APIL Auction

Tomorrow is a big day.  For the first time, we are combining two of the most popular student events of the year into one day — the APIL Auction, and the SBA Dodgeball Tournament.  I’ll explain Dodgeball tomorrow, but today, I’ll give you the scoop on the APIL Auction.

APIL is the acronym for a student organization called Advocates for Public Interest Law.  Each year, this good organization raises money to give stipends to students for their summer internship in public interest work, including all of our students going across the world through the Global Justice Program.   APIL primarily accomplishes this goal through the APIL Auction.  Typically, Professor Jim Gash dons his tuxedo and serves as auctioneer (and will do so again this year!).

This year, there will be a silent auction and a LIVE auction.   Many of the items in the “live” auction are donated by the professors.  Below is a sampling of the interesting items in this year’s auction:

– Dinner for four with the (Professor) Cochran family.  Will include a viewing of Professor Cochran (“Coach”) as a baby, child, and law student (with long hair).

– Lunch/dinner for 4 at El Cholo’s with Professor Goodno

– Traditional Friday Evening Sabbath Dinner for 4 with Professor Helfand

– A week (6/8/13-6/15/13) stay at Sandstone Creek Club Time Share in Vail, CO (1 bedroom, 2 bath and sleeps 4) courtesy of Professor Nelson

– A Reserved Parking Space for a semester! 

– A basketball autographed by Steve Nash of the Lakers (with fancy display case and certificate of authentication)

– Several beautiful jewelry pieces valued at over $4,000.  One is one of the very popular Pandora bracelets.

Payments for items from the Auctions can happen at the event, or anytime the following week.  Students can team up with friends to bid on items, especially the live auction items.

CDO Presentations

Our Career Development Office (CDO) consistently provides presentations to our students that introduce a wide variety of career paths.  This week’s presentations focuses on government jobs, and I thought the lineup was particularly interesting!

Here are the announcements the CDO shared with our students:

* CDO PRESENTATION:  A DAY IN THE LIFE OF AN FBI AGENT: Tuesday, February 26, from 12:30pm – 1:30pm, in Classroom E.  Come hear about life as an FBI agent from Special Agent Eric Jensen.  Lunch will be served.  If you have any questions, please contact the CDO at cdo@pepperdine.edu.

* CDO PRESENTATION:  LUNCH WITH THE AIR FORCE JAG: Wednesday, February 27, from 12:30pm – 1:30pm, in the Library Computer Lab.  Join us for an informal lunch informational session with Captain Kathleen M. Potter, Assistant Staff Judge Advocate with the United States Air Force JAG Corps.  She will be available to answer all of your questions about the work of a JAG lawyer, life in the Air Force, internship and postgraduate opportunities, and application tips.  Lunch will be provided.  If you have any questions, please contact the CDO at cdo@pepperdine.edu.

* CDO PRESENTATION:  A DAY IN THE LIFE OF A U.S. ATTORNEY: Thursday, February 28, from 12:30pm – 1:30pm, in Classroom B.  Please join us to hear from Abraham Meltzer, Assistant United States Attorney from the Civil Fraud Division, and from Meghan Blanco, Assistant United States Attorney from the Criminal Division, Public Corruption and Civil Rights Section.  They will discuss the exciting work of a federal prosecutor and internship and postgraduate employment opportunities with the Department of Justice.  Lunch will be served.  If you have any questions, please contact the CDO at cdo@pepperdine.edu.

The February Bar

The bar examination is administered twice a year.  The summer exam garners significant attention, but because of much smaller numbers, the February exam gets far less.  For those taking February’s exam, however, the stress is just the same.  Today is Day One of the three-day, eighteen-hour California Bar Examination and Pepperdine Law has several graduates sitting for this exam.  They are in my thoughts this morning.

Day One of the California Bar Exam consists of three essays in the morning (three hours) and a performance test in the afternoon (another three hours).  Day Two consists of 200 multiple choice questions: 100 in the morning (three hours) and 100 in the afternoon (another three hours).  Day Three is a repeat of Day One.

If you are afflicted with a morbid curiosity and would like to see the format of the written portions of the exam (Days One and Three), they are all posted on the State Bar of California’s website.  HERE is a link to last February’s essays and performance tests.

40th Law School Dinner

The 40th Annual Law School Dinner took place at the Beverly Hilton in Beverly Hills last Saturday evening, and it was a wonderful evening!  One of our fantastic 2L students, John L. Adams, took some great pictures, and he was gracious enough to allow me to share several of them with you today.

I’ll lead with a picture of John with Professor Gash and yours truly.

Well-Deserved Attention

Kristee Sherry is one of our super-talented 3Ls.  Kristee is one of a small handful of students whose “student comment” (think: long, scholarly article) was selected for publication in the Pepperdine Law Review.  This is quite an honor.

Yesterday, the honor associated with Kristee’s article went beyond selection for publication when two separate legal blogs singled out her article for praise!  Such attention to a student-authored article is not unprecedented, but it is extremely rare.  I could not be happier for such well-deserved scholarly attention!

You can read the shout-outs HERE and HERE.  In addition, the article itself is found on the Pepperdine Law Review‘s website.

The Beauty of Pepperdine

It is sometimes disappointing to hear people talk about Pepperdine as if she is primarily a pretty face.  We believe there is so much more to appreciate about our law school than simply its beauty.

But this morning as I look at the view just over the top of my computer monitor (pictured above), I reluctantly admit that the stunning beauty cannot be overemphasized.

Balfour Award

We have two separate academic fraternities in our long list of student organizations: Phi Alpha Delta and Phi Delta Phi.  Yesterday, we learned that the president of our chapter of Phi Delta Phi, Rachael Lavi, was named one of the six recipients of the prestigious Balfour Award — a national award presented by Phi Delta Phi!

HERE is the list that was published on the organization’s website!

Rachael is one of our fantastic 3L students, and I cannot imagine a more worthy recipient!

Club Sports

Most picture the law school experience as long days buried in thick casebooks grappling with difficult concepts.  That’s a pretty accurate picture!  However, one of the things I try to emphasize from the first day is that students need to maintain or develop healthy activities outside of law school.  One shouldn’t overdo it: law school is demanding, and one of the things it demands, is time.  Still, to be in it for the long term, healthy escapes must be incorporated into the weekly schedule.

One of the great vehicles for healthy activities at Pepperdine University is the Campus Recreation department.  “Campus Rec,” as it is known, has an amazing lineup of opportunities.  For the serious athlete, one of those opportunities is to participate in Club Sports.  Club Sports is sort of an in-between option between the major university athletic teams and intramural athletics.  Club teams compete against other schools and proudly wear the Pepperdine Waves uniform.

Last Sunday, I went to watch Ikedi Onyemaobim, one of our impressive first-year students, play lacrosse.  It was a beautiful day and a beautiful setting (you can see the Pacific Ocean backdrop in the picture above), and it was fun to watch Ikedi (#18) score four goals in Pepperdine’s 17-14 victory over Occidental College.

Presidential Trivia

In honor of Presidents Day, a little presidential/lawyer trivia from Professor McClurg’s The Companion Text to Law School:

There have been forty-three presidents in United States history.  Of that number, twenty-six were lawyers.  Here is the list:

1. John Adams
2. Thomas Jefferson
3. James Madison
4. James Monroe
5. John Quincy Adams
6. Andrew Jackson
7. Martin Van Buren
8. John Tyler
9. James K. Polk
10. Millard Fillmore
11. Franklin Pierce
12. James Buchanan
13. Abraham Lincoln
14. Rutherford B. Hayes
15. Chester A. Arthur
16. Grover Cleveland
17. Benjamin Harrison
18. William McKinley
19. William H. Taft
20. Woodrow Wilson
21. Calvin Coolidge
22. Franklin Delano Roosevelt
23. Richard Nixon
24. Gerald Ford
25. William Jefferson Clinton
26. Barack Obama

Dalsimer Moot Court Competition

The annual team appellate advocacy intraschool competition is the Vincent S. Dalsimer Moot Court Competition.  Students earn one unit of credit for participation.  Two-person teams sign up, usually at the end of the Fall semester, and submit their appellate brief in January.  Oral argument rounds begin in February or March, depending on the date of the Law School Dinner.  The Final Round is argued (the morning of the Law School Dinner) before a distinguished panel of judges.  United States Supreme Court justices have served on the Final Round bench over the years, including Chief Justice John Roberts.  Brief and Individual Advocacy awards, which include prize money, are presented after the Final Round, and the winning team is announced at the Law School Dinner that evening.

For this year’s competition, oral argument rounds will take place all day tomorrow, and the competition will conclude next Saturday, February 23, 2013.

Click HERE to read about Judge Dalsimer, the namesake of the annual competition.