Join MSU Law for the Second Annual Dean’s Speaker Series. The 2022-23 series, entitled “Ethics, Law, and Society,” will bring in a diverse group of leading legal thinkers to the Michigan State University community with thought-provoking presentations about law and contemporary issues.
Henry R. Silverman Professor of Law
University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School
“Reimagining Ethics in Legal Education”
Thursday, September 29, 2022
12:15 - 1:15 p.m.
MSU Law Castle Board Room and via Zoom
Dr. Allen is an internationally renowned expert on privacy and data protection law, ethics, bioethics, legal philosophy, women’s rights, and diversity in higher education.
Her books include Privacy Law and Society (Thomson/West, 2016), the most comprehensive textbook on the US law of privacy and data protection; Unpopular Privacy: What Must We Hide (Oxford, 2011); The New Ethics: A Guided Tour of the 21st Century Moral Landscape (Miramax/Hyperion, 2004); Why Privacy Isn’t Everything: Feminist Reflections on Personal Accountability (Rowman and Littlefield, 2003); and Uneasy Access: Privacy for Women in a Free Society (Rowman and Littlefield, 1988), the first monograph on privacy written by an American philosopher.
The first African-American woman to hold both a PhD in philosophy and a law degree, she is a graduate of Harvard Law School and received her Ph.D. in Philosophy from the University of Michigan.
James E. Jones Jr. Professor of Law
University of Wisconsin Law School
“Law, Ethics, and Predatory Governments”
Monday, November 14, 2022
12:15 - 1:15 p.m.
Bernadette Atuahene is a property law scholar, focusing on land stolen from people in the African Diaspora. After completing her graduate studies, she served as a judicial clerk at the Constitutional Court of South Africa and then practiced as an associate at Cleary, Gottlieb, Steen & Hamilton in New York. She has worked as a consultant for the World Bank and the South African Land Claims Commission. She has also directed and produced an award winning short documentary film about one South African family’s struggle to regain their land. She has been honored with the Fulbright Fellowship, Council on Foreign Relation’s International Affairs Fellowship, and Princeton’s Law and Public Affairs Fellowship.
Professor Atuahene’s first book — We Want What’s Ours: Learning from South Africa’s Land Restitution Program (Oxford University Press, 2014) — is based on 150 interviews she conducted with South Africans dispossessed of their land by the colonial and apartheid governments and who received some form of compensation post apartheid.
She won a National Science Foundation award for her current ethnographic project about racialized property tax administration in Detroit, which has received several accolades, including the Law and Society Association’s John Hope Franklin Award for best paper on race in 2020. She has published in the California Law Review, Northwestern Law Review, Southern California Law Review, and NYU Law Review.
Partner
DLA Piper (US)
“Ethics and the Judiciary”
Monday, February 20, 2023
12:15 - 1:15 p.m. — CANCELLED
Kim J. Askew is a partner at DLA Piper (U.S.) in Dallas, Texas. She represents clients in significant and often high-profile business disputes and in significant employment matters involving claims of race, disability, gender and age discrimination, sexual harassment and in litigation involving business torts, trade secrets, non-compete, and non-solicitation and employment agreements. She has successfully tried cases to jury and non-jury verdicts in state and federal courts around the country and has handled appeals before federal and Texas appellate courts.
Ms. Askew is a long-time leader in the American Bar Association, State Bar of Texas, and Dallas Bar Association. In 2022, the Texas Minority Council Program of the State Bar of Texas recognized her with a Lifetime Achievement Award for her work on diversity, equity and inclusion in the legal profession. She leads the Texas delegation in the ABA House of Delegates and is a past chair of the Section of Litigation of the American Bar Association, the first lawyer of color to serve as chair, and is a former chair of the ABA Standing Committee on the Federal Judiciary. She is an emeritus member of the Council and the Membership Committee of The American Law Institute (ALI) and has chaired key ALI committees. She currently serves on ALI’s Development Committee.
Ms. Askew has written numerous articles and frequently speaks on discovery, evidentiary, business litigation, and employment law topics, and has received the Gene Cavin Award, the highest recognition from the State Bar of Texas for contributions to continuing legal education.
Ms. Askew has been recognized for her trailblazing legal career and community service. The Dallas Business Journal recently listed her as one of the Texas 100: Top 100 Influential People to watch in Dallas and D CEO Magazine named her one of the Dallas 500 (Top Business Leaders) since 2015. Since 2005, Lawdragon listed her as one of the “500 Leading Lawyers in America” and named her to its Hall of Fame in 2022. Lawdragon named her as one of its Inaugural 500 Leading Litigators in America for 2023. Benchmark has frequently named her one of the “Top 250 Women In Litigation.”
Peter Kiewit Foundation Professor of Law, Emeritus
Arizona State University
Former Senior Assistant Disciplinary Counsel
DC Office of Disciplinary Counsel
“The Divided Self: Ethical Tensions in Lawyering”
Monday, March 20, 2023
12:15 - 1:15 p.m.
Myles V. Lynk was the first Peter Kiewit Foundation Professor of Law and the Legal Profession at the Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law, Arizona State University, where he specialized in legal ethics, corporate law, civil procedure, and professional responsibility. He was co-chair of the State Bar of Arizona’s Task Force on Multi- jurisdictional practice and was a member of the State Bar’s Task Force on the Future of the Legal Profession. He is a member of the American Law Institute and served on its governing Council, and served two terms from 1998 to 2004 on the Civil Rules Advisory Committee of the Judicial Conference of the United States, where he chaired its Discovery Rules Subcommittee.
He served on the White House Domestic Policy Staff in the Carter Administration and was a law clerk to Judge Damon J. Keith of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. Professor Lynk was a partner in the Washington, D.C., office of a national law firm from 1985 through 1999. A past president of the District of Columbia Bar, Professor Lynk was Senior Assistant Disciplinary Counsel for appellate litigation in the District of Columbia Courts’ Office of Disciplinary Counsel from 2019 through 2022. He has held visiting professorships in law at Duke University, the University of South Carolina and George Washington University. In 2014, Professor Lynk was a Visiting Fellow at Magdalene College, University of Cambridge, England, and a Visitor to the Faculty of Law at the University of Cambridge. Professor Lynk is author of numerous articles and public lecture presentations and a graduate of Harvard Law School.
Partner
Holland and Knight
“Ethics and the Global Law Firm”
Monday, April 3, 2023
12:15 - 1:15 p.m.
Trisha Rich is a partner in the global law firm Holland & Knight and a national leader in the legal ethics community. She founded and coordinates the Attorney Defense Initiative, the nation’s first privately sponsored pro bono initiative that focuses on assisting impaired lawyers facing disciplinary charges.
Rich is also president of the Association of Professional Responsibility Lawyers, the nation’s largest legal ethics bar organization, and she is a frequent speaker and author on a variety of issues related to ethics and risk management.