The Levin College of Law has accepted an invitation from the Teach for America program to become a participating college. The mission of the program is “building a highly selective national corps of outstanding recent college graduates—of all academic majors and career interests—who commit two years to teach in urban and rural public schools in our nation’s lowest-income communities and become lifelong leaders for expanding educational opportunity.”

Miami-Dade is one of the program’s placement sites. Under this program, any applicant admitted to the J.D. program here and to the Teach for American program will receive an automatic two-year deferral of his/her law admission. More information about the program is available at www.teachforamerica.org.

The law school is the second college on the UF campus to be invited to participate, joining the College of Medicine, which is already affiliated with the program.

University of Florida alumni, students and friends of the university can upload their own personal video and photos related to their experiences at UF via goGatorNation.com, a new website that aims to highlight interesting facts about the university and its alumni in a fun and engaging way.

“GoGatorNation.com is designed to be a social network and to work in conjunction with the activities of the UF Alumni Association,” said Joe Hice, associate vice president of marketing and public relations. “It’s basically a Gator Facebook.”

Hice says highlights of goGatorNation.com are “orange-and-blue nuggets” that serve to spotlight contributions of the Gator Nation that many wouldn’t otherwise know. As people view the site, the “nuggets” appear from within the video, from behind a photograph and in other unexpected ways.

For example, Hice said, goGatorNation.com features facts about the university such as the $518 million in research grants awarded to UF in 2006, as well as information about former students such as the two UF alumni who are now in the NASA astronaut program and UF graduate Robert Grubbs, who won the 2005 Nobel Prize in chemistry. The site is an expansion of the Gator Nation campaign introduced a year ago to highlight a broad range of the university’s academic and research accomplishments, Hice said.

“We were looking for a way to get alumni and members of the Gator Nation even more involved in the campaign,” he said.

Visitors to the site also will be able to watch some of the Gator Nation TV commercials, listen to new radio spots, and chat with alumni and friends through a message board.

“The interactive part is the ability to upload your own Go Gator commercial. It’s the next step of what we started a year ago,” Hice said, referring to the Gator Nation campaign that included TV and radio commercials aired during athletic events as well as “The University of Florida is the Foundation for the Gator Nation” banners placed across campus.

The Market:

Statistically, the small firm is one of the larger employment markets for entry-level attorney positions for new law graduates.

• At UF Law, of the 181 recent graduates ho gained employment in a law firm, 49 percent began their first-post graduation position in a small firm.

• Solo and small firms currently make up 63 percent of lawyers in private practice according to the American Bar Association’s Issues Update.

• The ABA General Practice Section Committee Update disclosed that 86 percent of today’s law students expect yo practice in small firms.

• Some 73 percent of The Florida Bar is made up of solo and small firms of 10 or fewer attorneys.

Typical Benefits of Small Firm Practice:

• Small firms concentrate on finding the right person for the job instead of emphasizing the highest academic credentials.

• More autonomy and responsibility sooner.

• Accelerated hands-on experience in the courtroom and greater case management.

• Actual client contact sooner.

• More relaxed and personal environment.

• Greater variability in the types of work.

• Faster advancement opportunities— large firms promote on a routinized seniority-based model (second-year associates, third-year associates, etc.) as opposed to an individual’s own industry and merit.

• Not as harshly impacted by economic changes and fluctuations.

• More amenable to flexible compensation plans such as incentives for bringing in new clients or variable compensation based upon fee dollars generated.

Challenges of Small Firm Practice:

• Starting pay is typically less, but potential to earn bonuses, incentives or percentage of new cases brought in develops faster.

• Greater expectation that the new associate will be able to hit the ground running.

• Requires more diligence and selfdirected job search to locate positions.

• No formal summer associate program, but they do hire law clerks.

Hiring Trends:

• Small firms are unable to predict their hiring needs in advance and hire as the need arises.

• Most small firms do not interview on campus in the fall. Some interview during spring OCI.

• Small firms do not have recruiting directors nor hiring partners.

• Timing is everything. Respond quickly to postings. If you have the option of responding by email or fax, opt for that means over snail mail.

• Small firms may defer hiring decisions until bar results are posted.

Finding Openings:

• Law students cannot rely solely upon advertised positions when seeking small firm employment as small firm practitioners may simply be too busy to carve out the time to advertise and search for help. Most small firms welcome and presume that they will receive unsolicited letters of interest and resumes from law students or recent graduates.

• No national directory of small firms, unlike NALP’s Directory of Legal Employers.

• Check state and local bar directories.

• Martindale Hubbell search (although this is a subscription-based service and not all small firm practitioners pay for this listing service).

• Network: Let it be known that you are interested in gaining small firm experience.

• Join The Florida Bar, General Practice, Solo, & Small Firm Section http://www.gpssf.org/ to network with the professionals, learn about small firm practice, and access the Small Firm Directory of Practitioners.

To Make Yourself More Marketable:

• Gain experience. Clerking for one of these firms can be a successful means of securing a job.

• Generally speaking, the ideal small firm candidate possesses the “total package.” They are well-rounded, ambitious and self-motivated individuals with local ties, who can work with minimum supervision while excelling in both written and verbal communication skills, and who can “hit the ground running.”

• Take practical courses in law school such as lawyering skills, interviewing & counseling, negotiation & mediation, law practice management, legal accounting and/or any skills-based clinics.

• Participate in Moot Court or Trial Team competitions.

• Attend CLE’s relevant to small firm practitioners.

• Learn about rainmaking, bringing in new clients, how and why to get involved in the local community, and about trust accounts and billing.

The UF team consisted of Scott Barnes and Shanese Rivera (for the plaintiffs) and Oshia Gainer and Kemay Jackson (for the defense). They were coached by Stacy Scott and Josh Silverman.

The case dealt with a civil rights section 1983 claim under title VII. The team argued both sides of a case in which a former police officer claimed that a department policy had a discriminating effect on pregnant police officers. UF defeated teams from Pace Law School and Catholic University of America Columbus School of Law in the preliminary rounds before besting a team from Southwestern Law School in the semifinals.

The team’s efforts to defend its title from 2005 fell just short in the final round when it lost 51-49 to Brooklyn Law School. The competition drew teams from 16 law schools, including Temple University, New York University, and Fordham.

After over three decades of practicing law in Ft. Lauderdale, UF Law alum Mike McNerney offers this advice to students seeking to practice law in South Florida:

“Clerk, clerk, clerk! Besides the traditional resume items, the best thing you can add to your legal experience coming out of law school is clerking. It makes a good resume great and a mediocre resume better.”

McNerney practiced law in Ft. Lauderdale for 31 years with the firm he founded with partners Mike Brinkley and Phil Morgan. His practice areas included all types of litigation dealing with banking, property, construction, land use, probate, viatical settlements, and contested matters before governmental and administrative bodies.

McNerney is considered a national authority on viatical and life settlements and has contributed to the drafting of laws in numerous states dealing with their regulation. He is a past chair and current member of the UF Law Board of Trustees.

McNerney has recently begun a new phase in his career. He is now general counsel for Integrity, a holding and financial services company based in Great Britain that is just setting up its U.S. operations.

Please Put Your Cigarette Butts in Plastic Cactus Receptacles

Everyone is reminded that smoking is prohibited in law school facilties or within 50 feet of law school buildings. This includes the courtyard and walkways between buildings.

If you do smoke outside the law school, please choose a spot outside areas nonsmokers must pass to enter or exit buildings.

This is more than an aesthetic concern: cigarette smoke can cause serious problems for people with allergies and other health issues.

In spite of rules prohibiting smoking, cigarette butts are commonly found on the grounds of the UF Law campus. To help alleviate this unsightly problem, plastic receptacles like the one pictured above have been placed near the various entrances to the school. Smokers who enter the campus with cigarettes are encourged to use the receptacles and help keep the campus clean.

UF Law students Gretchen Lehman and John Rains defeated Georgia Law students Chad Armstrong and Shalanna Pirtle. Lehman and Rains were coached by fellow moot court team members, Mike Hargett and Scott Bowman.

“I feel wonderful,” Lehman said afterward. “We were up against a very formidable opponent. Georgia was excellent, and we’re very proud of what we did.”

Five senior U.S. district judges from Florida and Georgia presided over the competition, including Judge Anthony A. Alaimo (presiding) of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Georgia; Judge Harvey E. Schlesinger of the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida; Judge Wm. Terrell Hodges of the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida; Judge B. Avant Edenfield of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Georgia; and Judge John H. Moore of the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida.

Their decision was unanimous.

“It was a very tough, lively bench,” Lehman said. “They seemed very well informed and very interested in public policy issues, and there were many of them in this case.”

Moot Court’s recent victories in the competition coupled with the UF’s football team’s recent wins over Georgia have broken an odd correlation between the two events. Prior to this year, in the 22 moot court competitions held since 1982 that did not end in a tie, the school that took home the title in the courtroom subsequently lost that Saturday on the football field 17 times.

“I think we started a new tradition,” Lehman said.

Assistant Professor

• Presented “The Killing Fields: The Battle Between U.S. Endangered Species and Pesticide Law,” as part of the UF School of Natural Resources and Environment (SNRE) Seminar Series. This research was supported by a grant that Angelo was awarded by SNRE in 2005.

Stuart R. Cohn

Associate Dean for International Studies; Professor; Gerald A. Sohn Scholar

• Spoke to the Florida Institute of Certified Public Accountants at the Florida Gulf Coast University Accounting and Tax Conference on Oct. 27, in Ft. Myers on “Overlapping Financial and Legal Concerns for Start-up and Capital Raising Companies.”

• Published “Good Corporate Governance in Developing Nations: Idealism and Realism,” by the United Nations Institute for Training and Research, Best Practice Series (2006). The article focuses on practical problems of creating good governance standards in countries that have not had a history of corporate development.

Michael W. Gordon

John H. and Mary Lou Dasburg Professor

• Organized and presented a panel, “From Owusu to Parlatino: European Union and Latin American Challenges to Forum Non Conveniens,” at the annual International Law Weekend of the American Branch of the International Law Association at the Bar of the City of New York.

• Spoke on litigation and arbitration between parties in Mexico and the United States, and on recent decisions of U.S. courts applying Mexican law, at the 15th annual program of the U.S.- Mexico Law Institute. He was reelected to the Board of Directors of the Institute.

• Published a book review of Mexican Law by Zamorra, Ramon Cossio, Pereznieto, Roldan-Xopa and Lopez, in 37 Inter-American Law Review 611-620 (2006).

Thomas R. Hurst

Professor; Sam T. Dell Research Scholar

• Published, “A Post-Enron Examination of Corporate Governance Problems in the Investment Company Industry,” in 27 Co. Law. 41 (2006).

Paul Magnarella

Affiliate Professor; Professor of Criminology and Law

• Published “The Hutu-Tutsi Conflict in Rwanda,” in Perspectives on Contemporary Ethnic Conflict (S.C. Saha, ed.), New York/Oxford: Lexington Books, 2006, pp. 107-131.

Paul R. McDaniel

James J. Freeland Eminent Scholar in Taxation; Professor

• Presented lecture, “ Worldwide or Territorial Income Taxation: Which is Better for the United States?” at the annual Herman Goldman Memorial Lecture before the New York City Bar Association on Oct. 24.

Martin J. McMahon, Jr.

Clarence J. TeSelle Professor

• Presented CLE, “Tax Pitfalls and Planning Opportunities in the Formation of Partnerships and LLCs,” at the University of Montana School of Law, 54th Annual Tax Institute, Missoula, Montana, Oct. 27.

Kenneth B. Nunn

Professor

• Published “Foreword: New Explorations in Culture and Crime-Definitions, Theory, Method,” 17 Florida Journal of Law and Public Policy Vii (2006).  

Mike Seigel

Professor

• Participated in a panel and presented a lecture entitled, “An Update on the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure,” to members of the Stetson Law Faculty in Gulfport, Fla., on Oct. 24.

Christopher Slobogin

Stephen C. O’Connell Chair

• Merck Visiting Scholar at Seton Hall Law School the week of Oct. 15. He gave a faculty workshop entitled, “Dangerousness and Expertise” and delivered a public lecture entitled, “The Criminal Justice System as a Public Health System.” He also gave a faculty workshop at Villanova Law School, “Preventive Justice,” and taught a class in Mental Health Law at Seton Hall.

In the News

Joseph W. Little

Professor; Alumni Research Scholar

• South Florida Sun Sentinel, Oct. 25. Quoed in an article about suspended city commissioner Keith Wasserstrom, whose unlawful lobbying ties to a contractor that won a city contract puts his commissioner position in jeopardy.