School of Law Professor William Dunlap available to comment on new arrests in Boston bombings

Bill Dunlap, a professor in the Quinnipiac University School of Law, is available to comment on the arrests of the three new suspects who were arrested in connection with the Boston Marathon bombing case.

A faculty member since 1983, Dunlap teaches constitutional, criminal, national security, counterterrorism and international law. He studied at the National Security Law Institute at the University of Virginia and the Parker School for Foreign and Comparative Law at Columbia Law School and has been a visiting scholar at Yale Law School and the Institute for Advanced Legal Studies at the University of London. He is a former chair of the Section on Admiralty and Maritime Law and of the Section on International Law of the Association of American Law Schools. After law school, he practiced first amendment law and international commercial litigation and arbitration at the Coudert Brothers law firm in New York. Before law school, he was a newspaper editor and a public radio host and producer in New York. He frequently gives public lectures and advises the media on current legal issues.

To schedule an interview with Dunlap, please call John Morgan, associate vice president for public relations, at 203-206-4449 (cell).

New Haven Register highlights School of Law alumni serving ‘an entire class of underserved people’

Several Quinnipiac University School of Law alumni are focusing on providing legal services to people who cannot afford traditional legal fees, but are not poor enough to qualify for free legal aid, the New Haven Register reports.

“We decided we wanted to meet the needs of those people who fall in the middle,” Danielle Robinson Briand, a 2010 graduate who now has a law practice in Bridgeport with fellow Quinnipiac grad Darren Pruslow, told the New Haven Register. “To be able to do that, we had to come up with a business model, which is still a work in progress, that gives us the time to do quality work and still pays our bills.”

The students told the daily newspaper that they decided to pursue what is called “low bono,” or discounted hourly rates and flat fees for legal services. It’s a trend that is catching on among younger attorneys, the Register reports.

“There’s an entire class of underserved people who don’t see the need to shell out a couple thousand dollars for a will,” Brian Young, a Quinnipiac Law grad who has a practice in Fairfield County, told the newspaper. “They don’t consider themselves wealthy. They’re working Joes. They’ve got jobs to get to during the week.”

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Symposium on primary care and the law April 13

Dr. Andrew Morris-Singer, president and principal founder of Primary Care Progress, will deliver the keynote address at “Primary Care and the Law,” an interprofessional symposium that will take place from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Saturday, April 13, in the Grand Courtroom of the School of Law Center at Quinnipiac University.

The symposium will bring together primary care practitioners, policymakers, attorneys and students to advance the conversation about the role of law in the delivery of high-quality primary care.

The “Quinnipiac Health Law Journal,” the Center for Interprofessional Healthcare Education at Quinnipiac and the Schools of Health Sciences, Law, Medicine and Nursing are presenting the symposium.

The event is free and open to the public, but registration is required. Register online. For more information, please e-mail healthlaw@quinnipiac.edu.

Please click here to read more.

University builds law school for the future

A rendering of the new School of Law facility in North Haven, scheduled to open in Fall 2014.

What if you could build a law school with the newest innovations and advanced technology, combined with the kind of thoughtful design that fosters both scholarship and community? What if you could build a law school for the future?

At Quinnipiac University School of Law, we are doing exactly that: creating a state-of-the-art center for legal study with technology that speaks to the most current thinking in legal pedagogy.

Opening in Fall 2014 on the university’s North Haven graduate campus, our new facility will showcase forward-thinking features that inspire collaboration and connection, like an abundance of team study rooms and greatly expanded space for the School of Law’s extensive legal clinics.

We are also building extraordinary opportunities for interdisciplinary collaboration as we join the university’s vibrant North Haven graduate community, home to the new Frank H. Netter MD School of Medicine and the graduate programs in the schools of Health Sciences, Nursing and Education.

Please click here to read more.

Jennifer Brown named dean of the School of Law

Jennifer Gerarda Brown has been named dean of the Quinnipiac University School of Law effective July 1, 2013.

“Jennifer was selected from a pool of outstanding applicants following an extensive national search,” said Quinnipiac University President John L. Lahey, who announced the appointment. “Quinnipiac is fortunate to have someone with Jennifer’s extensive teaching, research, administrative and legal experience to serve as the next dean of the School of Law.”

Brown came to Quinnipiac as a faculty member in the School of Law in 1994 and she currently is the Carmen Tortora Professor of Law. For nearly 15 years, Brown has served as the director of the School of Law’s Center on Dispute Resolution. U.S. News & World Report repeatedly ranks Quinnipiac in the top 20 law school programs in dispute resolution.  Brown has served on the law school’s executive committee, honor code committee and the speakers and conferences committee.

“I am extremely excited to be stepping into the deanship at Quinnipiac,” Brown said “There is so much at Quinnipiac to value. Under Brad Saxton’s leadership, our sense of community and student service has only strengthened, and I plan to maintain that focus. We will be looking for new ways to work with our students as they plan their careers and find their core sense of purpose as problem-solving professionals.”

One of the first projects Brown will undertake as dean is leading the law school’s move from the Mount Carmel Campus in Hamden, where it has been since 1995, to Quinnipiac’s North Haven Campus, which also is home to Quinnipiac’s schools of medicine, nursing,health sciences and education.

“The opening of the medical school in the fall of 2013 will give us some fantastic opportunities for cross-disciplinary learning,” Brown said.  “As we plan a very exciting move to a newly renovated building on the North Haven graduate campus, we’ll seize opportunities to design a building as innovative as our educational and extra-curricular programs. I’ve loved working at Quinnipiac these 18 years, and I look forward to new opportunities to serve this place and the people who populate it.”

Lahey said he is confident the School of Law will be highly successful under Brown’s leadership. “Jennifer is well known and highly regarded in the legal community as a result of her work with Connecticut judges, lawyers and legal academics,” Lahey said. “She brings the additional benefit of a demonstrated deep commitment to the law school and its students. I am confident that Jennifer will facilitate the introduction of innovative approaches to legal education that will build on the core strengths of the School of Law.”

Brown received her A.B. from Bryn Mawr College. She received her J.D. from the University of Illinois College of Law where she was a notes and comments editor of the Law Review from 1983-1984.  She held a clerkship from 1985-1986 with the Hon. Harold A. Baker, U.S. District Court for the Central District of Illinois.

Brown worked as an associate at the law firm of Winston and Strawn in Chicago from 1986-1989.  She is a nationally recognized scholar. Prior to coming to Quinnipiac, she was an associate professor at Emory Law School, and over the course of her career she has taught at law schools including The University of Chicago, Georgetown University, Harvard University and Yale University. She has been a senior research scholar in law at Yale University since 1998.  She has a lengthy record of scholarly achievements that includes numerous publications, book chapters and invited presentations. In 2008, she received the Honorable Robert C. Zampano Award for Excellence in Mediation.

She and her husband Ian Ayres, the William K. Townsend Professor of Law at Yale Law School, live in New Haven with their children Henry and Anna Ayres-Brown.