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MSU College of Law

Foster Swift Creates Named Professorship in Legal Ethics

Michigan State University College of Law Dean Joan W. Howarth recently announced a generous award from the law firm Foster Swift Collins & Smith.

The award provides support to create and name the Foster Swift Professor of Legal Ethics for a five-year term. This professorship will be held by Professor Renee Newman Knake, co-director of the Kelley Institute of Ethics and the Legal Profession.

“It’s vital that our students be taught by the best legal minds so they are prepared to take on the challenges of the evolving legal profession,” Dean Howarth said. “I’m grateful to Foster Swift for also recognizing the importance of investing in our faculty.”

The gift is part of Empower Extraordinary, a capital campaign to raise $23 million for the College of Law, including $5 million for recruiting and retaining talented faculty members.

Professor Knake’s teaching and scholarship focus on the ethical and regulatory structures which govern the practice of law. She is particularly interested in ways lawyer regulation can be liberalized to expand access to justice for the public. 

During spring 2015, Knake is on sabbatical leave as a scholar-in-residence at Stanford Law School’s Center on the Legal Profession and as a visiting scholar at the American Bar Foundation in Chicago. At the request of American Bar Association President William Hubbard, Professor Knake is serving as the reporter for the ABA’s Commission on the Future of Legal Services, made up of 30 highly accomplished attorneys from solo practice, legal aid, law firms, the judiciary, government, bar leadership, and the legal academy. She will return to the Law College in fall 2015, teaching courses including Professional Responsibility, which covers legal ethics and regulation of the profession.

“I’m very appreciative of this honor from Foster Swift,” Knake said. “Their contribution acknowledges the importance of legal ethics to the law school curriculum, a subject which is central to my teaching and scholarship here at the Law College as well as my service to the profession.”

Foster Swift Collins & Smith joins a prestigious list of supported faculty positions including:

  • The John F. Schaefer Endowed Chair in Matrimonial Law held by Professor Cynthia Lee Starnes;
  • The Alan S. Zekelman Professor of International Human Rights Law held by Professor Susan H. Bitensky, director of the Lori E. Talsky Center for the Human Rights of Women and Children.

For more information about Empower Extraordinary, contact Tina Kashat Casoli, director of the Office of Advancement, at (517) 432-6840 or via email at casoli@law.msu.edu.

Last Updated: February 19, 2015

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