the lead lawyer at the trial. A good number, says Collens, ”can`t handle it,” finding some felony cases, like murder, too draining emotionally. For others, it`s a powerful experience, which helps develop a sense of professional responsibility.” Burger has praised the program as one of the nation`s most noteworthy.
Kent is also apparently the only law school with a mandatory three-year writing and research program that emphasizes communication skills. (Most schools have only a one-year program.) Moreover, the school offers innovative programs in environment and energy law and a graduate tax program developed by senior partners at eight big Chicago firms and by a top executive at McDonald`s Corp.
Under Collens, Kent has tried to emphasize the novel without diminishing its commitment to a traditional curriculum. For the third time in the last four years, its trial advocacy team has made the national finals, which gets underway later this month in San Antonio.
While some law schools are scurrying for new applicants because of declining enrollment nationwide, Kent is voluntarily cutting its enrollment 25 percent (to 250 from 325), beginning with next year`s entering class, in order to maintain what it deems quality instruction. If recent history repeats itself, 90 percent of those students will find jobs within nine months of graduation.
PLAYERS STRIKE OUT WITH LOCAL ARBITRATORS
What Sports Illustrated tabbed ”Dizzy Days at the Arbitration Table”
just ended with some major league baseball players able to trigger a contractual oddity allowing them to name a price they think they`re worth in a one-year pact. The team names another and an arbitrator must then pick one of the two. Thirty-five cases went to arbitration. Owners won 20 and players, 15. Once again, University of Chicago Law School Professor Bernard Meltzer and Northwestern`s Stephen Goldberg were the lone Chicago arbitrators and, alas, did not lose any favor with the sport`s management class, though tears are not in order for the rank-and-file. In Meltzer`s only decision, he gave Houston pitcher Frank DiPino the $280,000 the club sought, not the $380,000 the player desired. As for Goldberg, he was the only arbitrator nationwide who handled several cases and did not end up splitting or coming close to splitting his rulings. (Of course, arbitrators fervently deny any attempt to balance rulings and thus curry favor with both the union and owners and get rehired the next year.) He ruled for management all three times, in the cases of Seattle pitcher Mike Moore ($400,000 rather than $530,000), Cleveland shortstop Julio Franco ($575,000, not $740,000) and Houston pitcher Bill Dawley ($325,000 instead of $435,000).
DIVORCE LAWYERS SHOW WHAT THEY`RE MADE OF
The legions of citizens with underwhelming respect for that generally bloodless species known as the divorce lawyer would love the cat fight playing out here involving two presumably high-powered members of the species, James Friedman of Chicago and James P. O`Flarity of West Palm Beach, Fla. At issue is the cosmically significant matter of the presidency of the relatively obscure American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers, which was formed some 20 years ago to try to elevate the notion of a divorce attorney as something more than a well-compensated keyhole peeper.
This headline-escaping flap stems from Friedman`s nomination of himself and subsequent election as president by the group`s board of governors at its annual meeting in Chicago last November. The election was unusual because O`Flarity had been duly chosen ”president-elect” in November, 1983. Since the academy`s inception, each president-elect automatically succeeded to the office of the president. At a Feb. 2 board meeting, the academy`s governors split 14-14 on who was the rightful big cheese. In a truly magnanimous gesture consistent with the selfless instincts of the species, Friedman then cast the deciding vote in his own behalf, prompting O`Flarity to file suit. Judge Benjamin Mackoff waded through the legal briefs, including one for O`Flarity by fellow Floridian and former American Bar Association President William Reece Smith Jr., and ruled for the out-of-towner.
Well, word of this Daley Center ruling apparently cast quite a pall in sunny Palm Springs, Calif. Although it`s unknown if local residents Bob Hope and Frank Sinatra canceled golf dates as a result, it is clear that Friedman, there preparing for the academy`s annual meeting this week, was not raising a glass of vintage Taitinger champagne in Mackoff`s honor. Despite the judge`s ruling, the academy`s board of governors on Sunday appointed another Chicago lawyer, Arthur Berman, the new president-elect, to preside over this week`s affair until the mess can be cleared up. Smith and Chicago`s Jay Canel have been pleading O`Flarity`s cause, while Friedman, a partner at Schiff Hardin & Waite, has utilized Richard Franch, Jed Mandel and Susan Cohen of Jenner & Block.
BRIEFS: Former U.S. Atty. Thomas Foran became ill in court while defending hotel owner John Coleman, rather notorious for shortchanging business partners, and underwent what is said to have been successful triple bypass heart surgery at Northwestern University Hospital. . . . U.S. District Judge Charles Kocoras, who ordered former Chicago Ald. William Carothers, two sons and a fourth man to pay more than $152,000 for threatening and beating up a political opponent and his allies, awards fees and costs to the victors in the case: $36,200 to Robert Graham and Jim Geocaris of Jenner & Block; $16,300 to D`Ancona & Pflaum, where Geocaris had toiled for part of the case; and $517 to Jerry Esrig. Carothers is in a federal prison in Indiana, serving a three- year term for extortion and conspiracy. . . . John Roberts takes over as dean at De Paul University`s College of Law July 1. Roberts, dean at Wayne State University in Detroit since 1980, has been an associate dean at Yale University, and has also served as counsel to the U.S. Senate Committee on Armed Services and toiled at Washington`s Covington and Burling.
. . . Northwestern law students Mike Maduff and Neil Abramson topple the likes of Harvard and the University of California-Berkeley at the Baltimore finals of the ABA`s first national negotiation contest, but have to settle for second as South Texas Law School takes home the bacon. . . . The Corporate Counsel Center at Northwestern University`s School of Law sponsors an Employment Law Institute Wednesday and Thursday. . . . Warren Lupel, who represented Gary Dotson, joins Solomon, Rosenfeld, Elliot & Stiefel, as do Jeffrey Bunn, Erick Lieberman, Denise Norton and Donald Thompson.
