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Five Students Working in Asia
Five students from The John Marshall Law School will spend a part of their summer working at Asian law firms and corporate headquarters through arrangements of the Asian Alliance Program.
This is the fourth year that Dorothy Li, co-director of the program, has arranged for student placements.
Timothy Westhoelter will be at Liu, Shen and Associates in Beijing; Stella Eun will be working in the legal department of the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. in Hsinchu, Taiwan; Mark Petrolis will be at DeQi Intellectual Property Law Corp. in Beijing; and Natasha Steinel will be at the law offices of Unitalen Attorneys at Law in Beijing.
Student Wayne Zhan is working at East IP Group, a law firm founded by Dr. Gao Lulin, former commissioner of the State Intellectual Property Office. It was during his term as commissioner that The John Marshall Law School first began working with Chinese attorneys to train them in intellectual property law. Today Dr. Gao teaches a master course at The John Marshall Law School.
Zhan also will be a teaching assistant for John Marshall faculty members, Professors Kenneth Kandaras and Kevin Hopkins who are teaching this summer at the State Intellectual Property Training Center in Beijing. This is the Chinese government's training facility for intellectual property law attorneys.
Dorothy Li (second from right), co-director of The John Marshall Law School's Asian Alliance Program, has arranged for five John Marshall students to work at law offices and corporate headquarters in China and Taiwan this summer. Leonard Amari (center), president of The John Marshall Law School Board of Trustees, extended best wishes to the students (from left) Timothy Westhoelter, Stella Eun, Mark Petrolis, Natasha Steinel and Wayne Zhan.
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25th Kissane Award Presented to Holly Grosshans
Holly Fugiel Grosshans became the 25th graduate to be named the recipient of the Elmer C. Kissane Public Service Award. The presentation was given during The John Marshall Law School commencement ceremonies on Sunday, May 18.
Grosshans, who is planning for a career with the Cook County State's Attorney's Office, will receive the $5,000 award after completing a year's service in the office. The award honors Elmer C. Kissane, a 1945 John Marshall alumnus, who devoted 43 years of his professional career to the Cook County State's Attorney's Office.
Grosshans has been volunteering as a law clerk for the state's attorney's office felony trial division the past two years. In addition, using her 7-11 license has allowed Grosshans, under attorney supervision, to prosecute various felony offenses, including cases dealing with unlawful use of a weapon by a felon, retail theft, burglary, armed robbery and narcotics. She has also helped prepare witnesses for trial.
"I have learned through this experience how important it is to have strong advocates for Cook County victims of crime," she said. "I want to continue to be this voice for the victims and their families."
Grosshans served as president of John Marshall's Student Bar Association (SBA) this past academic year. She has been a member of the Public Interest Law Council, Family Law Association, Phi Alpha Delta Fraternity. In the 2006-2007 academic year, she was vice-president of SBA chairing the Barrister's Ball and served on the planning committee for the Student and Alumni Exchange.
Her volunteer efforts included work in New Orleans through the Student Hurricane Network and a marathon runner raising nearly $2,000 for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society.
Before law school, Grosshans was a development associate for the Boys & Girls Clubs of Boston from 2003 to 2005. She was a product manager for Motorola, Inc. in Arlington Heights for two years after graduating from Augustana College in 2001.
Holly Fugiel Grosshans (left) accepts congratulations from Dean John Corkery (right), and Paul Kissane (center) on receiving the Elmer C. Kissane Award given in memory of Kissane's late father.
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Brian Benko Named Sweetnam Scholar, Extern
The Center for Tax Law and Employee Benefits at The John Marshall Law School has selected Brian Benko the 2008 Sweetnam Scholar.
The $5,000 scholarship will help defray expenses while Benko is completing a summer 2008 externship in Washington, D.C., with the U.S. Department of the Treasury, Office of Tax Policy for ten weeks. He will earn law school credit for his work as part of his LL.M. degree in employee benefits. Benko will receive the joint J.D./LL.M. degree from John Marshall in January 2009.
William F. Sweetnam Jr. established the scholarship to assist the student selected for the summer externship with the U.S. Department of Treasury, Office of Tax Policy. Before joining the Groom Law Group in May 2005, Sweetnam was benefits tax counsel at Treasury's Office of Tax Policy. The benefits tax counsel is the principal legal advisor to the Secretary of Treasury on all aspects of employee benefits taxation and related matters.
Benko's externship work is expected to include developing policy on a correction program for Code §409A failures. Benko has already examined the issue through an academic paper, "Not All Plan Failures are Created Equal: Inventing the Code §409A Correction Program," which won him the Paul Faherty Legal Writing Competition $5,000 prize this month.
In fall 2008, Benko will be externing for The Profit Sharing/401k Council of America drafting a white paper that distinguishes the employer's role in providing healthcare from its role in providing retirement benefits, in the tax-preferred system. He also has been asked by author Sal L. Tripodi to help update, edit and draft a five-volume guide and reference manual on employee benefits law, "The ERISA Outline Book," used by more than 2,000 firms.
As a John Marshall student, Benko is a former the student liaison for the American Bar Association Section of Taxation and the Chicago Bar Association's Employee Benefits Committee. He is a staff editor for The John Marshall Law School Review of Intellectual Property Law and a Morrissey Scholar. He has contributed to and edited The John Marshall Law School Center for Tax Law and Employee Benefits newsletter.
Benko was a panelist for the 2007 IRS Hot Topics Conference and moderated the 2007 National Institute of Pension Administrators Annual Conference. He was a research assistant by Professor Kathryn Kennedy, director of the center, and Barry Kozak, associate director of the Graduate Employee Benefits Programs.
Benko received a bachelor's degree in public affairs from Indiana University in May 2005. He is a Park Ridge resident.
Barry Kozak (left), associate director of the Graduate Employee Benefits Program, and Professor Kathryn Kennedy (right), director of the Center for Tax Law and Employee Benefits, present Brian Benko (center), with the $5,000 Sweetnam Scholarship.
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Faculty Activity and Publications
Professor Colin Miller
Publications
Colin Miller had his essay, "Ordeal By Innocence: Why There Should Be a Wrongful Incarceration/Execution Exception to Attorney-Client Confidentiality," accepted for publication in the Northwestern Colloquy. The essay will also appear in an upcoming issue of the Northwestern Law Review.
Professor Samuel Olken
Activities
In early April, he presented a paper, "Justice Sutherland Reconsidered," at Vanderbilt University Law School's Symposium, "Neglected Supreme Court Justices." Sponsored by the Vanderbilt Constitutional Law and Theory faculty, this conference featured prominent legal historians and constitutional scholars who examined the significance of several lesser known Supreme Court justices. Vanderbilt Law Review will publish professor Olken's paper in the spring of 2009.
Professor David Schwartz
Activities
On May 20, he chaired a panel on "Patents and Biotechnology" at the Summer Institute in Intellectual Property, Biotechnology and Agricultural Sciences at Drake University Law School.
He was a panelist for the May 21 presentation "Pattern Jury Instructions for Patent Cases" with the U.S. District Court Judge Matthew Kennelly and others at a joint John Marshall Law School Center for Intellectual Property Law and Intellectual Property Law Association of Chicago event.
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Nicholas Henry Named Sprague Scholar
The Lucy Sprague Public Service Scholarship was awarded to graduate Nicholas Henry during the commencement ceremonies of The John Marshall Law School on Sunday, May 18.
The $25,000 scholarship will help Henry pay down his law school debt. The scholarship is presented by the family of Lucy Sprague who was killed while a student at The John Marshall Law School. The scholarship was established in 1998 in the memory of Lucy Sprague by her parents, Lee and the Honorable George Sprague, a district court judge in Cambridge, Mass., her brother, Alexander; and her sister, Cynthia.
Henry, a 1st Lieutenant in the U.S. Marine Corps, will continue his public service as a member of the Judge Advocate General Corps.
"It truly is an honor to be selected by such a loving and caring family for this very generous scholarship in memory of Lucy," Henry said. "This award will allow me to continue in public service. My looming student loans had me questioning how much longer I could commitment myself to public service, but this Sprague Scholarship gives me the opportunity to continue to serve. We all went to law school with a dream of making a difference for those who need it the most. This scholarship will help to make my dream a reality."
It was as an undergraduate student at the University of Dayton that Henry enlisted in the Marines "because I felt a need to give back to my nation and my community as a whole." He was deployed to Iraq twice with his military police unit and worked to help train members of the Iraqi police force. He returned to the University of Dayton and completed his bachelor's degree in accounting and an M.B.A. degree in 2005.
At The John Marshall Law School, Henry and three fellow students worked tirelessly to develop the Veterans Legal Support Center (VLSC) and Clinic. They secured a $100,000 grant from the Illinois Department of Veterans Affairs to establish the clinic which began serving veterans in January 2008. VLSC also worked with the Office of the Illinois Supreme Court to establish training sessions for attorneys around the state who were willing to take on veterans' cases on a pro bono basis.
May 2008 graduate Nicholas Henry (left) accepts congratulations from Alexander Sprague (center) and John Marshall Dean John E. Corkery (right) after being named the Lucy Sprague Public Service Scholarship winner at the May 18 commencement ceremony.
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Tax Center Hosts Program on Major Issues
The Center for Tax Law and Employee Benefits and the Corporate Law Association at The John Marshall Law School hosted the April 22 program "Providing Legal and Other Advice to Compensation Committees of Public Companies: Ethical and Professionalism Issues." Guest presenters were (from left) Barry Kozak, associate director of the graduate employee benefits program at John Marshall; Laura Thatcher, a partner at Alston+Bird LLP; Sridhar Ramamoorti of Grant Thornton LLP; and John Marshall Professor Arthur Acevedo. The program focused on the ethical issues facing the compensation committee members and the compensation consultants.
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