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Ward Farnsworth, associate dean for academic affairs at Boston University School of Law, has been named dean of the School of Law at the University of Texas at Austin. Farnsworth’s appointment, effective June 1, fills the position currently held by Interim Dean Stefanie Lindquist.

On Tuesday, May 8, 2012, beginning at 7:30 p.m., the University of Texas Tower was illuminated in burnt orange with lit windows spelling out a "No. 1" in recognition of the School of Law’s national championship at the twentieth annual Conrad B. Duberstein Bankruptcy Moot Court Competition, held at St. John's University in Queens, New York, March 9-12, 2012.

Five students at the University of Texas School of Law have been selected to receive Baron & Budd Public Interest Summer Fellowships for the coming summer. The program will provide each fellow with a $4,250 stipend to work fulltime for at least ten weeks providing legal services to underrepresented individuals or communities.

Six students at the University of Texas School of Law have been selected as the 2012 Whitehurst Public Interest Summer Fellows. The fellowships are made possible by a gift from Bill, ’70, and Stephanie Whitehurst, and are administered by the William Wayne Justice Center for Public Interest Law at the Law School. The fellowships are awarded annually to outstanding students between their second and third years of law school to support their summer public-interest work.

In February, students from the Sheffield Society met with Judge Edward C. Prado, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. Prado, a 1972 graduate of the Law School, serves as the community fellow for the Sheffield Society, which is one of eight societies in the Law School’s Society Program. Prado was joined for the talk by his current law clerks, Derek Linkous, Michelle Parthum, Amit Vora, and Alex Zolan, as well as third-year student Kate Nanny, ’12, who will clerk for Prado after graduating from the Law School.

The Chancellors honor society celebrated its one-hundredth anniversary with a Chancellors reunion and celebration on April 13, 2012.

Alumni from all over the country came to Austin for Reunion 2012, held April 20–21, at the Law School. Here are some photos from the festivities.

Barbara Bintliff, director of the Tarlton Law Library/Jamail Center for Legal Research and Joseph C. Hutcheson Professor in Law at the Law School, has recently won three different awards in recognition of her work, two from the American Association of Law Libraries and one from her alma mater, the University of Washington School of Information.

Bill Beardall, director of the Law School’s Transnational Worker Rights Clinic, has been honored with Harvard Law School’s 2012 Gary Bellow Public Service Award. Each year the student body of the Harvard Law School votes to present the Bellow award to an alumnus or alumna in recognition of the recipient’s work to achieve social justice through public-interest law.

Eleven University of Texas School of Law students have been selected by the Bernard and Audre Rapoport Center for Human Rights and Justice as Rapoport Center Fellows for summer and fall 2012. They will work with nongovernmental and intergovernmental organizations in destinations as diverse as Mumbai, India; Washington, D.C.; and Guatemala City, Guatemala. Their projects include investigating cases of disappeared persons, implementing corporate accountability campaigns, assisting in genocide prosecutions, researching litigation on prisoners’ rights, and building the legal capacity of impoverished populations.

On April 23, 2012, the Law School hosted the final round of the 2012 Thad T. Hutcheson 1L Moot Court Competition in the Eidman Courtroom. Finalists Michael Kelso and Courtney Johnson argued before a venerable panel of jurists.

The Student Bar Association announced the recipients of the 2011–2012 Teacher and Administrator of the Year Awards at a ceremony at the Law School on April 23, 2012. These awards, determined entirely from student votes, honor distinguished faculty and staff members for their significant contributions to the Law School community.