I am starting my holiday vacation a little early this year. So I will be out of the office until the new year. However, I managed to attend a few events before taking off.

Monday was our staff holiday luncheon. What a delight and what a fun event. We shared white elephants gifts and had lunch catered by AQ Chicken. It was fun. We also had our final faculty candidate of the semester. That evening was a quiet dinner at Thai Diner with Kedron Benham and Michele McCall.

The next day was the last Academic Deans Meeting of the semester, and the Provost wished us all a happy holiday. I then had my final meeting of the semester with the Provost.

Happy holidays to all of you. Thanks for a very successful semester. If you’ve been following the blog, you can see we’ve made a number of extraordinary strides with our strategic planning effort, in our faculty recruitment, our library director search and our development director search. Many thanks to all of you for working so hard to bring to life the great things happening here at the School of Law. May you all have very happy, warm and joyous holidays with your families and friends, and I’ll see you next semester.

Another busy week around the law school. Jesús Moroles arrived and we have been excited to watch the installation of the courtyard begin. The pillars outside the Norma Lea Beasley Entrance Hall were installed early in the week and peaked everyone’s interest in our artist.

Monday we had a faculty candidate in, and I went to have lunch with Kelly Scott, our alumna who works at the Washington County Prosecutor’s Office. It was good to meet with her and to catch up with her and all the developments in her career.

Tuesday was a very quiet day, other than the last day of my workplace legislation course. What a great class. Thanks for your patience this semester with all the class conflicts. Good job on your presentations, and I look forward to grading your finals.

Wednesday I had lunch with Carolyn Allen, the Dean of Mullins Library. It was fun to get off campus and to find out what was going on in her life and to share what’s happening with me. We’ve decided to make that a regular event, and I look forward to it. Thank you very much for lunch, Carolyn. Later that afternoon, we celebrated our November birthdays. Happy Birthday Cathy Chick, Chauncey Brummer, Kim Ferguson and Monika Szakasits.

The next day, Thursday, Malcolm and I left for a reception down in Dallas with our Dallas alumni sponsored at Patton Boggs and hosted by Robert Jeffery “Jeff” Cole. A number of our Dallas alumni turned up including 50+ grads Gene Schieffler and Norma Lea Beasley. A number of our younger alums were there as well. It was a very lively group. They were very excited about what was happening at the Law School. Also, three of our alums were excited about spearheading an effort to form a Dallas Chapter of the Law Society – Mark Torian, Adam Daughtery and Jason Jobe. Thank you to Jeff, Gene, Norma, Mark, Adam, Jason, Keith Williams, James Ish, Steve Caple, Hirum McBeth, Floyd Clardy, Kevin Jones, Val Albright, and Lloyd Ward and his wife for attending.

And then the next day we returned from Dallas in time for a faculty meeting and Jesús Moroles gave a presentation to the Law School community on his work in general and his vision for the courtyard. We were very pleased to have Michael Hollomon, Richard’s life partner, there as well as Chancellor White, Archie Schaffer and Woody Bassett. The latter two spearheaded the courtyard fundraising efforts. A number of our alums came, as well as Mayor Coody. It was a wonderful and warm event, and people are very excited about the beautiful work of Jesús and the vision of Richard in the courtyard. That evening I went to dinner with Jesús; his friend Margarete, who is a collector of his sculptures; Nancy and Andy Cozart and Dana and Wally Nixon. It was a wonderful evening and thanks very much to the 36 Club for squeezing us in on a busy and rainy evening.

Once again, there are a lot of events going on around here. Sadly, we learned of the passing of one of our retired Law School colleagues, Jim Jackson. Our thoughts are with Jim’s family during this time of sorrow.

Although it has been pretty quiet around here as students study for final exams, the Law School community and I have had a full schedule leading up to the holiday season.

Monday, Dec. 3, was the Washington County Bar luncheon and the new officers were elected. Those new officers, and congratulations to each of them, were Boyce Davis, president; John Burrows, vice president and Chreea Stanimirovic, secretary/treasurer. Both Boyce, ’74, and Chreea, ’05, are both School of Law alums.

That afternoon was a faculty meeting followed by dinner with my good friend Carol Gattis from the College of Engineering. I’ll be sharing my vacation with Carol starting today. The rest of the day was spent trying to catch up on correspondence and reporting. I wanted to be sure to leave for vacation with as little carryover as possible sitting on my desk.

The next day Richard Ray came over and gave the faculty and staff an update on our University benefits; it was very helpful to all of us. Thank you, Richard.

I then headed over to a meeting of the Council of Deans with the Provost. Some of the agenda items included some of the interesting academic programs occurring in the undergraduate dorms and also concerns about fire safety and the possibility of upcoming fire drills in the next academic school year.

That evening I was very honored to attend the Hispanic Women of Arkansas’ annual holiday dinner and open house up at the JTL Shop in Springdale at the invitation of Margarita Solorzano. There looked to be about 200-300 people in attendance. There were dancers and music and a number of very important members of the Hispanic community representing various businesses including Cox Cable and Tyson Foods. Again, it was an honor to be invited and to see a number of our students who attended as well.

Wednesday was the annual alumni Christmas party at Trapnall Hall in Little Rock. Malcolm and I traveled down to meet with our Law Alumni Society Board, which we held at the new Arkansas Bar Association Center. It’s a beautiful setting, and we really appreciate the service of our alums who brought their thoughtful suggestions to us on how to improve our alumni society as well as how to encourage many more of our alums to become active members. Alumni at the meeting included Karla Rogers Dean, William Adair Jr., Gregory Graham, Don Schnipper, Kathy Searcy, Jimmy Simpson, John Stroud Jr. and Dan Young. Earnest Brown Jr. and James Smith joined us by phone.

The Law Alumni Christmas party was at Trapnall Hall and was attended by a number of alums, many for the first time. We really appreciate them coming to see us and mixing and mingling with each other. A special thanks to Don Judges, Carl Circo, Ned Snow, Susan Schell and Judith Kilpatrick for representing the School of Law. Also, a big thanks to our driver, Lewis, from physical plant who drove the van and delivered us safely there and back. We really appreciate Lewis taking the time to be our driver. Also, thanks to Malcolm and Michele who had such a beautiful event set up. Although it was lightly attended by members of the Law School community, there was a very large turnout by alums, and once again, we were very pleased to see them all. Two of the special guests were UALR Law School Dean Chuck Goldner and his wife Susan. Also, I saw Shannon Underwood and her husband, Joe, who are both 2005 School of Law graduates. Their baby’s name is Anna, and I met Shannon’s parents, too. It was great catching up with their family.

On Thursday, the Law School celebrated the life of Jim Jackson, one of our retired law librarians, at 5 p.m. in the courtroom. I was sorry that I had to miss the celebration of Jim’s life, but Thursday morning I left for the LSAC Board Meeting in Philadelphia at the Four Seasons Conference Hotel. That evening several of us on the Board had dinner together: Kent Lawless, Majorie LaRue, Athornia Steele from Capital University and Kwan and Bill Wang. It was a delightful dinner and we were all able to catch up and share about the most recent events in each others lives, including the exciting news that Kwan, Hillary Clinton’s former roommate at Yale, and Bill are going to participate in or work the Iowa Caucuses in January.

Friday was the board meeting, and we looked at a number of issues including the potential globalization of LSAC products and services, as well as ways to improve our current services and products we offer to our member schools. That night was the board dinner at the Four Seasons. Phil Shelton came back to say hello to everyone. You may recall from my earlier posts that Phil Shelton is the former chair of LSAC, the new chair being Dan Bernstein. It was fun to see Phil and to be able to catch up with his new life of retirement which he is enjoying immensely.

Saturday was a continuation of Friday’s brainstorming session. We thought about things we might do differently or current challenges facing the organizations and suggestions for confronting those. Ellen Rutt initiated a really great idea to avoid the typical meeting in which we just sit around and listen to a number of committee reports which were preprinted in the meeting booklet in advance anyway. This got people really engaged and thinking out of the box, and I think most folks enjoyed it. Since we were able to get done by noon, I spent a bit of time with Marjorie LaRue and Stacie Walters walking around Philadelphia and doing a little last minute Christmas shopping. That evening we had dinner with John Law, a law professor at the University of Alberta in Canada, and again enjoyed sharing the company of my colleagues.

Sunday morning it was time to get to the airport and catch a flight where, yes indeed, the original flight was delayed, as was the connecting flight. I have learned not to be too surprised, as this has become a real pattern for me while traveling. It was back to school on Monday and a short week before vacation.

As I mentioned, I will be heading out of town for a little R & R, but I look forward to sharing about all of the exciting events happening in 2008. On behalf of the School of Law, I want to wish you a blessed and safe holiday season.

Despite having a short week because of the Thanksgiving holiday, it was jammed packed with activities. As has been the case for the last few weeks, we had several faculty candidates interviewing and visiting with members of the School of Law community. In addition, on Monday I had the opportunity to meet with Dr. Mark Cochran, director of the American Association of Engineering Societies and associate vice-president for agricultural research, and Dr. Ivory Liles, associate vice-president for agricultural extension. I very much enjoyed their overview of the Division, and appreciated them taking time from their busy schedules share that information with Associate Dean Kilpatrick and myself. We were able to think of ways in which the School of Law and the agricultural division could cooperate more to both units’ benefit, and we’re looking forward to following up with Drs. Cochran and Liles in January to flesh out those ideas. It was a very productive meeting, and again, my thanks to them for coming to visit with us.

Monday was also our staff Thanksgiving potluck, unfortunately I wasn’t able to attend, but I’m sure that a good time was had by all. By all accounts, the meal was delicious. There was pork loin along with all the traditional fixin’s and lots of dessert. There certainly weren’t many leftovers. It’s great that the Law School staff had such a great time.

Monday evening I went down to the Town Center where Mayor Dan Coody announced this was his last term in office and that he was not going to run for re-election. He also talked at great lengths about the contributions and accomplishments of the City of Fayetteville staff. After attending that event, it’s clear that we really do have hard working, capable and competent staff running the City of Fayetteville. Thanks to Mayor Coody for all his work to date—we’ll certainly miss him. Following that event, I went to the Law Review pizza party at U.S. Pizza where Suzanne Clark and Ryan Ray thanked all the members of the Law Review for their hard work in getting issues to press. Thanks also to Don Judges, Kim Coats, Carl Circo, Scott and Ami Dodson, Tim Tarvin and Angie Doss for attending. I know that both the members of the Law Review and I appreciated them being there.

In addition to interviewing a faculty candidate visit on Tuesday (as well as class), I was able to spend some quiet time that evening with Ray Niblock, class of 1993, who cooked a lovely dinner (steak, salad and broccoli) and graciously provided some downtime. That quiet dinner allowed us to catch up and was wonderful. Thank you very much, Ray. It was great to see you and visit with you.

Wednesday was a very slow day around here. We operated with just about a skeleton crew. The highlight of the day was being able to go to lunch with alumnus Melissa Lee. Melissa graduated in 1998, and it was great to catch up with her on all the new things happening in her life. She is going to be serving in Afghanistan next year and talked about what her duties there will entail. We ate at Emilia’s and I had salmon with tabouli. It was a relaxing middle of the day. Then I was off to the office again to finish up some correspondence before beginning the holiday. I hope that everyone was able to have a warm, safe and joyful Thanksgiving! Hopefully everyone had an opportunity decompress and enjoy the love and laughter of friends and family.

I was able to stay put in Fayetteville for most of a busy and full week. We had a number of faculty candidates visit with the Law School community, and we very much enjoyed meeting all of them and learning from their presentations. There are many talented folks on the market, and we are very fortunate to have them express an interest in us.

Tuesday evening, in addition to the regular day (hello workplace leg. class), was our usual monthly Inn of Court meeting. The Inn of Court group that presented the program was led by alum Eva Madison. The focus was sexual harassment in the workplace. The group included students April Kersten, Emily Sprott, Michael Nutt, Ryan Ray and Suzanne Clark. The fact that their presentation highlighted sexual harassment in the context of a law firm, and a jury awarded a multi-million dollar judgment was particularly interesting. The presentation held everyone’s interest, and the evening provided the opportunity to visit with some of our alums and members of the Washington, Benton and Sebastian County Bars who were present.

The next morning I was able to watch the preparation and the final rehearsal of our National Moot Court team, Ryan Ray and Ben Oxford. There arguments had to do with the second amendment right to bare arms and, from what I was able to observe, they were very well prepared. Over lunch at Thai Diner, I finally had the chance to meet Lisa Childs, who joined the university a little over a year ago as an intellectual property lawyer. She deals with a lot of technology and licensing issues. Both our meal and chat were delightful. We hope to involve her more in the Law School community. That afternoon consisted of a series of meetings including one with Mark Power and Dave Gearhart about our director of development search, and another with our legal research and writing faculty to hear their concerns and ideas about the program.

Thursday morning started out with a very exciting event. The University of Arkansas School of Law was asked by the United States Embassy in Kyiv, Ukraine to take part in the celebration of International Education Week by participating in an audiovisual conference. The conference provided an opportunity for professors and students from the law departments of the Krok University in Kyiv, the Kyiv International University and other universities to discuss legal issues with their counterparts at our law school. There was a great turnout at Embassy’s facilities, and we were able to feature several of our own faculty members, including Uche Ewelukwa, Sharon Foster, Don Judges and Ned Snow.

Our last strategic planning meeting for the semester was held during lunch. There are four strategic planning groups comprised of members of the Law School community, who have met throughout the semester. Each group has student members, and we very much appreciate their time and input. The focus of this meeting was to come up with a “wish list” of things we would like the Law School to do, discuss programs we might take on and suggest changes we might make to the curriculum, the law school community and its environment. Our group had a very lively discussion and submitted a number of suggestions to the strategic planning group. We look forward to reading all the groups’ suggestions and getting feedback from the committee next semester. The strategic planning committee is already planning two additional sessions for next semester that will focus on issues surrounding scholarship. Thanks to all who participated in this process.

That afternoon the Law School was very pleased to host the Arkansas Alternative Dispute Resolution Commission for a panel discussion and question-and-answer session about the role of ADR in Arkansas. At the conclusion of the session, the Commission recognized Sid McCollum for his role as a founding member of the Commission and for his 10 years of extraordinary service to the state of Arkansas through promoting ADR. Afterwards there was a reception and members of the Law School community mingled with our guests.

Friday, Malcolm and I headed down to Russellville to speak with the members of the Pope County Bar Association. Several of our alums were there, including Alex Streett (’65), Jim Coutts (’90), Roy Beth Kelley (’97), Steve Gardner (’76), Bob Hardin (’72), Kristin Clark (’97) and Josh Sanford (’00). We also met some new friends who came out to learn about the School of Law. We’re very thankful to our host, Michael Robbins, a 2001 graduate of the School of Law. We forgot to take pictures of that bar meeting (shucks!), but we were delighted to have the opportunity to update everyone about the exciting events occurring at the law school.

Now, I need to give a couple of shout outs. The first is to professor Carl Circo who received a unanimous tenure vote from his faculty colleagues Friday evening. Carl is wonderful member of the Law School community and has enriched us in many ways. So congratulations Carl on your well deserved vote. Another kudos goes out to a good friend and alum, Katherine Shurlds, on her 60th birthday. Katherine is also a professor of journalism here at the university and teaches a course on media law. Her fabulous birthday event was held at the UARK Bowl on Dickson and came complete with a band. What fun to hang out with Katherine’s friends and journalism colleagues to help Katherine celebrate!

And that pretty much wraps it up. This weekend was the first quiet one in quite a long time, so I spent it relaxing and recharge. I’ll bet though that things won’t stay slow for long. Stay tuned!

Sunday evening, after dropping off Dean Jim Chen, I was back at Bonefish Grill to have dinner with women from the Arkansas Women’s Forum. During dinner, I met Sven Erik Holmes, who is an alumni of the university and executive vice-chair for legal and compliance at KPMG in New York. He was having dinner with the Chancellor. We visited a bit, and I invited him to the School of Law’s AALS reception in New York. It was fun to meet him and to chat with he and Chancellor White during dinner.

The week was a busy one. Not only did I visit with one of our law library director candidates on Monday, I also got my flu shot (you should, too!) and attended the Washington County Bar Association luncheon. Rick Ramsay (’77), our alum and president of the Arkansas Bar Foundation, was the lunch speaker. I always enjoy attending the WCBA luncheons and seeing our alums and members of the northwest Arkansas legal community.

The next day, Tuesday, another candidate for the law library director position was on campus and I attended a meeting with the academic deans and then the Council of Deans. On top of that full schedule, it was time to prepare for a trip to the meeting of the Labor and Employment Law (LEL) Section of the American Bar Association.

I flew out early on Wednesday. Those of you who follow my blog are familiar with my flight issues, and this time was no different—my flight was delayed and switched three times. I finally landed in Philadelphia and arrived at Loews Hotel. That evening I went to the Section reception, held in an exhibition hall, where various LEL committees had set up booths to recruit new members. As a member of the Ethics and Professional Responsibility Committee, I manned our booth along with Eve Hernandez, a member of our committee, and Justin Schwartz, a co-chair of the committee. I’m pleased to say we recruited several new members, and we are looking forward to seeing them at meetings in the future.

Thursday was the beginning of the conference for which 1258 labor and employment lawyers had registered. It was exciting to have that number of labor and employment lawyers in the same place, and the programs were fantastic. Jim LaVaute, the chair of the Section, presided over the opening plenary session given by Christine Cooper, a faculty member from Loyola University Chicago School of Law who gave a terrific Supreme Court update. After working a little bit in the morning, I had lunch with my good friend Mike Green from Texas Wesleyan and Myra McKenzie of Wal-Mart, a fellow with the Ethics and Professional Responsibility Committee. She will be joining us at our meetings and participating in our CLE programs. It was great to have her there both as a member of Wal-Mart Legal and as my mentee and sorority sister. It certainly was fun to catch up with them both.

Our committee’s panel discussion on ethics and professionalism was later that day. The program was titled “Ethical Challenges in Employment Law,” and the panelists were Dennis Duffy, a management lawyer; Gail Lopez Hernandez, a union lawyer; myself; Paul Burgoyne, the disciplinary counsel for Pennsylvania and Andrew Altschul, a management employee and mediator lawyer from Washington state. The program was packed—standing room only—with quite a lively discussion, so we think it was pretty successful. That evening, the Section held a diversity reception at the lovely Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, which was well attended.

Afterwards, Mike Green and I attended the Council Dinner that was held at the Striped Bass. I had scallops for an appetizer and a very interesting entreé. I’m not sure I would recommend it. It was seared Ahi tuna and short ribs served with green apple, so it was pretty unusual. The dessert definitely made up for it. It was triple chocolate – chocolate straw candy, chocolate cake and a hot chocolate shooter—and absolutely delicious.

The plenary session on Friday morning was a “Review of Significant Developments in Common Law and State Statutory Decisions.” It was very informative, bringing all of us up to date on the most recent statutory and case decisions in labor and employment law. I also attended the “Immigration Fundamentals” program, which was pretty packed. After that it was off to lunch with Mike Green, and we ate (again for the “foodies”) at a fabulous restaurant called The Marathon Grill. I started off with a small cup of Manhattan-style clam chowder, and my lemon grass ginger marinated swordfish salad was so unusual that I thought I’d share the ingredients with you: swordfish fillets, spring greens, piquillo peppers, tomatoes, hearts of palm, mandarin oranges, red onion, basil and sesame seeds finished with a citrus soy ginger vinaigrette. It was a really delightful lunch.

That afternoon I received an e-mail from Terri with the good news that we had completed the accreditation process and we are fully accredited for the next seven years. What delightful good news to receive from the Law School while on the road. We’re really thankful to Associate Dean Kilpatrick for spearheading our accreditation process and keeping us on task so that we were able to get this accomplished so quickly.

Friday evening I had a chance to catch up with two of our alums, Emmanuel (’90) and Chidinma (’07) Ahia. What warm and easy companions they are. We went to Maggiano’s Restaurant, an Italian eatery around the corner from my hotel. After I updated them about the Law School, we visited about Emmanuel’s current career, how he came to America and how he discovered this country’s race issues. What was most interesting was hearing how he processed it all, coming from Nigeria. It was a fascinating conversation. Emmanuel and Chidinma are interested in starting a chapter of the alumni society in Philidelphia for our law grads, and we are working to connect them with other Arkansas alums living in the Philadelphia area.

At Maggiano’s the portions were both humongous and delicious. We all shared a spinach and artichoke dip appetizer which was giant, and Emmanuel and I had clam chowder. As the main course, Chidinma had a gnocchi entreé that was very large, Emmanuel had chicken parmesan with a side of linguine and I had lobster ravioli. All of us were amazed at the portions.

Saturday saw me awake bright and early for an academics’ and deans’ breakfast. There was another being hosted for law students, and since so few people attended both breakfasts we combined them. Those of us who were faculty members met students who are interested in practicing labor and employment law. A little later that morning was a plenary session on “Federal Enforcement of Statutory Rights” which featured a prominent panel. We got to hear from Ron Cooper, the general counsel of the EEOC; Ronald Meisburg, general counsel of the National Labor Relations Board and Jonathan L. Snare, the acting solicitor of the U.S. Department of Labor. As you might imagine, it was extremely informative to actually hear from these agency administrators.

Afterwards I joined the law students track, where they were observing a litigation session entitled, “I’ll See You in Court.” All week there had been an ongoing discrimination trial. The premise of the suit was that a woman filed a sexual harassment claim against Hooligan’s Bar. According to the facts, some of the employees had drilled holes in a wall in order to look into the women’s locker room and were observing women as they dressed. The session I attended was the last of that program, but it was still fascinating because we were able to observe the jury’s deliberations. There were two sets of juries: one was was selected by the lawyers who litigated the cases in front of the Section, and the other had actually been struck by the lawyers. We were able to observe both juries and the struck jury came back with a larger verdict than the jury that had been selected by the lawyers. At the end, the moderator introduced all the students who share with us their schools and described their interests in labor and employment law. All in all it was a good session.

Saturday’s Fall Section Council lunch was held on the 33rd floor of the Loews Hotel, which boasted a beautiful view. Lunch was delicious. It was buffet-style, and afterwards we went downstairs for the Fall Section Council meeting. Let me take a moment to congratulate the planners of the program. Not only were they able to bring together 1250 labor and employment law practitioners, but they offered multiple, high-quality tracks of CLE. Congratulations to Steve Gordon, the union and employee co-chair of the program; Allen Gross, the employer co-chair and Howard Shapiro, the employer co-chair for a successful conference.

After the Council dinner, I met with one of our alums, Gary Samms (’89), and we had dinner at The Palm restaurant. I updated him on all the goings-on at the School of Law. Gary is a delightful guy. He shared his story of coming to school at the University of Arkansas and shared the fact that he feels the preparation he received here was as good as any he would have received at any law school. In addition to being a lot of fun, he’s a very successful lawyer to boot. Try Googling him—there’s tons of information. He’s done a lot of malpractice defense, along with early criminal defense work, but now he specializes in litigation. He hasn’t been back to visit in a long time, so we were able to give him an Arkansas sweatshirt because he didn’t have any Arkansas gear.

For the “foodies” out there, the dinner at The Palms was extraordinary. We started with a shrimp cocktail (with enormous shrimp) followed by an arugula endive salad with strawberries, toasted walnuts and balsamic vinaigrette. I had an entree of three large crab cakes, and Gary had a steak. All the sides are served family style. We had au gratin potatoes and something very unusual, fried asparagus. I thought that meant it was sauteed, but it was batter dipped and fried instead. For dessert, I had the largest piece of carrot cake I had ever seen. It was fun getting to know Gary and I hope he’ll come out and visit the School of Law soon. Next time I’m in Philadelphia, I hope to get all of our alums together so that they can meet each other and we can enjoy each other’s company.

Early Sunday morning was conclusion of the Fall Section Council meeting. We ended a little early, so Chris Hexter, a union side attorney from St. Louis; Mary O’Melveny, a union attorney for Communications Workers of America and I spent the couple of hours we had before our planes/train left at a craft fair being held at the convention center around the corner from the hotel.

Afterwards, we went to lunch at the Reading Terminal Market. Wow! It is an old railroad train station that has been converted into a market, and there are tons of different restaurants serving all types of different ethnic foods. Anything you could imagine was all there under one roof. Chris and Mary both went to a deli, but being the “foodie” that I am, I scouted out all the opportunities from Indian food to sushi. Eventually I settled on a good home-cooked meal at a little soul food restaurant that served greens, cornbread, macaroni and cheese, sweet potatoes and fried chicken. They were both pretty envious once they saw my plate. After lunch, Chris Hexter graciously offered me a ride to the airport in his hybrid rental. Another whirlwind week, full of new acquaintances and old friends.