Greetings from the UND School of Law!

May 1, 2009

Greetings from the UND School of Law!

As many of you know, in late February Dean Paul LeBel formally began his service as Vice President for Academic Affairs and Provost at UND. To fill the vacancy left by former UND Provost Dr. Greg Weisenstein, now president at West Chester University in Pennsylvania, UND President Robert Kelley named Paul to serve as the University’s VPAA and Provost until a permanent successor is named. While Paul serves as the University’s Provost, President Kelley and Paul have asked me to serve as the Dean of the School of Law.

I am deeply honored to have this opportunity to serve the School of Law, and I’d like to take a few moments of your time to introduce myself and to share with you my excitement about the School of Law. I am committed to working to achieve our vision of the School of Law being recognized as one of the very best small public law schools in the nation, as well as President Kelley’s vision of UND moving from great to exceptional.

Like so many of our alumni, my own connections to UND and the School of Law are strong. Along with three of my grandparents, both of my siblings, and many aunts, uncles, and cousins, I am a proud graduate of UND, earning my BA in anthropology with a minor in geology in 1990. I also grew up around UND, as my father, Tom Rand, has served as Assistant Dean and now Associate Dean in the College of Arts & Sciences for four decades. My grandfather, Al Rand, the long-time city clerk in East Grand Forks, was a graduate of the School of Law.

After college, I stayed in the Midwest for my legal education and to start my professional career. I graduated from the University of Michigan Law School in 1993. After law school, I clerked for Justice Beryl J. Levine on the North Dakota Supreme Court, and then for U.S. District Court Judge J.P. Stadtmueller in the Eastern District of Wisconsin. I also served as an Assistant U.S. Attorney in Milwaukee, prosecuting drug and violent crime and serving as a tribal liaison to the Menominee Nation in northern Wisconsin.

In 2000, as Professor Marcia O’Kelly retired, I was fortunate enough to be hired as a new Assistant Professor at the School of Law, working with then Dean Jerry Davis, and Professors Randy Lee, Tom Lockney, Patti Alleva, and Candace Zierdt, among others. Since 2000, I have taught the two-semester sequence of Constitutional Law in the first year, along with other related courses. I also designed and taught one of the first law school courses on Indian Gaming Law in the nation. Indian gaming law and policy has become my main area of scholarly research, and in 2002, along with Dr. Steven Light, a political science professor in UND’s College of Business and Public Administration, I founded the Institute for the Study of Tribal Gaming Law and Policy as a component of the School of Law’s Northern Plains Indian Law Center. With the incredible support we’ve received at UND, Steve and I have written three books and published dozens of articles on Indian gaming, twice testified before the U.S. Senate Indian Affairs Committee on tribal gaming regulation, and appeared on C-SPAN’s “Book TV” to discuss our first book. I have been proud to carry UND’s name throughout the state, region, and nation.

In 2004, when Paul LeBel was named Dean, he asked me to serve as Associate Dean. In the last five years, my administrative responsibilities have expanded to include the School of Law’s entire academic program, as well as faculty development in teaching and research and chairing our Faculty Selection Committee. I’ve been directly involved in the School of Law’s strategic planning, and, along with Paul, I was primarily responsible for coordinating our 2007 ABA re-accreditation process.

I have had a chance to visit with several of our friends and alumni about our numerous recent successes, including:

Admissions: Improvements in our admissions process and the increasing strength of our reputation have resulted in doubling the number of our applications in the last few years. As a point of comparison, the incoming first-year class in 2000 consisted of 64 students drawn from 217 applications; our current first-year class, the Class of 2011, consists of 83 students drawn from 470 applications. The Class of 2011 has a median LSAT of 151 and UGPA of 3.35, and nearly two-thirds entered law school in August 2008 as North Dakota residents. (And as of March, we’d already received more than 400 completed applications for the Class of 2012.) We are justifiably proud of our very bright and hard-working student body.
Student activities: Our students have multiple opportunities to be engaged with the School of Law, through co- and extra-curricular activities, skills competitions, and student organizations. This year, our student Trial Team won their regional competition for the second year in a row and went on to compete in the national competition, thanks in part to the excellent practice they had under so many of our distinguished alumni and friends who served as volunteer judges for the team. Our students also competed in several national moot court competitions, including the National NALSA moot court competition sponsored by the University of Colorado and the University of Denver (where one of our students received the competition’s “Best Oralist” award). In June, the North Dakota Law Review will present a one-day symposium on a very timely issue, “Corporate Governance and Shareholder Rights in a Time of Financial Crisis,” which will examine the North Dakota Publicly Traded Corporations Act. This free symposium features an array of distinguished panelists from North Dakota and across the country, and will be part of the SBAND Annual Meeting in Bismarck. And this year marks the 40th anniversary of our Legislative Intern program, in which students spend a semester in Bismarck working with the experienced attorneys at the North Dakota Legislative Council.
Pro bono & mentoring programs: Our mentoring program is a partnership among the School of Law, SBAND, and the North Dakota Association for Justice. The program pairs law students with attorneys based on career interests and location. The attorney mentors give students a window into the life of a practicing attorney, and also help students begin to build a professional network in North Dakota. The School of Law also is developing a pro bono program, through which law students will provide legal assistance to attorneys engaged in pro bono work or legal community service. The pro bono program not only gives students “hands on” legal experience, but also emphasizes the responsibility of legal professionals to serve the community.
Faculty hiring: In the past few years, we have hired a number of excellent new faculty, including Assistant Professors Greg Gordon (J.D., University of California at Berkeley), Josh Fershee (J.D., Tulane), Eric Johnson (J.D., Harvard), Keith Richotte (J.D., University of Minnesota; LL.M. University of Arizona), Kendra Fershee (J.D., Tulane), and Bill Johnson (J.D., University of Michigan). You can read more about all of our faculty – their backgrounds, their courses, their expertise – on our web site.

Faculty achievements: Our faculty are talented teachers, engaged scholars, and consummate legal professionals. In just the past handful of years, our faculty have won awards for excellence in teaching, professional and public service, scholarship, and student advising; designed new courses in the areas of professionalism, energy law, intellectual property, human rights, entertainment law, immigration, and employment law; published five books, a half-dozen book chapters, and dozens of articles on topics such as attorney ethics, environmental justice, low-income housing, eyewitness identification, national energy policy, sexual harassment claims, legal education, the laws of inheritance, tribal legal systems, and researching North Dakota law; presented continuing legal education seminars in Grand Forks, Fargo, and Bismarck for SBAND and local bar associations, as well as nationally and internationally; helped to found the Randy H. Lee Chapter of American Inns of Court; and held offices in local, regional, national, and international professional organizations.

Distinguished visitors, speakers, & events: Throughout the year, the School of Law and our student organizations host an impressive set of speakers on a variety of legal topics. Since 2008, our distinguished visitors, who spend several days with our students and faculty, have included Peter Pantaleo, the New York managing partner of DLA Piper and a UND law graduate, as our Distinguished Practitioner in Residence; U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit Judge Myron H. Bright as our Distinguished Jurist in Residence; and Judith Wegner, former Dean at the University of North Carolina School of Law, as our Distinguished Scholar in Residence. Two of our graduates, Col. Ward Johnson and Lt. Col. Colbey Vokey, offered students different perspectives on the constitutionality of the GTMO detentions; Judge Knut Petterson from Norway and Chief Judge Anita Fineday from the White Earth Tribal Court spoke about their court systems; David Aaron, general counsel for Alien Technology gave students a taste of patent litigation; and SBAND President David Maring encouraged students to pursue a litigation practice. And the North Dakota Supreme Court’s always well-received annual visit to the law school gave students an up-close look at the workings of the Court and appellate practice. Almost all of our events are free and open to the public, and often carry CLE credit for practicing attorneys in North Dakota and Minnesota. You can learn more about upcoming events at the School of Law on our web site.

These successes are the product of a talented and dedicated team of professionals: our innovative and accomplished faculty, our highly capable staff, and our tireless administrators, including Assistant Dean Jeanne McLean, Admissions & Records Director Ben Hoffman, Finance & Administration Director Julie Simon, Alumni & Public Relations Director Rob Carolin, Career Services Director Trish Hodny, Thormodsgard Law Library Director (and new Assistant Professor) Rhonda Schwartz, and our Development Officer with the UND Foundation, Mark Brickson. Together, everything we do at the School of Law has a singular set of goals: to serve our students, our state, our nation, and our world.

We don’t – and can’t – succeed alone, however. With your continued support, UND School of Law not only will maintain our current level of success, but will reach the next level of excellence – both as North Dakota’s law school and as one of the finest small public law schools in the entire nation. In my new position as Dean, I look forward to visiting with you about the School of Law and thanking you for your support. Please don’t hesitate to call or stop by – we’d love to show you what we can do!

Kathryn R.L. Rand

Dean & Floyd B. Sperry Professor