Drake Law School second-year students Audrey Baumgartner and Andrea Hardesty are working to bring justice to the wrongfully convicted as interns with the Wrongful Convictions Division (WCD) of the Office of the State Public Defender. The division partners with the Midwest Innocence Project and is dedicated to exonerating Iowans convicted of crimes they did not...
The Drake University Constitutional Law Center is pleased to announce James A. Gardner as presenter of the 2020 Judge James Grant Iowa Constitution Lecture. His lecture titled “Is Iowa a Liberal Democracy?” will be delivered virtually on Thursday, Oct. 29 at 3 p.m. Gardner is the Bridget and Thomas Black SUNY Distinguished Professor at SUNY...
Drake Law School earned a spot on preLaw Magazine’s 2021 Employment Honor Roll for outperforming expectations when it comes to placing graduates in legal jobs. The magazine calculated a predicted employment percentage based on traditional school profile numbers including students’ average LSAT scores and undergraduate GPAs and compared that number to its actual employment percentage. Drake...
Drake University Law School earned an A+ ranking for family and child law in preLaw magazine, placing Drake among the top four law schools in the nation for this field. This is the third year in a row that Drake Law received recognition for excellence in family law. The publication based the rankings on law schools’ offerings...
Drake University Law School is proud to announce the selection of former dean Allan Vestal as a Dwight D. Opperman Distinguished Professor of Law. The Opperman Distinguished Professorship recognizes faculty who have demonstrated the highest level of teaching, scholarship, and service to the law school, the university, and the profession. Vestal joined Drake Law School in 2009 as dean and professor of law....
Kerrigan Owens (LW’20) took full advantage of the opportunities Drake Law had to offer through various internships, student organizations, and extracurricular activities. Last year, as president of the Student Bar Association, Owens and the Drake Law director of clinics and experiential learning, Suzie Pritchett, established a pop-up clinic to address the needs of young mothers at...
The Drake University Constitutional Law Center is pleased to announce Stephen Gardbaum as the 2020 Constitution Day speaker. Gardbaum will present “The Counter-Playbook: Resisting the Populist Assault on Separation of Powers.” The Constitution Day Lecture is scheduled for Sept. 17, 2020 at 3 p.m. and will be delivered virtually. Gardbaum holds the Stephen Yeazell Endowed...
Drake University Law School will host a fall webinar series to explore whether existing policies and practices perpetuate racial inequities in American society – from racial profiling to Afrocentric facial feature bias and environmental harms. This series of live-streamed talks, open to law students, lawyers and the larger community, features Drake Law faculty and guests...
During his 25-year career as a federal district judge in the Northern District of Iowa, Mark W. Bennett tried civil and criminal cases in six different federal districts and frequently sat by invitation on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. He authored dozens of published opinions and sentenced over 4,000 offenders to federal prison in...
Drake University Law School is pleased to announce that Jerry L. Anderson, Dean and Richard M. and Anita Calkins Distinguished Professor of Law, has been elected to the prestigious American Law Institute. The Institute’s members consist of judges, professors, and lawyers, who are elected based on their “outstanding achievement in the legal profession.” The Institute’s...