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AKRON WILSONMatthew J. Wilson, dean of The University of Akron School of Law, says he’s “all about non-tradition.” Tracing Wilson’s path to and through legal academia suggests he may be more about following tradition in surprisingly unconventional ways.

Start with his decision to become a lawyer. He was 4 years old and a Sunday regular at The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. “Afterward, I would travel this route to some neighbors’ houses – including Donny and Marie Osmond’s grandparents and a widow named Alice – to talk,” Wilson said. “I loved to talk.”

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STUDENT NAME:
 Joseph RosatiALBANY ROSATI

LAW SCHOOL: Albany Law School

STATUS: 3L

UNDERGRADUATE: B.A., Political Science; Minor in Business, State University of New York at Albany

HOME CITY/STATE: South Salem, New York

Joseph Rosati, a 3L at Albany Law School and executive editor of the Law Review’s New York Appeals issue, was both smart and lucky when it came to earning his JD. He was smart, he said, in understanding the kind of institution in which he would thrive as a student. That included the importance of size, location and cost of attendance. He was lucky, he added, in choosing a law school whose professors are both top-notch teachers and recognized statewide and nationwide as authorities in their fields, and whose classes include hefty doses of practical skills learning.

“I didn’t even consider the quality of the professors and classes when I was doing my research and deciding among several schools,” Rosati said in e-mails and a telephone interview. Continue reading

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Penelope Andrews, president of Albany Law School of Union University, moved into legal academia in the mid-1980s because of both identity and circumstance: She was a black woman from South Africa, at Columbia Law on a student visa and completing her degree during the height of apartheid.

“The South African government had declared a state of emergency,” Andrews said in a telephone interview. “Despite a job offer, I couldn’t get a green ALBANY ANDREWScard and I feared that I’d be arrested if I returned home. Happily, a Columbia law professor suggested I teach in a law school somewhere in the British Commonwealth.” Continue reading

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Touro Law CenterSTUDENT NAME:
 Alanna McGovern

LAW SCHOOL: Touro College, Jacob D. Fuchsberg Law Center


STATUS: 3L (full-time/day student)

UNDERGRADUATE: Stony Brook University, B.A. in English

OTHER EDUCATION: Study abroad with Sacred Heart University program in Dingle, Ireland. Concentration: Theology and Native Irish Spirituality

HOME CITY/State: Babylon, New York

Alanna McGovern, a much honored 3L at the Touro College Jacob D. Fuchsberg Law Center, is among that rare breed of people who have wanted to be lawyers for as long as they can remember. So long that her family members – truck drivers, medical technologists, nurses, police officers but no lawyers – initially dismissed it as the babbling of a 4-year-old. That’s right, 4-year-old. Continue reading

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TOURO SALKI2If there is one subject in which Patricia Salkin is fluent – even more, perhaps, than the land use laws on which she is an expert and the intersection of law and governmental affairs where her experience is longstanding – it’s the lives and life stories of her students at the Touro College Jacob D. Fuchsberg Law Center.

And if there is one thing that infuriates and energizes Salkin, the dean, it’s that the data used to recommend a law school (or not) don’t reflect the true quality of the education her students receive and the opportunities available to them. Continue reading

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CORNELL ALI MAINSTUDENT: Nora Ali

LAW SCHOOL: Cornell Law School

STATUS: 3L

UNDERGRADUATE: The Johns Hopkins University, B.A. in Public Health Studies

HOME CITY/STATE: Fanwood, New Jersey

Nora Ali, a 3L at Cornell Law, knows the value of finding the right fit in a law school.  Not because Cornell helped her secure an interview with Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison in New York, the prestigious U.S. firm where she will be working after graduation and passing the bar.  But because after a near disastrous first semester, Cornell Law enabled her to marshal her considerable intelligence and abilities, and reverse the fall. Continue reading

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eduardo_penalver_hi_resEduardo Peñalver’s social activism started long before he led Cornell classmates in their 1993 takeover of the university’s administrative office building. It was an effort to elicit more university support for Hispanic students after racial slurs and a swastika were scrawled across a Hispanic artist’s work on campus.

“Both my parents were involved in the nuclear freeze movement in Seattle,” Peñalver, the dean of Cornell Law School, said in a telephone interview. “I remember them driving the whole family to Bangor, Washington, to march and protest at the nuclear submarine base there. They were real activists, believers in working toward social transformation.” Continue reading

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Fordham MartinMichael M. Martin’s relationship with Fordham Law School began with a love affair and ended up as a love affair. Here is how Martin, the dean since 2011, explained it:

“I had completed my own education – undergraduate and law degrees at the University of Iowa, then off to Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar – and was teaching at the University of Washington School of Law in Seattle. That’s when I met the woman to whom I’ve been married for 43 years. Ellen was from New York and we decided to move there. Continue reading

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NYL Wolff stuStudent: James Anthony Wolff

Law School: New York Law School

Status: 3L, Evening Division

Undergraduate: The Johns Hopkins University, Peabody Conservatory of Music; B.A. in Music Composition

Home City/State: New York, N.Y.

James Anthony Wolff long ago confessed to being a serial entrepreneur; a 3D and space technologies entrepreneur to be exact. The record of his business dealings in just the past few years attests to his compulsion to start companies around his inventions of new technological processes and systems. Continue reading

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