Student News

On Sept. 8, Elon Law welcomed preceptors and other attorneys and judges to the school's first monthly reception with the legal community of the 2011-12 academic year. At the reception, the Honorable L. Patrick Auld, federal magistrate judge for the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of North Carolina delivered remarks and the Student Bar Association presented its first Making a Difference award.

Elon Law's Public Interest Law Society provided Public Interest Endowment Stipends to Class of 2013 members Melodie Menzer and Kaitlin Shimansky in support of summer 2011 internships with legal counsel for the Guardian ad Litem program in Wake County, N.C. and the Orleans Public Defenders in New Orleans, Louisiana, respectively.

Third-year law student L. Collin Cooper authored an article on leadership and the law featured in The Young Lawyer, a publication of the American Bar Association Young Lawyers Division.

On August 18, the Elon Law Class of 2014 participated in the fifth annual "Elon Law Reaches Out" community service day. During this annual orientation event, the entering class assisted several nonprofit organizations in the Greensboro community.

Christa Davis, a third year student at Elon Law, was one of 20 students to receive a grant through the U.S. State Department for the Emerging Leaders' Extraction and Environment Program (E-LEEP).

Elon Law students Sarah Dixon and Ashley Smith have been chosen to participate in the Equal Justice Works 2011 Summer Corps Program. The program provides law students with funding support for legal projects at qualifying nonprofit public interest organizations. Summer Corps members expand the delivery of critically needed legal assistance in low-income and underserved communities across the country on a broad range of issue areas.

For the third consecutive year, students at Elon Law taught at several public high schools through a Street Law course offered in the spring semester. Street Law programs enable law students to teach practical legal information to high school students, encouraging greater awareness among teens about the impact of law on society while providing law students with opportunities to enhance legal skills and knowledge of substantive law.

Elon Law's Innocence Project and the undergraduate chapter of Phi Alpha Delta at Elon University cosponsored an April 20 forum entitled "Wrongful Convictions and Innocence: Racism and the SBI Audits." The forum featured Daryll Hunt, exonerated of rape and murder charges after more than 19 years in prison, and three distinguished attorneys engaged in innocence and justice initiatives.

Created in the fall of 2010, the Student Advocacy Board enables Elon Law students to strengthen trial advocacy skills through participation in annual competitions that draw students from law schools across the country. Members of the Board organize into trial teams, receive coaching from Elon Law professors and accomplished trial attorneys, and compete in multi-day national advocacy competitions.

Published by the Bankruptcy Law Section of the North Carolina Bar Association (NCBA), through the Section's online "Disclosure Statement" newsletter, the March 2011 article by Kay and J. Marshall Shelton, an attorney with Ivey, McClellan Gatton and Talcott, provides case summaries of nine recent court decisions of the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Middle District of North Carolina.