Blog

Encouraging Public Discourse About Energy Law and Policy

An April 12, 2012, panel discussion at Denver Law probed the question, Who properly regulates oil and gas development taking place near residents of Colorado cities and towns? Legal standards and policy justifications for state and for municipal regulation were examined by panel moderator Mark Mathews, from the law firm Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck, Cathy Proctor, who has written on energy issues for the Denver Business Journal since 2000, Wayne Foreman, also from Brownstein, and Geoff Wilson, General Counsel for the Colorado Municipal League.

Proctor, who regularly writes on the concerns arising about the impact of increased drilling activity in populated areas on water and air quality, called the conflict between state and local regulation of this activity, “a high stakes game—this is a multi-billion dollar industry, there are thousands of jobs at stake.” Describing the “tug of war between state and local regulation,” Foreman advocated for “the need to have a single state agency oversee and regulate oil and gas.” Wilson said that municipalities’ perspective on oil and gas development is shaped by the industry’s “special legal right to locate [its activities] in open spaces, in residential areas, in commercial areas.”

Over 160 attorneys, government officials and public interest members attended the event in person, joined by a like number tuning in to the web broadcast. The panel was the second in a series of four discussions on topics relating to natural resources and public policy, co-sponsored by the Denver Law Environmental and Natural Resources Law Program (ENRLP) and Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck. “These are local as well as global issues,” said Don Smith, ENRLP director. “Our goal is to be a forum, providing many different viewpoints, for wide-ranging examinnation of the critical energy-related issues of our time.”

Workplace Law “Semester In Practice” Externship Debuts With Great Results

A new addition to the list of externship opportunities Workplace Law (WPL) program students may participate in is the “Semester In Practice” program (SIP) an intensive fieldwork experience in the offices of a local employment law attorney. “It has been the most rewarding experience I’ve had in law school,” reports third-year student Alex Smith. “I find it similar to learning a language, where one only truly becomes fluent when one is immersed in the language.”

The Semester-In-Practice was developed by Director of Externships Professor Ann Vessels and Professor Lindsey Webb, who served as faculty supervisors. “It’s an outstanding program,” says Ann Vessels. “It gives students the opportunity to develop their practice skills by participating in a full time externship, working forty hours per week, and also taking a weekly seminar. The student gets significant exposure to the substantive law in the externship. In the seminar he or she focuses on skills and professional identity.”

The WPL position placed Alex Smith with Doris Truhlar, JD’80, and Robert Truhlar, JD’81, of Truhlar and Truhlar, LLP. “We were incredibly honored to be included as the ‘beta tester’ for this program,” says Doris Truhlar. “Having Alex Smith with us every day was an extremely positive experience, both for us and for Alex. One of the big benefits to the student is that it permits her or him to have much more in-depth contact with clients. The student is part of forming a bond with the client, and also gets to see how attorneys advise clients.”

“The program offers students a wonderful opportunity to witness, first hand, how attorneys in practice do their jobs, and how law firm operate,” adds Bob Truhlar. “The student gets to know the attorneys well, and at the end of the externship should be prepared to start her or his career, with many of the tools necessary for a first-year attorney.”

For Alex Smith, the first Denver Law student to participate in a workplace law Semester In Practice, the on-the-ground learning had tangible benefits. “The amount of information I retained through a practical learning experience added tremendously to what I learned in the classroom setting,“ he reports. “After working at Truhlar & Truhlar, I have a much greater understanding of everything from unemployment benefits and severance agreements to retaliation claims under Sarbanes-Oxley.”

Constitutional Rights & Remedies Capstone Course Will Debut Next Fall

Next fall, Denver Law’s Constitutional Rights & Remedies Program will offer for the first time a Capstone Course in constitutional rights and remedies. “This is exactly the kind of course advocated in the 2007 Carnegie Foundation report, Educating Lawyers: Preparation for the Profession of Law,” reports Program Director Sam Kamin. “Students will encounter real-world scenarios and use practical lawyering skills as they learn to litigate a client’s claim that constitutional rights have been violated. We are proud to offer this course to our students.” Professors Kamin and Justin Marceau developed the course in collaboration with local attorney Ed Ramey. All will have a hand teaching it in the fall.

Charting the Frontiers of Environmental Law at the PIELC

Eight Denver Law students and Environmental Law Clinic Director Mike Harris attended the 27th Annual Public Interest Environmental Law Conference, March 1-4, in Eugene, Oregon. The conference featured over 125 panels, workshops and presentations. It brought together 3,000 activists, attorneys, students and scientists. “It’s the largest conference of its kind,” Harris reported. “And it demonstrates to students how broad this area of the law is. Almost everything in environmental law that is going on outside the classroom doors is new and cutting edge. You see it all at PIELC.”

Workplace Law at Denver Law Embraces “Carnegie Integrated Courses”

Workplace Law faculty members at Denver Law are developing and writing about “Carnegie Integrated Courses,” which add concepts and exercises that foster lawyering skills and professional identity to standard doctrinal courses taught from the podium.

Roberto Corrada, holder of the Sturm College of Law Chair in Modern Learning, is recognized for his labor law course, in which he analogizes union formation and collective bargaining to the classroom setting. “I teach the course this way,” he writes, “because I realized after about three years of teaching the course in the traditional way at the University of Denver that none of my students had the sufficient work background (blue collar, industrial) to really understand the context surrounding the cases in the textbook, in particular, the subtleties of the power relationship between employer and employee.”

Nantiya Ruan, Lawyering Process Professor and Workplace Law Program faculty member will become the program’s Director in July. In “Experiential Learning in the First-year Curriculum: The Public-Interest Partnership,” 61 Am U. L. Rev 523 (2012), she writes about an experiential learning model she employs in her first-year legal writing and research class. This learning initiative encourages law professors to create integrated classes that join what the Carnegie Report terms “civic professionalism” with legal skills explicitly, starting on day one of law school. Nantiya partners her students with a public-interest organization, such as the National Employment Law Project (a national non-profit that advocates for wage rights on behalf of low-wage workers). The organization supplies her with the details of an impact litigation issue about which it wishes to receive legal analysis and research. Her students research and write on the impact litigation issue, as well as engage with the public-interest partner as they would a live client, including client interviews, drafting legal letters and e-mails, and participating in mock mediations, negotiations, and oral arguments.

In “The ‘Plus One’ Clinic: Adding (Political) Value to the Clinical Experience by Representing Landlords Alongside Tenants,” 18 Clinical L. Rev. 245 (2011), Assistant Professor Raja Raghunath proposes that “[a] clinic representing workers in wage or employment discrimination claims would add at least one case representing an employer defending one of those types of claims.” Doing so, he reasons, would surface questions and issues likely to teach students professional identity and purpose, the “third apprenticeship” in legal education identified in the Carnegie Report.

“The Best Experience I Received In All of Law School”

Dan Mauk, who graduates from Denver Law in May, 2012, values his participation in the Civil Litigation Clinic during his last semester in law school. “I had the chance to participate in two federal employment discrimination cases,” he observes. “I was able to use all the theory and law I have learned in my employment law classes and apply it to a real life case.”

Assistant Professor Raja Raghunath supervises the Clinic’s student lawyers in cases involving employment discrimination and wage theft. He reports that the Clinic is currently litigating two Title VII/Section 1981 actions on behalf of a total of seven clients in the District of Colorado for discrimination on the basis of race, national origin, and religion. The Clinic also takes on the cases of workers seeking their unpaid wages in state court actions. The results are impressive. “One student team in the Spring 2012 semester secured approximately $30,000 in unpaid wages for eleven workers without having to proceed to trial on their claims,” according to Professor Raghunath. “The clinic also continues to work on long-term solutions to the rampant wage theft in the state, alongside interested community partners in the private bar and state and federal agencies.”

“It was the best experience I received in all of law school,” says Dan Mauk. “The supervising professor allows the students to have a significant amount of control over the cases and the direction they proceed.” Dan drafted letters to opposing counsel, drafted briefs to the court, conducted and defended depositions, participated in mediation and settlement, was involved in all stages of discovery, and he appeared in Federal Court. “The most rewarding experience for me was conducting a deposition,” he relates. “This is something that most attorneys do not get a chance to do until they have been practicing for a couple years. It is a very valuable experience to have under my belt before I even graduate.”


Environmental and Natural Resources Law »

Encouraging Public Discourse About Energy Law and Policy

An April 12, 2012, panel discussion at Denver Law probed the question, Who properly regulates oil an

More in Environmental and Natural Resources Law

International and Comparative Law »

40th Year Anniversary Celebration for Denver Journal of International Law & Policy

http://djilp.org/1890/djilp-celebrates-its-40th-anniversary/

More in International and Comparative Law

Workplace Law »

Workplace Law “Semester In Practice” Externship Debuts With Great Results

A new addition to the list of externship opportunities Workplace Law (WPL) program students may part

More in Workplace Law

Corporate and Commercial Law »

The Corporate & Commercial Law Program is up and running in a big way

Program Director Jay Brown envisions a challenging and rewarding program for students wishing to ear

More in Corporate and Commercial Law

Constitutional Rights and Remedies »

Constitutional Rights & Remedies Capstone Course Will Debut Next Fall

Next fall, Denver Law’s Constitutional Rights & Remedies Program will offer for the first

More in Constitutional Rights and Remedies
Social Buttons by Linksku