Year: 2012

Six students have been selected to serve as Public Service Scholars for the 2012–2013 year with the William Wayne Justice Center for Public Interest Law at the University of Texas School of Law.

The academic ties between the University of Texas School of Law and the Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México (ITAM), which began with the establishment of a dual-degree program in 2011, are growing stronger. On October 19–20, 2012, a group of professors from the Law School traveled south to Mexico City, Mexico, to participate in a scholarly symposium with their ITAM colleagues.

Dean Ward Farnsworth traveled to Houston on October 24, 2012, to visit with Law School alumni.

The William L. Prosser Award will be presented to Jane Stapleton, Ernest E. Smith Professor in Law at the Law School, at the annual Association of American Law Schools meeting on January 6, 2013. The Prosser Award was created and presented to its first recipient, Leon Green, in 1974, and honors those who have made an outstanding contribution to the world of tort law scholarship.

The University of Texas School of Law is once again hosting the Information Technology Law and Energy Law module for the University of St. Gallen’s Executive Master of European and International Business Law MBL-HSG program from October 28 to November 2, 2012. Since 2001, the Law School has participated in this program, which holds a strong position in the landscape of executive law studies in Europe.

In recognition of National Pro Bono Week (October 21-27, 2012), the UT Law Pro Bono Program celebrates the pro bono efforts of members of the Law School community. Recently the Pro Bono Program spoke with Nicole Simmons, director of Public Service Programs in the UT Law Career Services Office, about her pro bono service.

Dean Ward Farnsworth traveled to Fort Worth on October 11, 2012, to visit with Law School alumni.

The Community Development Clinic at the University of Texas School of Law has released a report examining the City of Austin's ad hoc policy for dealing with tenant displacement issues in conjunction with the demolition of an apartment complex on East Riverside Drive last year that displaced more than five hundred low-income tenants. In order to better protect tenants who are displaced from future apartment demolitions, the report recommends the adoption of a uniform citywide tenant relocation ordinance with stronger enforcement mechanisms.

In celebration of National Pro Bono Week (October 21–27, 2012), the UT Law Pro Bono Program is pleased to announce that third-year student Megan Sheffield has been selected to serve as a Pro Bono Scholar for the 2012–2013 academic year. The Pro Bono Scholars Program provides scholarships to second- and third-year students who commit to working with the UT Law Pro Bono Program a minimum of three hundred hours during the academic year. The scholars plan and implement pro bono projects and conduct research and outreach that furthers the mission of the program.

The work of Community Development Clinic Director Heather Way and Lucille Wood, a Research Fellow in the William Wayne Justice Center for Public Interest Law, was featured in a recent article in the Austin American-Statesman. The article examines the recent release of a report, coauthored by Way and Wood with Professor Peter Ward, C.B. Smith Sr. Centennial Chair in U.S.-Mexico Relations and Professor of Public Affairs and Sociology at the University of Texas at Austin, examining the use and prevalence of “contracts for deed”—informal transactions for property that often have interest rates of as high as twenty percent—in Texas from 1989 to 2010.

On January 6–11, 2013, the Pro Bono Program will take thirty students as well as several faculty members to the Texas Rio Grande Valley during the second week of January. This will be Pro Bono in January’s fourth year in the Valley. This year the Pro Bono Program is partnering with the Texas Civil Rights Project in Austin to organize clinics in the San Juan area to assist pro se youth to petition for relief under the recently launched Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program. At the clinics, students and volunteer attorneys will help high-school DACA petitioners (aka “DREAMers”) complete forms and compile documents to file with United States Citizenship and Immigration Services.

In recognition of National Pro Bono Week (October 21–27, 2012), the UT Law Pro Bono Program celebrates law students’ volunteer efforts in underserved areas of Texas through Texas RioGrande Legal Aid’s Rural Outreach Initiative. Over the 2011–2012 school year, fourteen students assisted TRLA with the project. This fall nine students have volunteered, and students will also have the opportunity to work on the project in the spring.