Matt Lamkin is an associate professor of law at TU Law.
Should doctors be asked to report to health insurers when patients aren’t following their treatment plans? Writing in the New England Journal of Medicine – the top medical journal in the world – TU College of Law Associate Professor Matt Lamkin addresses workplace “wellness” programs that tie the cost of employees’ insurance to their health behaviors. Under these insurance plans, employees with chronic conditions like diabetes and high blood pressure can see their insurance costs rise by thousands of dollars if they fail to follow their doctors’ instructions. Lamkin writes that although these programs seek to reduce health care costs by improving employees’ health – both of which are worthy goals – they can also come with hidden costs.
“Requiring physicians to report their patients’ noncompliance to insurers can threaten the trust that a productive doctor-patient relationship depends on,” Lamkin said. “If a patient knows that a negative report from her physician will cause her insurance costs to skyrocket, she may be less honest with her doctor about her health behaviors.”
Professor Lamkin joined The University of Tulsa College of Law in 2013. Prior to entering academia, he served as a policy advisor to the mayor of Indianapolis, an attorney at one of the world’s largest law firms and a fellow at Stanford University’s Center for Law and the Biosciences.
You can read the article, “Physician as Double Agent: Conflicting Duties Arising from Employer-Sponsored Wellness Programs,” at the New England Journal of Medicine.
The University of Tulsa College of Law (TU Law) has recently been recognized by Above the Law as #37 in its 2018 Top Law School rankings. Above the Law’s rankings focus on student outcomes from the graduating class of 2017 including employment, costs and debt, and alumni satisfaction.
Above the Law limits their list to the top 50 law schools including those with quality employment prospects outside of their particular region as well as for students who do not graduate at the top of the class.
For the same year, TU Law is also ranked as #15 nationally and #1 in Oklahoma for 2017 graduate employment in full-time, long-term Bar License required and JD Advantage positions ten months after graduation.
TU Law was founded in 1923 and offers fall, spring and summer starts. For more information, contact usor read about us online.
Hope Forsyth was recently honored by The University of Tulsa College of Law for graduating with the highest cumulative grade point average. The W. Lee Johnson Award was presented to Forsyth at the TU Law Hooding Ceremony, Friday, May 4, 2018, where she also served as class valedictorian.
As a law student, Forsyth received the highest grade in 11 classes including Basic Corporate Law, Agency & Partnership, Conflict of Laws, Constitutional Law II, Professional Responsibility, Evidence, Selling & Leasing, Criminal Law, Legal Writing, Civil Procedure I and Torts. She also received the George and Jean Price Award for Excellence in Legal Writing and the OBA Award for Outstanding Student.
Forsyth served as the executive editor of the Tulsa Law Review, is a student member of the Johnson-Sontag/Council Oak Chapter of the American Inns of Court and is a member of Phi Delta Phi Legal Honor Society.
During her time at TU, Forsyth gained experience at multiple levels of the federal court system as a judicial extern for Senior Judge Stephanie Seymour on the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals and as an intern for Chief Judge Gregory K. Frizzell, former Magistrate Judge T. Lane Wilson and Magistrate Judge Paul J. Cleary, all of the Northern District of Oklahoma.
Before law school, Forsyth’s essay “Forum” was published in “Digital Keywords: A Vocabulary of Information Society and Culture” by Princeton University Press. Her law review comment, “Mutually Assured Protection: Dmitri Shostakovich and Russian Influence on American Copyright Law,” is forthcoming in the Tulsa Law Review. In her free time, Forsyth is an America’s Test Kitchen home recipe tester and a volunteer sacramental catechist for her Catholic parish. Forsyth will join the law firm of GableGotwals as an associate attorney in September.
Fareshteh Hamidi, first-year law student at The University of Tulsa University College of Law, was recently honored with Crowe & Dunlevy’s Diversity Scholars Program scholarship, an honor awarded to one outstanding TU Law candidate each year who qualifies based on academic achievement, financial need and commitment to the law. The scholarship totals $10,000, with $2,000 installments granted each semester based on the student’s excellent progress and performance.
Hamidi graduated in 2012 with a bachelor’s degree in kinesiology from Oklahoma City University. Since that time, she has held a legal internship and worked in the health care and hospitality industries. Today, she is seeking a health law certificate from the University of Tulsa College of Law, where she is a member of the Immigration Law Society and won first place in the Board of Advocates Redbud Invitational Competition. In her spare time, Hamidi is an active community member, volunteering with the Junior League of Oklahoma City, Emergency Infant Services, NewView Oklahoma, OK Kids Korral at the Toby Keith Foundation and more.
Crowe & Dunlevy offers comprehensive transactional and litigation services from early mediation to alternative dispute resolution through 30 practice groups and can be found at crowedunlevy.com.
With an undergraduate degree in biomedical science from Texas A&M University, Melissa Revell knew she wanted to pursue a career in the healthcare industry. Her studies led her to the field of law and to The University of Tulsa.
As a third year law student, Revell is worked in Washington, D.C. as a legal extern for both the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services and the American Health Lawyers Association (AHLA).
“I spent the last semester of law school externing in Washington, D.C.”
“Working in Washington, D.C., the last semester of law school has rounded out my perspective on health care, by allowing me to see health care from the vantage point of a federal administrative agency,” said Revell. “I’m excited to take what I’ve learned from these experiences back to Tulsa where I’ll be working after graduation.”
At the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, Revell consults with and drafts opinions for administrative law judges on Medicare disputes. At AHLA, she writes articles on recent healthcare decisions, legislation and regulatory changes for the agency’s newsletter sent to its 14,000 members.
“I’ve observed how healthcare attorneys provide objective counsel with compassion.”
In the summer of her second year, Revell interned at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee, conducting legal research and advising counsel of issues of informed consent, patient discharge and advance directives. “My experience at St. Jude greatly impacted me, as I learned first-hand how their positions require the attorneys to provide objective counsel, while approaching delicate issues with compassion.”
Revell first became passionate about health care in her undergraduate years when she shadowed several physicians, operated a breast cancer research lab and volunteered in a prenatal clinic.
“Melissa came to me early with the goal of securing an opportunity in Washington, D.C. in health law. She used her network from her internship at St. Jude to focus in on where she wanted to be. We worked together on a plan within the externship program that allowed her to get course credit for two placements concurrently. Through her own tenacity, she is getting double experience and exposure in her preferred practice area,” said Lauren Donald, assistant dean for experiential learning at TU Law.
Revell is joining McAfee & Taft in Tulsa as a healthcare attorney.
During her time at TU Law, Revell was selected as a William W. Means Professionalism Endowed Scholar and a Steele Scholar. She served as an articles research editor of the Tulsa Law Review in 2017-18 and as an associate editor in 2016-17. She also earned four CALI Excellence for the Future awards in Legal Writing II, Legal Writing III, Constitutional Law II and Insurance Law.
“One of my favorite things about TU Law is the high caliber of the professors and how vested they are in their students. I love living in Tulsa, and I believe that Tulsa is a perfect size legal market for a new attorney to begin his or her career,” said Revell. After graduation, Revell is joining the healthcare practice group at McAfee & Taft in Tulsa.
For more information on externships at The University of Tulsa College of Law, visit us online.
Cybersecurity scholar Ido Kilovaty joins TU as the Frederic Dorwart Endowed Assistant Professor of Law.
Ido Kilovaty has been appointed to hold the Frederic Dorwart Endowed Assistant Professor of Law position at The University of Tulsa College of Law. He will teach cybersecurity law, internet law and international law.
Kilovaty comes to TU from Yale Law School where he was a Cyber Fellow for the Center for Global Legal Challenges, a Resident Fellow for the Information Society Project, and involved in co-teaching a course titled, “The Law & Technology of Cyber Conflict” offered both to law students and computer science majors.
“I am delighted to be joining The University of Tulsa College of Law,” said Kilovaty. “I am very much looking forward to be working with the outstanding faculty and students at Tulsa.”
Focuses on domestic and global cybersecurity.
Kilovaty studies the connection between technology, law and policy, with a focus on domestic and global cybersecurity. His recently authored “Freedom to Hack” which proposes a solution of ethical hacking for the improvement of smart-device security is forthcoming in the Ohio State Law Journal. He has also written on election interference through cyberspace, “Doxfare: – Politically Motivated Leaks and the Future of the Norm on Non-Intervention in the Era of Weaponized Information” appearing in the Harvard National Security Journal (2018).
At Yale Law, Kilovaty developed a project to connect the legal and technical aspects of cybersecurity.
At Yale Law School, Kilovaty developed a cross-disciplinary project on cybersecurity bringing together lawyers, policymakers, and technology experts to engage in constructive discourse on the current state of affairs on cybersecurity law and policy. The project was a collaboration between Yale Law School and Yale University’s Department of Computer Science designed to bridge the gaps between the legal and technical aspects of cybersecurity.
Kilovaty earned his Doctor of Juridical Science (S.J.D.) degree from Georgetown University Law Center, his Master of Laws (LL.M.) from the University of California Berkeley School Of Law, and his Bachelor of Laws LL.B.) from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
M. Dalton Downing, a third-year law student at The University of Tulsa College of Law, recently won first place in a national writing competition sponsored by the Association of Securities and Exchange Commission Alumni (ASECA).
His first-place finish came with a $5,000 prize and a trip to the ASECA Annual Awards Dinner in Washington, D.C. The annual dinner featured the most prominent members of the U.S. securities community, including current and former SEC Commissioners. Downing was honored alongside Alan L. Beller, former SEC Division Director of Corporate Finance, who is the 2018 William O. Douglas Award Recipient.
The title of his winning paper is Picket Signs Versus Pocket Books: Using U.S. Securities Law to Compel Corporate Lobbying Disclosure. The Tulsa Law Review originally published the article in Fall 2017, and it will be reprinted by ASECA later this year. You can read the article at this link.
Downing is currently writing two other articles, one addressing corporate political spending from a state law perspective and the other making the case for a self-funding SEC.
During his time at the University of Tulsa College of Law, Downing served as editor-in-chief of the Tulsa Law Review and recently externed with Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals Senior Judge Stephanie K. Seymour. Following graduation this spring, he will join the Washington, D.C. office of Latham & Watkins LLP.
Aisosa Arhunmwunde is a third-year law student at The University of Tulsa College of Law who is working towards a career in immigration law. Originally born in Nigeria, Arhunmwunde immigrated with her family to Canada where she earned her undergraduate degree in philosophy from the University of Manitoba.
After college, she decided to continue her education in law school. “I realized early that laws are dormant until a person is there to enforce and interpret them for people,” said Arhunmwunde. “It was then that I realized I wanted to be the voice of those who needed help with their legal rights.”
“TU Law allowed me to start school in the spring semester.”
Originally, Arhunmwunde looked at TU Law because she wanted to begin law school in the spring semester and TU offers spring, summer and fall starts. After she compared schools, she realized that TU’s robust experiential learning program, excellent academics, diverse student body and the affordable cost of obtaining a legal education was right for her.
She worked with asylum-seekers in Ireland.
During law school, Arhunmwunde has focused her interests on immigration law by working at TU’s Immigrant Resource Network and Immigrant Rights Project. During the summer months, Arhunmwunde took her studies abroad through TU’s Study Abroad program and interned at the Irish Refugee Council in Dublin helping clients who were seeking asylum.
Elizabeth McCormick, JD, associate dean of Experiential Learning and director of the Clinical Education Program at TU Law said, “Aisosa brings the unique and valuable perspective of her own experience as an immigrant and international student to her work with immigrant clients. She has seized on every available opportunity to gain first-hand experience in immigration law and in representing real clients. The combination of her intellect, passion and empathy will be a great benefit to her and her clients in the future.
After completing her internship, Arhunmwunde traveled to Ghana which was funded by TU Law’s Public Interest Board. Based in Accra, she conducted interviews with citizens on the street who were displaced in order to help them find living spaces. She was one of a cadre of students from around the world there to conduct human rights work in the field.
“Law school is challenging but worth it if you choose the right one for you.”
“It is truly rewarding to have a client whose case you’ve work on call and tell you their asylum is approved and they no longer fear going to jail. It is so worth it,” said Arhunmwunde. “Law school is challenging like everything worthwhile, but it is easier and more enjoyable if you choose a law school that gives you the tools and sets you up for success before you put a foot out of the door.” During her time at TU Law, Arhunmwunde served as the associate editor of the Energy Law Journal, secretary of the Black American Law Students Association and was a member of the Women’s Law Caucus, Board of Advocates and the West African Students Association.
The annual book review issue of the Tulsa Law Reviewis now available for reading. Editor-in-Chief and TU Law student M. Dalton Downing prefaces the issue with the following comments about the tradition of publishing book reviews relevant to law.
“In an essay published by the Texas Law Review nearly a decade ago, Sanford Levinson lamented the degree to which law journals were abandoning book reviews. He felt that law journals—the legal profession’s chief scholarly fora—had a duty “to serve as a venue for serious discussions of important books relevant . . . to thinking about law.” The following year, in collaboration with Levinson and Mark Graber, the Tulsa Law Review published its inaugural book review issue.
So began our rich tradition of publishing book reviews that not only offer careful, evaluative criticism of prominent books, but that also bridge disciplinary divides. As you will see in the nearly two dozen essays that follow, both the books under review and the reviewers come from an array of disciplinary backgrounds—from law, of course, but also from sociology, philosophy, political science, and history. Skillfully pairing thought provoking books with astute reviewers, our co-editors, Professors Julie Novkov and Stuart Chinn, assembled a collection of reviews that capture the depth and complexity of each book, stimulate interdisciplinary conversation, and offer original insights. ‘
The Tulsa Law Review owes a debt of gratitude to all who made this issue possible: to Sanford Levinson (whose book is reviewed herein) and Mark Graber for inspiring and establishing this tradition; to Professors Novkov and Chinn for their thoughtful, diligent editorship; and to the reviewers for crafting insightful, fascinating essays that educate and inspire our readers.”
To read this issue of the Tulsa Law Review click here.
Manuel Pallarez and Randall Young, third-year law students at The University of Tulsa, won first place in the National Native American Law Student Association Moot Court Competition, March 2-4, 2018.
The 26th annual competition included 200 law students from 45 schools and was hosted by the Arizona State University (ASU) Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law NALSA Chapter in Phoenix and the ASU Indian Legal Program.
200 students from 45 law schools competed
Each year, the moot court competition gives students from across the U.S. an opportunity to argue the most compelling issues in federal Indian law and tribal governance. Throughout the year, team conduct intensive legal research to write an appellate brief and prepare oral arguments.
“The College of Law is very proud of Manuel and Randall for achieving this honor in the national NALSA moot court competition,” said Lyn Entzeroth, dean of the TU College of Law. “Students in our Native American Law education program have the opportunity to study with our outstanding Indian Law faculty. Manuel and Randall are impressive students who represent our law school well.”
“I was shocked when our team was announced as the victors.”
Pallarez said, “As a two-year member of the National NALSA Moot Court Team, it was an honor and a privilege to represent TU Law in Phoenix. I am most thankful to our coaches, June Stanley and Brenda Christie (Tulsa-area attorneys). It was their belief in our abilities that made the victory possible. I will be the first to admit that I was shocked when our team was announced as the victors. The entire weekend felt like a dream as we kept advancing. The most satisfying part of the victory was being able to win with a great friend, two great coaches, and for the entire TU community. This will absolutely be a memory that I cherish for a long time.”
Young added, “Throughout the competition, every team we played would have made their law schools proud. Particularly in from the elite eight moving forward, we encountered insightful legal analysis and stellar advocacy. Competing with our colleagues from among 45 sister schools helped us hone our arguments going into the final round. That being said, as an alumnus of The University of Tulsa’s History and English programs, and now a 3L at the TU College of Law, I felt especially prepared to learn quickly, think of my feet and argue persuasively. In my mind, our accomplishment represents not only our personal dedication, but also the University’s mission to foster critical thinking and excellence.”
TU Law student and Oklahoma Bar Association (OBA) Student of the Year Hope Forsyth is serving as an extern for Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals Senior Judge Stephanie K. Seymour. Forsyth’s skill set along with support from TU Law professors and the professional development office helped her secure this coveted legal externship.
“After hearing a judge speak in my first year of law school, I knew I wanted to learn at the federal court level,” said Forsyth. “Internships and externships in chambers involve learning from judges and their staff, observing the court in action, analyzing both frequent and unusual legal issues, and drafting written work for the judge to consider including in orders and opinions. Working for judges in law school gives an incomparable lesson in how to be an effective advocate.”
Forsyth is externing at the appellate level in her final year of law school.
Now, Forsyth is a third-year student at The University of Tulsa College of Law. She is the executive editor of the Tulsa Law Review, a student member of the Council Oak/Johnson-Sontag Inn of Court and a member of Phi Delta Phi. She has earned 11 CALI Excellence for the Future Awards for the highest grade in various classes and the George and Jean Price Award for legal reasoning, research and writing.
In addition to her appellate externship with Senior Judge Stephanie K. Seymour, Forsyth has gained experience at multiple levels of the court system through internships with Chief Judge Gregory K. Frizzell, former Magistrate Judge T. Lane Wilson and Magistrate Judge Paul J. Cleary, all of the Northern District of Oklahoma.
Forsyth credits her professors at TU Law for providing a solid education, mentorship and individual attention to all students. “TU Law is a close-knit and mentoring community with world-class legal professors,” said Forsyth. “They’ve had a formative influence on my education.”
“TU Law is a close- knit and mentoring community.”
Forsyth grew up in Cushing, Oklahoma, where her father practices law. Outside of law school, Forsyth is an America’s Test Kitchen home recipe tester and a volunteer sacramental catechist at her Catholic parish.
After graduation, Forsyth will join GableGotwals in Tulsa as an associate attorney.
In 2018, The University of Tulsa College of Law has the largest number of externship placements in the school’s history. The school’s externship program allows students to be matched with attorneys and judges to obtain real-world, practical experience for academic credit.
“This is a record-setting semester for our externship program,” says Lauren Donald, assistant dean for experiential learning and TU Law 2007 alumna. “More than 30 percent of our law students are completing externships this year. Currently, we have students externing in Oklahoma and in cities across the U.S. including Denver, Dallas, Ft. Worth, New York City and Washington D.C.”
Legal externships provide the opportunity for students to move from thinking like lawyers in the classroom setting to operating like lawyers in practice settings. They also provide significant experience and knowledge in specialized areas of law including immigration, energy, environmental, corporate and judicial law.
Preston Brasch, externed at the Harvard Immigration and Refugee Clinic.
Third-year law student, Preston Brasch, recently returned from an externship at the Harvard Immigration and Refugee Clinic in Cambridge, Massachusetts. “While at Harvard, I met extensively with clients who had fled persecution. I spent much of my externship preparing their asylum claims, assisting with research, drafting court filings and securing expert testimony,” said Brasch.
“Learning about my clients’ lives was a humbling experience – I felt a sense of responsibility to serve them well, knowing how much trust they gave the clinic. In many cases, their lives depended on us effectively advocating on their behalf because if forced to return to their home countries, there was a great chance they would face serious harm,” said Brasch.
HRIC Managing Attorney Phil Torrey spoke very highly of his TU Law intern. “Brasch was more like a colleague than a student.” Sabi Ardalan, assistant director of the HRIC added, “We were very grateful to have Preston Brasch as a part of our legal clinic in the summer of 2017. He did incredible work researching and writing, meeting with clients and preparing case filings. TU Law clearly prepared him very well for this summer externship.”
To learn more about externships at TU law, visit us online. TU Law is rated a U.S. News and World Report Top 100 Law School and a preLaw Magazine Best Value Law School. For information on admissions, visit us online today.
TU Law alumna Leslie R. Need has recently become a partner in the law firm of Landye Bennett Blumstein LLP in its Anchorage office.
Need previously clerked for U.S. Magistrate Judge John D. Roberts and Alaska Superior Court Judge Vanessa White, and worked at the Alaska Attorney General’s Office in the Child Protection Section.
Need focuses her practice on municipal, Alaska Native, environmental and natural resources law representing business and individual clients as both plaintiff and defense.
She received her bachelor’s degree from Kansas State University and her juris doctor from The University of Tulsa College of Law. She is a member of the Alaska Bar Association, American Bar Association and Anchorage Bar Association.
This article, written by Lauren Donald, assistant dean for experiential learning at TU, was first published in the Tulsa Business & Legal News.
The externship program at The University of Tulsa College of Law is one of the most robust programs of its kind, offering students an effective and comprehensive bridge to go from law student to lawyer.
TU Law’s proximity to the thriving, urban setting of the city and its engaged legal community ensure that externs have opportunities in a variety of exciting and relevant placements. In addition to local resources, students also take advantage of externships across the U.S. and abroad in government agencies, public interest organizations, courts, law firms and corporations.
Through externships, students build confidence in their ability to practice, feel the pleasure and challenge of work that matters, and find a path from lawyering experiences to a rewarding career.
Said Keaton Taylor, a second-year law student and extern with the Tulsa County Public Defender: “During (the law student-to-lawyer) transition, new skills become necessary for success; skills that can only be learned by doing. Externships are crucial to future lawyers. The externship program gives me the opportunity while still in school to begin navigating the new terrain of an attorney.”
Supervisors also find reward in helping lay a foundation for a student’s career. April Merrill, Legal Aid attorney for Medical-Legal Partnerships, says that through her practice students are exposed to real-world issues and sometimes of the darker side of life.
“This is often the first real-life experience the student has interacting with actual clients who are entrusting their problems to us,” she said.
Through these experiences, she hopes to instill in students a desire to serve low-income persons as these future lawyers move on in their careers.
Merrill has invested time as a supervisor in building the student experience.
“I strive to take the students from the legal theoretical framework to the practical, everyday practice of law,” she said. “As the students are allowed more client interaction and responsibility for drafting and research, I can see their confidence grow.
“Those ah-ha moments, as Oprah calls them, are the most rewarding. As a supervisor teaching a concept and to see it suddenly click, it’s really meaningful.”
Under the direction of engaged supervisors such as Merrill, students begin to identify their path and develop marketable skills.
“Law school is like an oyster producing pearls,” Taylor said. “For a pearl to hold value, it must be polished. Experiential learning increases my value as a pearl. I aspire to be the shiniest pearl on the market so I need to polish my skills as soon as possible. The externship program at TU allows me to do that.”
Leslie Briggs, right, shown with TU Law Dean Lyn Entzeroth at the Albert Schweitzer Fellowship reception.
TU Law student Leslie Briggs is working towards a career to “help people with pressing problems that seem insurmountable.” To achieve that goal, Briggs has been heavily involved in rights-oriented work including serving as an intern at the Tulsa County Public Defender’s Office and the OK Policy Institute and as the Tulsa-area organizer for Oklahomans for Criminal Justice Reform. Recently, Briggs’ article titled, Bail reform should be the solution for Oklahoma’s overcrowded jails, was published on the OKPOLICY.org website and is included below.
Oklahoma voters know that the time is right for criminal justice reform for our state, and they showed it by passing State Questions 780 and 781 by wide margins last November. Not all stakeholders were on board: Just before the questions took effect on July 1, some Sheriffs and District Attorneys raised concerns about rising county jail populations, since many low-level drug and property offenders are no longer eligible for terms in state prisons. While overcrowded jails are a real problem, the state can do much more to solve it by reforming bail practices than by undoing recent reforms.
Like state prison populations, both urban and rural local jail populations have dramatically increased to a point that is breaking our ability to operate them safely. Oklahoma County jail, for example, was originally designed to hold 1,200 inmates; its average daily population has reached twice that size in recent years. But the vast majority of jail inmates in Oklahoma County – about 80 percent – are being held pretrial, which means they haven’t yet been convicted of a crime but can’t afford bail to get out of jail before their case is resolved. Nationwide, about 9 in 10 pretrial inmates have a bail amount set but are unable to meet the financial burden to be released from jail.
Jurisdictions across the country have shown that we can reduce that number by implementing an evidence-based, pretrial release program that relies on individual risk assessments rather than money bail. Doing so at the state level would save counties huge amounts of money without risking public safety.
Pretrial detention doesn’t just contribute to jail overcrowding. It also creates big problems for defendants, their families, and taxpayers. It costs over $51 a day to house an inmate in jail. In many counties, this cost falls on the inmates themselves through jail fees — and if they can’t afford bail they aren’t likely to be able to pay off the fee debt, either. When those fees can’t be collected, the costs must be covered by city and county taxpayers. An extended pretrial stay in jail may also result in a defendant losing their job, losing their children to state custody, and being evicted from their home. That’s part of why defendants who are detained before trial are much more likely to plead guilty and take a plea bargain — whether or not they are actually guilty — to obtain faster release from incarceration.
We have better options to make this system more just and less expensive. Instead of using money to secure bail, courts should use the information available to them to determine who is at most risk to reoffend or fail to appear for their court date. Strong, empirically-based pretrial risk assessments have been developed and put into use federally and in several states. The Arnold Foundation’s Public Safety Assessment (PSA) is one risk assessment tool that estimates the likelihood that the defendant will commit a new crime, commit a new violent crime, or fail to appear for their court date. These policies save taxpayer dollars, improve public safety, and reduce unjust outcomes for low-income defendants.
For example, Allegheny County (PA) Jail saw a 30 percent decrease in the number of defendants sent to jail after preliminary arraignment once they integrated a risk assessment tool into their bail setting process, among other reforms. Washington D.C. has gone even further by eliminating money bail in favor of pretrial release that may come with conditions like GPS monitoring, regular drug testing, and checking in at court by phone or in person. Over the last five years, 90 percent of those released under D.C’s system have remained arrest free before their cases were resolved.
“This creates a paradox for those sitting in jail: bond out and be required to hire an attorney who charges $350 per hour, or stay in jail and risk losing your job, home, and children, only to then feel pressured to take a plea deal for less time in incarceration.”
In the absence of these reforms, private bail bondsmen often play the role of facilitating release by paying off bail and supervising defendants in exchange for high interest charges on the bail amount. Proponents of the current money bail systemcontend that bail bondsmen save taxpayers money and do the job of making risk assessments in the interest of public safety. But bail bondsmen do not have a standardized, evidence-based system for determining who is a potential threat to public safety, and they do not consider the type of crime committed in their assessment of who they will bond out. They also don’t face a penalty if the defendant they bond out commits a new crime after release. These incentives mean that bondsmen are primarily concerned whether defendants are a flight risk and whether they will be able to pay off the interest, not whether they are likely to commit a new crime.
The second major issue is access to justice for low income defendants. Only those who cannot afford to hire an attorney are eligible for representation by a Public Defender. Under Oklahoma law, when a defendant posts bail it creates a “rebuttable presumption” that the defendant is not indigent, making it more difficult for them to be represented by a Public Defender. This creates a paradox for those sitting in jail: bond out and be required to hire an attorney who charges $350 per hour, or stay in jail and risk losing your job, home, and children, only to then feel pressured to take a plea deal for less time in incarceration.
Just this month, 67 former District Attorneys and Department of Justice officials from across the country – groups that are rarely outspoken proponents of reform – filed a brief detailing how money bail harms the criminal justice system and urging wider adoption of individual assessment of defendants. In Congress, Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) and Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) showed the bipartisan support for bail reform with a bill that would provide grants to local justice systems that implement risk assessments. With criminal justice reform remaining at the center of attention in Oklahoma, the time is right for bail reform. We should not let State Questions 780 and 781 stand alone. We should build upon them with evidenced-based reforms.
This article was originally published August 16, 2017.
From the left, M. Dalton Downing, Tulsa Law Review editor-in-chief; Hope Forsyth, executive editor; and Randall Young, articles research editor.
Hot off the presses – the first issue of volume 53 of the Tulsa Law Review has been released and is available online and in print. The publication features important legal scholarship including an article titled, Fighting Rape Culture with Noncorroboration Instructions by Tyler Buller, assistant attorney general, Iowa Department of Justice. The article catalogues the criminal justice system’s long history of discrimination against sexual assault victims and proposes an effective solution to dismantle barriers that currently prevent the successful prosecution of sex crimes.
The publication also features articles by TU Law students Dalton Downing and Randall Young. Downing’s article lays out the need for greater transparency in corporate lobbying expenditures, and Young’s article compares the Supreme Court’s opinion in Crawford v. Washington to the history of the right of confrontation.
Click here for full access to Tulsa Law Review, Vol. 53, Issue 1.
M. Dalton Downing, Tulsa Law Review editor-in-chief
“I am proud to introduce the Tulsa Law Review’s inaugural issue of Volume 53, which builds on the rich tradition of publishing innovative and thought-provoking articles from legal scholars worldwide,” said M. Dalton Downing, editor-in-chief of the publication. “The articles in this edition address a broad range of prescient issues in our society across the spectrum of legal scholarship — from criminal law to international trade law to securities law.”
“This issue is the result not only of the wonderful work of our contributors, but also the tireless efforts of the Tulsa Law Review editorial staff, which includes more than forty outstanding second and third-year law students at the University of Tulsa College of Law,” Dalton said.
Tulsa Law Review, founded in 1964, is the oldest and largest student-run publication at The University of Tulsa College of Law. Publishing three to four issues each year, TLR receives more than 1,500 submissions annually and publishes a wide range of legal scholarship from professors, judges, practicing lawyers and renowned legal thinkers. The publication is indexed in LexisNexis, Westlaw and HeinOnline; and each issue is distributed nationally and abroad to law school libraries, private law firms, public legal organizations and individual subscribers.
The 2017-18 editorial board includes:
Editor in Chief: M. Dalton Downing
Executive Editor: Hope Forsyth
Notes & Comments Research Editor: Kymberli Heckenkemper
Production Editor: Chase Winterberg
Articles Research Editors: Amanda Gibson, Melissa Revell, Emalie Rott, Randall Young
Managing Editor: Alexander Lemke
Executive IT Editors: John Farley, Steve Pontius
Supervising Editors: Colin Byrne, Blair Hand, Vanessa Lock, Matt Primm, Trey Purdom, Alexandra Simmons
Staff Editors: Austin Hilterbran, Casey Johnson, Morgan Johnson, Caleb Jones, Mike Shouse
Associate Editors: Demi Allen, Alec Bracken, Cordal Cephas, Alexandra Dossman, Meghan Drake, Matt George, Joshua Hansen, Dallas Jones, Scott Major, Allison Martuch, Robert McClendon, Sarah McManes, Laurie Mehrwein, Madison Mosier, Lacy Pulliam, James Rayment, Violet Rush, Brent Smith, Clint Summers, Samantha Tober, Houston Wells
Stiles serves on the TU Board of Advocates, the Immigration Law Society, Women’s Law Caucus and the Student Bar Association.
Welcoming refugees – Tulsans help others establish “home” in the U.S.
By Bria Bolton Moore and Morgan Phillips
Elissa Stiles
Stiles, a University of Tulsa College of Law student, says she has learned to be “borderless” in the way she sees people. As an undergraduate student at TU, Stiles studied abroad in Africa and South America. She found she loved working with people from different backgrounds, which sparked her interest in immigration law.
In addition to co-founding the Immigration Law Society at TU, Stiles spent a week in May volunteering at a detention center in Texas. There, she met with asylum seekers to prepare them for interviews with asylum officers.
“There’s not a specific reason that I was born in the United States and they weren’t,” Stiles says of the asylum seekers. “That’s just the luck of the draw. How silly of me to think I deserve to be in this country but the people who weren’t born here don’t deserve that. People who want to come to this country … I want to help them get here.”
The University of Tulsa College of Law has earned a spot on preLaw Magazine’s annual list of Best Value Law Schools. It honors law schools that keep student debt manageable while providing a quality education so students can pass the bar and get legal jobs.
“With legal education seeing dramatic turmoil, we celebrate those schools that have risen to the challenge and continue to offer affordable, quality education,” said Mike Stetz of preLaw and The National Jurist. The Best Value Law School ranking was calculated using 2016 data on tuition, bar passage and employment rates as supplied to the American Bar Association by each law school. This year, only 62 schools made preLaw’s list.
TU Law is a selective Top 100 law school as ranked by the U.S. News & World Report, 2018. The school offers an excellent, highly personalized education rooted in practical experience. Visit us for more information on TU Law, our faculty, admission opportunities and an application fee waiver.
From left: Anna Carpenter, Matt Lamkin and Stephen Galoob.
The University of Tulsa College of Law is a Top 100 law school that provides a dynamic doctrinal and experiential legal education. The faculty at TU not only impact students’ experiences through their classrooms and clinics, but also through publishing high-level scholarly articles, papers and opinions.
Most recently, TU faculty published or have articles forthcoming in prestigious law journals including Yale Law Journal, Stanford Law Review, Notre Dame Law Review, Arizona Law Review, BYU Law Review, University of Illinois Law Review, U.C. Davis Law Review, Constitutional Commentary, Hastings Law Journal and Lewis & Clark Law Review. TU Law’s prominent scholars include Anna Carpenter LL.M, J.D.; Stephen Galoob, Ph.D., J.D.; and Matt Lamkin, J.D.
“I am very proud that The University of Tulsa College of Law boasts such diverse and groundbreaking scholarly articles by its faculty,” said TU Law Dean Lyn Entzeroth. “Our professors provide deep and meaningful value to our law students and to the legal community.
Carpenter is an associate clinical professor of law and director of the Lobeck-Taylor Community Advocacy Clinic. Her scholarship includes empirical and theoretical work on access to justice and the role of lawyers, non-lawyers and judges in the civil justice system. Professor Anna Carpenter’s most recent article, “Active Judging and Access to Justice,” is forthcoming in the Notre Dame Law Review and another, “Measuring Clinics” is forthcoming in the Tulane Law Review (with Colleen F. Shanahan, Alyx Mark, and Jeff Selbin).
She also recently published “Trial and Error: Lawyers and Nonlawyer Advocates” in the peer-reviewed journal, Law and Social Inquiry; “Lawyers, Power, and Strategic Expertise” in the Denver Law Review; and “Can a Little Representation Be a Dangerous Thing?” in the Hastings Law Journal (all three with Colleen F. Shanahan and Alyx Mark).
Galoob is an associate professor of law whose scholarly work examines fundamental questions in criminal law, torts, contracts and professional responsibility. He is currently writing articles concerning blackmail, the nature of norms, fiduciary concepts, reparation and political legitimacy.
Galoob’s essay (with Ethan Leib), “Fiduciary Political Theory: A Critique,” was published in the Yale Law Journal in 2016. In 2017, Galoob published “Coercion, Fraud, and What Is Wrong With Blackmail” in Legal Theory; “Retributivism and Criminal Procedure” in New Criminal Law Review; “The Ethical Identity of Law Students” (with coauthors) in International Journal of the Legal Profession; and “Living Up To (and Under) Norms” in Tulsa Law Review.
Galoob’s forthcoming publications include“The Core of Fiduciary Political Theory” (with Ethan Leib) in Research Handbook on Fiduciary Law; “Fiduciary Principles and Public Offices” (with Ethan Leib) in Oxford Handbook of Fiduciary Law; “Fiduciary Political Theory and Legitimacy (with Ethan Leib) in Fiduciary Government; and “Climbing the Mountain of Criminal Procedure” in American Journal of Comparative Law.
Lamkin is an associate professor of law whose scholarship explores the intersection of health care, law and ethics with a focus on how the increasing commercialization of medical care is reshaping our understandings of disease and disability, informed consent and personal responsibility, and the role of government in regulating medical care.
Lamkin’s article, “Medical Regulation as Social Control,” was published in the BYU Law Review (2016). He has coauthored a series of articles with philosopher Carl Elliott at the University of Minnesota, including “Avoiding Exploitation in Phase I Clinical Trials: More than (Un)Just Compensation,” Journal of Law, Medicine, & Ethics (forthcoming 2018); “Involuntarily Committed Patients as Prisoners,” University of Richmond Law Review (2017); “Restrict the Recruitment of Involuntarily Committed Patients for Psychiatric Research,” JAMA Psychiatry (2016); and “Curing the Disobedient Patient: Medication Adherence Programs as Pharmaceutical Marketing Tools,” Journal of Law, Medicine, & Ethics (2014).
TU Law offers a superb doctrinal and experiential legal education to talented and engaged law students. With a full-time annual tuition of $24,600, The University of Tulsa College of Law allows students to pursue their professional dreams at a cost that is one of the most affordable among Top 100 private law schools and competitive with top-tier public law schools.
Remaining true to TU Law’s mission of high standards and selectivity, the law school continues to increase its 1L enrollment. Important drivers in the enrollment increase include outstanding academic programs, engaged faculty, exceptional clinical and externship opportunities, strong bar preparatory support, and a high job placement rate for graduates. Moreover, TU Law embraces, promotes, and protects the values of community, civility and dialogue to create an intellectually vibrant and thriving law school.
Beginning with orientation, TU Law focuses students on future and professional aspirations. Faculty and administration work closely with students to help them refine their career objectives and secure placements meeting their interests. One 2017 graduate who recently accepted a fellowship at Harvard Law School credits TU Law faculty with guiding and supporting her as she pursued her professional goals. Other recent graduates have secured positions with federal judges, state and federal governments, public interest organizations, selective law firms, and major industries including banking and energy.
TU Law faculty impact the legal world not only through classrooms and clinics but also through engagement and scholarship in a wide array of important issues. Faculty recently placed high-level articles in prestigious law journals including Yale Law Journal, Stanford Law Review, Notre Dame Law Review, Arizona Law Review, BYU Law Review, University of Illinois Law Review, U.C. Davis Law Review, Constitutional Commentary, Hastings Law Journal and Lewis & Clark Law Review.
In this report, we share more about TU Law’s accomplishments and community. It is truly a privilege to lead this dynamic law school. I look forward to the challenges and opportunities that lie ahead.
Lyn S. Entzeroth
Dean & Dean John Rogers Endowed Chair
The University of Tulsa College of Law
Hope Forsyth, a 3L at The University of Tulsa College of Law, has been selected as the college’s Oklahoma Bar Association (OBA) Outstanding Student in 2017. Annually, each law school in the state selects a graduating student to receive the award at the OBA meeting in November.
2017 OBA Outstanding Student, Hope Forsyth
“I’m honored and excited to be selected as TU’s representative for this great honor,” said Forsyth. “I greatly appreciate the stellar education, mentorship and opportunities I have received throughout both my law and undergraduate education at TU.”
During her time at TU, Forsyth has gained experience at multiple levels of the federal court system through internships for Chief Judge Gregory K. Frizzell, former Magistrate Judge T. Lane Wilson and Magistrate Judge Paul J. Cleary, all of the Northern District of Oklahoma. In the spring of 2018, Forsyth will extern for Tenth Circuit Senior Judge Stephanie K. Seymour.
Forsyth’s law review comment, “Mutually Assured Protection: Dmitri Shostakovich and Russian Influence on American Copyright Law,” will be published in the Tulsa Law Review Spring 2018 issue. Prior to law school, her examination of the historical and current use of the word “forum” was published in Princeton University Press’Digital Keywords: A Vocabulary of Information Society and Culture.
Forsyth grew up in Cushing, Oklahoma, where her father practices law. She earned a bachelor’s degree magna cum laude in communication and media studies with minors in English and philosophy from The University of Tulsa, where she was a research fellow for the Oklahoma Center for the Humanities, Honors Scholar, Presidential Scholar and National Merit Scholar. Outside of law school, Hope is an America’s Test Kitchen home recipe tester and a volunteer sacramental catechist at her Catholic parish.
After graduation, Hope will be an associate attorney at GableGotwals in Tulsa.
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