Category Archives: U.Miami

So I read this interesting blog post by Denise Howell, Google as KM, about how she uses Google’s RSS feed of news items about her firm to find out what her fellow lawyers are doing. And I figure, why not set up an RSS feed of Google news items about UM Law? And right away I score a hit about something big I didn’t know about: University of Miami School of Law Assistant Dean Marni Lennon — one of the most public-spirited members of the UM community — has been selected as the recipient of the 2005 Outstanding Law School Faculty or Staff Award from Equal Justice Works.

Lennon serves as Assistant Dean of Students, Director of Disability Services and Director of H.O.P.E., Helping Others Through Pro Bono Efforts. She received her undergraduate degree from the University of Southern California and graduated from UM’s School of Law in 1995.

Lennon established H.O.P.E. in 1998, offering a program to assess the desire for a public interest service within the law school community. The response was overwhelming, and the program has since grown to include multiple legal advocacy and community outreach projects.

Equal Justice Works will present the award to Lennon Oct. 27 during its national conference in Washington, D.C. The award honors a law school faculty or staff member who plays a pivotal role in developing a public interest ethic among law students.

Marni was a student in the first law class I ever taught, Civil Procedure I, fourteen years ago. She did well, and I think she’s forgiven me.

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The Padilla Event Monday night will be followed on Tuesday by a debate on “The Future of the Supreme Court” sponsored by People For the American Way and the Miami Chapter of the Federalist Society, in coordination with the University of Miami School of Law and the President’s Office of the University of Miami. Here are the details:

TUESDAY, OCTOBER 11, 2005
12:30-2:00 P.M.
LIMITED LUNCH WILL BE SERVED FREE OF CHARGE

University of Miami Law School,
1311 Miller Drive, Room 352

Welcome Speaker: Donna Shalala, President, University of Miami
Panelists Include:

• Ralph Neas, President, People For the American Way
• Edward Whelan III, President, Ethics and Public Policy Center
• Karen Pearl, Interim President, Planned Parenthood Federation of America
• Wendy Long, Legal Counsel, Judicial Confirmation Network
• Moderator: Maria Elena Salinas, Univision

For questions and RSVPs please contact Raquel Simon at rsimon@pfaw.org, 850-877-0307, or Clayton Hackney at CH8640@students.law.miami.edu, 305-491-1062.

I suspect the name “Miers” may get mentioned.

And no, I’m not going to turn this blog into a local calendar, it’s just coincidence.

There’s going to be a particularly interesting event Monday night at our law school. LAFAC and the American Constitution Society have invited Andy Patel, who is Jose Padilla’s lawyer, to speak on “Lawyering Terrorism After September 11th: Litigation Strategy in the Jose Padilla Case”. He’ll be joined by Prof. Stephen Vladeck who is also a member of the Padilla defense team. Prof. Mario Barnes will act as Moderator.

The event will be held Monday, October 10, 5:00 p.m., Room F209 here at UM Law, and there will be a reception afterwards, at 6:30 p.m., in the Faculty Meeting Room.

Just in case you are trying to e-mail a member of the UM Law faculty, all UM faculty (and most staff but not student) email accounts have been down all day, and intermittently down yesterday. If someone knows when it will be fixed, they are not telling. We are told it is a hardware issue, but no more than that.

You can still reach me via my law.tm address, but mail to me at law.miami.edu is in cyber-purgatory somewhere.

Maybe we should outsource?

Update (8:30pm) It is showing signs of life now. Grrrr.

Googling for a phone number to call to ask for help with a balking online journal collection (the last page of EVERY article was missing!), I stumbled on Richter Library Web Services Dream Design, a blog with this great mission statement:

This weblog focuses on the University of Miami Richter Library’s website and strategies for thinking about ‘visionary’ possibilities for web services. It encourages ‘dreaming’ about ‘academic library’ information architectures so that dreams become reality and Richter sets the model for a next generation of academic library web services.

It’s a real pity it hasn’t been updated since last April, because I think this is the sort of thinking-out-loud that user-centered service-oriented institutions like libraries (and law schools!) should be doing.

I’ve just received an e-mail announcing that,

UM’s Coral Gables Campus Closed Monday
Medical Campus and Rosenstiel Campus Open for Business

The University of Miami’s Coral Gables campus will remain closed on
Monday, August 29, to continue campus clean-up, and all classes,
activities, and events are canceled for Monday.

May as well go ahead and finish writing the lecture….

Incidentally, the law library will be open tomorrow, as will Subway. So there will be air conditioning and food of a sort.