Amicus Fall 2019

A New Home for the Law Journals

Anonymous — Wed, 01 Jan 2020 06:00:00 +0000

A New Home for the Law Journals Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 12/31/2019 - 23:00

Serving on a journal is, for many, among the most memorable and rewarding experiences of law school. Following a renovation of the Wolf Law Building's garden level, Colorado Law’s three student-led journals now have a new, state-of-the-art home.

The space includes double the previous square footage for journals staff to work, collaborate, and publish robust and high-quality scholarship. It was designed with collaboration and flexibility in mind, offering office suites, conference room, lounge, and large common area for socializing and events. The renovation was completed in late 2019.

Rendering of the expanded journals suite.

"Law review is your opportunity to speak beyond the walls of the law school and have a voice in the conversations happening about really important issues," said Leah Fugere ('20), editor-in-chief of the University of Colorado Law Review. "It really means a lot that the university invests in supporting us as students, as journals, and in the space that we use."

Besides honing writing, editing, and research skills, the social aspect of serving on a journal cannot be overlooked. Connections made with fellow editors and journals staff, who often become lifelong friends and colleagues, span far beyond the three years of law school.

"The potential for this new space is to build even stronger, closer, more robust relationships between the people on the journals because now, for the first time, we’ll have a space where everybody can be there together," said Rob McCary ('19), who served as managing editor of the University of Colorado Law Review in 2018-19. "There’s room for all of the team that needs to be there at the same time instead of cycling through single-file. And there’s a huge common room where we can have 15 or 20 people working or we can host a social event for the entire team—all 60 members—in one space. That is something we have never had before and I think it is going to facilitate even stronger relationships and a more positive sense of community."

This space is going to impact students for many years. It will make their journals experience so much more valuable, meaningful, and fun, he said.

Students reflect on their journals experience

[video:https://youtu.be/KKkaRE3ZYc8]

There are a number of philanthropic opportunities to support the expanded journals suite. Please contact Peter Sanders, Assistant Dean for Advancement, for more information: peter.sanders@colorado.edu or (303) 492-0752.

Colorado Law’s three student-led journals have a new, state-of-the-art home in the Wolf Law Building.

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Holding Government Speech Accountable: Professor Norton Publishes Book on Government Speech and the Constitution

Anonymous — Thu, 24 Oct 2019 22:36:09 +0000

Holding Government Speech Accountable: Professor Norton Publishes Book on Government Speech and the Constitution Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 10/24/2019 - 16:36

Constitutional law tends to focus on the rules that apply to what the government does—like the rules that apply to the laws that the government enacts to the government’s taxes and the government’s decisions to arrest and imprison. What’s less clear are the constitutional rules that apply to what the government says. In her new book, The Government’s Speech and the Constitution (Cambridge University Press), constitutional law scholar and Professor Helen Norton investigates the variety and abundance of government speech, from early proclamations and pamphlets to the electronic media of radio and television and to today’s digital age.

"At its core, constitutional law addresses the uses and abuses of government power. This includes the uses and abuses of the government’s expressive powers," Norton said. "When we see or hear the terms 'government' and 'speech' in close proximity, we often think of the constitutional issues triggered when the government regulates our expression. In this book I focus on the constitutional issues raised when the government itself is doing the talking."

"When we see or hear the terms 'government' and 'speech' in close proximity, we often think of the constitutional issues triggered when the government regulates our expression. In this book I focus on the constitutional issues raised when the government itself is doing the talking."
Professor Helen Norton

Norton, who holds the Rothgerber Chair in Constitutional Law at Colorado Law, focuses her teaching and scholarship on constitutional and civil rights law. Before entering academia, she served as deputy assistant attorney general for civil rights at the U.S. Department of Justice during the Clinton administration. Her constitutional law scholarship has appeared in the Duke Law Journal, Northwestern University Law Review, Stanford Law Review Online, and the Supreme Court Review, among other journals.

Q: First, let’s start with a definition. How do you define government speech?

When I talk about the government’s speech, I’m referring to the speech of a governmental body like an agency or congressional committee (think of the surgeon general’s report on the dangers of tobacco) as well as the speech of an individual who speaks when backed by the government’s power (like the attorney general announcing official policy or a police officer interrogating a suspect).

Q: How is speech by the government different from when anyone else speaks?

The government is unique among speakers because of its coercive power, its enormous resources, its often privileged access to key information, and its wide variety of expressive roles. The government speaks not only as sovereign, but also as employer, as educator, as property owner, as commander-in-chief, and in many other roles. For all these reasons, the government’s speech has unusual potential for great value as well as great harm.

Q: Why does the government’s speech deserve our attention right now?

The government’s speech can serve, or instead threaten, democracy. We need to empower our government to operate effectively to serve and protect us, even while we need to limit its power to harm us. Think of governmental threats that silence dissenters as effectively as jailing them, or governmental lies that pressure their targets into abandoning their constitutional rights as effectively as denying those rights outright. These concerns are as important now as they’ve ever been.

Q: Are there ever instances when the government can lie to its citizens? Under what circumstances?

The government’s lies, like our own, can be complicated. Sometimes the government tells lies in hopes of achieving important public objectives: think of undercover police officers’ falsehoods about their identities, which are told to discover and stop wrongdoing. But of course, the government’s lies sometimes inflict devastating injuries—for example, when the government lies to the public to avoid legal or political accountability or to justify certain military actions. This requires us to wrestle with hard questions about when we can effectively challenge those lies through constitutional litigation and when we must instead rely solely on political action like protesting and voting.

Q: You’ve written extensively about free speech as it relates to artificial intelligence, employers, and the government. What inspired you to write this book about government speech?

I’ve worked for the government myself when I helped lead the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division during the Clinton administration, so I have some experience with the challenges and benefits that come with speaking for the government. After I entered academia, my early work in this area focused on the value and importance of the government’s speech so long as its governmental source is made clear to the public. As the years passed, I also became interested in the dark side of the government’s speech—in other words, the government’s destructive expressive choices. This led me to wonder whether and when the Constitution limits the government’s speech. This book represents my efforts to describe and analyze the tensions between these two sides of the government speech coin.

Q: How has writing the book influenced your future scholarship?

Thinking about the constitutional rules that apply, or should apply, to the government’s speech invites lots of important and challenging questions both about the nature of speech and the nature of government. It requires us to expose our views about how government does and should work, and our views about how speech does and should work. What value does the government’s speech offer, what dangers does the government’s speech threaten—and does the Constitution protect us from those dangers? These are questions that I’ll continue to explore.

This story originally appeared in the fall 2019 issue of Amicus.

Constitutional law tends to focus on the rules that apply to what the government does—like the rules that apply to the laws that the government enacts to the government’s taxes and the government’s decisions to arrest and imprison. What’s less clear are the constitutional rules that apply to what the government says. In her new book, The Government’s Speech and the Constitution, constitutional law scholar and Professor Helen Norton investigates the variety and abundance of government speech.

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Alumni in Focus: Entrepreneurial and Business Law Success Stories

Anonymous — Wed, 16 Oct 2019 23:23:41 +0000

Alumni in Focus: Entrepreneurial and Business Law Success Stories Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 10/16/2019 - 17:23

Susan Miller ('19)

Otto Hanson ('16), Sarah Boulden (JD/MBA '13), Christian Sederberg ('05), Laura Littman ('13)

Otto Hanson ('16)
Staff Attorney, Davis Graham & Stubbs LLP
Founder and CEO, TermScout

Otto Hanson’s entrepreneurial spirit helped pave his way to the University of Colorado Law School and to co-founding his own company. As a staff attorney at Davis Graham & Stubbs LLP and founder of TermScout, a legal tech startup that helps businesses and consumers build and understand contracts, Hanson recognizes the important practical skills he gained while attending Colorado Law. Hanson earned his MBA from the Middlebury Institute of International Studies and worked for various startups before attending law school.

"A big part of the reason why I chose Colorado Law was the programs run by Associate Professor Brad Bernthal and former Dean Phil Weiser,” he said. "I started out in the Silicon Flatirons student group and was president during my second year. I also competed in transactional competitions, and my team won the national Transactional LawMeets competition in New York City in 2015."

The Tech Lawyer Accelerator and the Deming Center Venture Fund (DCVF), led by a cross-disciplinary team of CU ��«��Ƶ graduate students, were two of the biggest influences on Hanson’s career.

"The DCVF is basically a venture capital fund run by graduate students. I was a student venture capitalist while I was a law student,” Hanson said. "Prior to law school, I’d been on the startup side but never the investor side. It was really great to try that hat on,” he said. “We listened to startup pitch presentations, interviewed executives, worked with the legal and financial teams, and learned about the due diligence process. We had to really look under the hood of the business and ask if we should allocate funds to this company. That was such a great experience to have while I was still in school."

Unbeknownst to him at the time, the DCVF would later play a pivotal role in Hanson’s own startup, which started when Hanson and Katherine Snow ('17) entered, and won, the Global Legal Hackathon in 2018 with an earlier iteration of their idea, then called LexLucid.

"We were frustrated after discovering some unusually and unapologetically aggressive terms in the click-through agreements of some large, well-known companies, so we set out to create a way for people (and later for businesses) to know what they’re signing," he said. "We received really positive feedback from judges and even found our first initial investor at the final round of the Global Legal Hackathon in New York City. We came back from that competition with a prototype of a product, an investor, and a winning idea, so we decided we had better keep at it."

When Hanson went out for TermScout’s first financing in early 2019, his team pitched—and received funding from—the Deming Center Venture Fund.

"It was great to work with the fund again and experience being on the company side of that transaction," Hanson said.

Another fundamental law school experience for Hanson was the Tech Lawyer Accelerator Program (TLA), run by Bill Mooz (’85). The program, which has been reimagined as the Institute for the Future of Law Practice, offers a hands-on training boot camp that focuses on disciplines not generally taught in law school followed by a field placement with companies in Colorado, Silicon Valley, and elsewhere.

"TLA got me up to speed. It was definitely a game changer,” he said. “Before law school I worked in low-tech startups, so I knew I needed more tech experience. TLA taught me the core language I needed to speak intelligibly to software engineers and work in the tech sector. I actually ended up working for a software company that summer. If you want to be involved with a high-tech business, being able to speak the language is just as key as knowing the law."

"If you want to be involved with a high-tech business, being able to speak the language is just as key as knowing the law."

Hanson also identified classes such as Venture Capital and Private Equity, taught by Bernthal and local venture capitalist Jason Mendelson, and Legal Writing Professor Amy Bauer’s Transactional Drafting class as useful and practical classes.

“I really didn’t want venture capital to be over. It was definitely a top class of all time for me,” he said. “The best class for technical skills was Professor Bauer’s transactional drafting class. She does a good job of using a technical approach to drafting and helping students recognize constituent parts of a contract. That is one skill that I still use all of the time."

Today, Hanson continues to practice law part time in the finance and acquisitions department of Davis Graham & Stubbs LLP and is the CEO of TermScout. “It’s incredible how supportive DGS has been, providing office space and mentorship for TermScout and being flexible with my legal practice as part of their efforts to give back to the entrepreneurial and legal tech communities,” he said.

Sarah Boulden (JD/MBA '13)
Senior Associate Attorney
Silicon Legal Strategy

As a graduate of Colorado Law’s JD/MBA dual degree program, Sarah Boulden got the best of both worlds: experiential education and practical coursework at Colorado Law and business-focused learnings at the Leeds School of Business.

Today, Boulden is a senior associate attorney at Silicon Legal Strategy, a boutique law firm providing transactional legal services to technology startups and investors. She heads the Denver office of Silicon Legal Strategy, which is headquartered in San Francisco. As outside general counsel for startup companies and venture capital firms, about 70 percent of her work is with startups and 30 percent is with venture capital investors. Most of Boulden’s day-to-day work consists of transactional legal work such as helping startups with formation and corporate governance, employment and consulting agreements, commercial agreements, equity and debt financings, and mergers and acquisitions.

"While I was a student I participated in activities across both the law school and business school. I was involved with Silicon Flatirons and the New Venture Challenge, and I was an articles editor on the Colorado Technology Law Journal,” she said. "I was also a student attorney in the Entrepreneurial Law Clinic and served as a course assistant for a Philosophy of Entrepreneurship class taught by Associate Professors Brad Bernthal and Phil Weiser, along with Brad Feld of the Foundry Group. At the business school I was also a director on the Deming Center Venture Fund."

Through classes and activities with the business school, Boulden broadened her knowledge base and acquired new skills not often taught in the classroom.

Additionally, through experiential learning in the Entrepreneurial Law Clinic, Boulden gained valuable practical skills. “In the clinic I had three clients with different needs, and I learned skills that are hard to obtain outside of an experience with a clinic or legal internship, such as drafting documents and client emails and the importance of responsiveness to clients. All of the skills I learned in clinic I still use today. Additionally, I’m currently a supervising attorney for the Entrepreneurial Law Clinic, so I’m able to advise and train current students."

"Theoretical classes are excellent for setting a solid foundation of the law, but practical courses allow students to be off to a running start as an associate."

Boulden noted the importance of taking practical classes. "The classes that stand out to me are Venture Capital with Associate Professor Brad Bernthal and Adjunct Faculty Jason Mendelson, Deals with Professor Erik Gerding, and Transactional Drafting with Legal Writing Professor Amy Bauer,” she said. "These practical classes have been the most helpful for me in my career. Theoretical classes are excellent for setting a solid foundation of the law, but practical courses allow students to be off to a running start as an associate. Additionally, networking and internships while you are a student are helpful to learn more about what you would like to do in the future and provide a much-needed break from legal coursework."

For students interested in business law, Boulden notes: "Students should try to gain a general understanding of the typical lifecycle of a business. Early stage companies typically need help with setting up the structure of the business to limit liability. They need form documents to issue equity, build a team, and work with vendors and customers. As companies grow, their needs change as they take on outside investment, grow their team, continue expanding their products and services and get ready for a successful exit. Additionally, knowing how to effectively use legal software and even Excel are important skills to have."

Christian Sederberg ('05)
Founding Partner, Vicente Sederberg LLP

Christian Sederberg’s practical experiences, from law school to his early career, have helped him succeed as a business lawyer in a variety of fields. Today, as a founding partner at Vicente Sederberg LLP, Sederberg helps lead a nationally recognized marijuana law firm into uncharted territory.

Sederberg entered the University of Colorado Law School knowing full well he wanted to do some sort of transactional law work.

"Prior to law school, I worked at Great West Health and Life and I did projects with the general counsel’s office," he said. "I liked reviewing contracts and I knew that I would like to continue working in that general area. I worked at KO Sports while I was in law school where I did sports agency work representing hockey players and professional snowboarders. Unfortunately, there was an NHL lockout during that time, which ended my short sports agency career, but by that point I really knew I was transaction oriented."

At Colorado Law, Sederberg joined the emerging Entrepreneurial Law Clinic, a project that then-Professor Phil Weiser took a leadership role in helping to develop into the current program.

"It was a unique clinical experience. We worked on forming companies and other issues related to a startup. We represented these startups from around the ��«��Ƶ and Denver area, helping professors and the university commercialize the research or inventions that came out of their work at CU, as well as graduate and undergraduate students who were starting new ventures."

Sederberg found the practical experience that comes from working in a clinic invaluable. "Nothing beats doing the work,” he said. “Transactional experiences can be hard to get while you are in law school. You can get the legal background in classes on corporations and administrative law, but it really takes being a practitioner to know how to do the work. Just getting in there and learning how to do it is important.”

His advice to current students looking for a career in business law or in transactional work would be to get the practical experience as soon as possible. “Get involved with the Entrepreneurial Law Clinic and also go to industry events or CLEs focused on the industries you are interested in. Try to get internships and externships with regulatory bodies or firms with strong transactional practice groups. For example, our firm often takes interns and externs from Colorado Law."

“Get involved with the Entrepreneurial Law Clinic and also go to industry events or CLEs focused on the industries you are interested in. Try to get internships and externships with regulatory bodies or firms with strong transactional practice groups. For example, our firm often takes interns and externs from Colorado Law."

After law school, Sederberg worked as a transactional attorney at McGloin Davenport Severson and Snow, where he focused on corporate and real estate transactions from 2005 until 2010.

"Then the recession hit, and commercial and residential real estate projects really dried up,” he said. “Financing to start new projects or complete existing projects also became difficult, if not impossible, to secure and insolvency was common. We shifted from helping clients build up to helping clients with bankruptcy and collections.”

Looking for a change, Sederberg was in luck when a friend introduced him to Brian Vicente. At the time, Vicente was doing advocacy work on cannabis issues for nonprofits. In 2010, Vicente Sederberg LLP took off, focusing exclusively on cannabis law.

“Some of the challenges to working in such a new field include the fact that our clients are almost all startups,” Sederberg said. “Medical marijuana became legal in Colorado in 2000, and recreational marijuana was legalized in 2012. Our clients face challenges raising money and finding good teams, and may have limited access to bank accounts. When we first started, it also wasn’t certain that marijuana wouldn’t be challenged by the Department of Justice at any time. Additionally, there’s limited case law—it takes time to build precedent, and the legalization is new and only at the state level."

Working in a developing field brings plenty of rewarding experiences. “Standing up a new industry that will only become larger is very rewarding," Sederberg said. "This industry is international in scope. We have worked with foreign governments on how to effectively regulate cannabis and hemp. It’s great being able to do this work with innovative people in an environment that will fundamentally change how the U.S. and the rest of the world does business."

The growing marijuana industry has provided Sederberg with a chance to participate in creating an industry. "When we were looking at how to regulate marijuana, we looked at the current Colorado liquor and gaming regulations,” he said. “In 2010, when we were developing the basic framework, we also created a partnership of sorts with the new regulatory agency, which was also learning how to regulate an entirely new industry. It’s a fascinating way to do things, to be involved with lots of stakeholders from the very beginning of an industry."

Laura Littman ('13)
Senior Product Manager, Strategic Networks
Zayo Group

Laura Littman’s interests and knowledge have led her to pursuing two different career paths in law and business: she currently works as senior product manager on strategic networks at the Zayo Group, where she originally began as in-house counsel.

When Littman entered Colorado Law, mentors such as Phil Weiser guided her into the tech policy space based on her interests. “Antitrust was my real interest going into law school. I came in as an undergrad economics major and Phil Weiser steered me towards telecom and the tech field because there’d be a lot of antitrust there,” she recalled. “I also worked with Phil as an editor for some of his writing and did antitrust research with him."

As a student at Colorado Law, Littman continued to pursue her interest in antitrust, getting involved with Silicon Flatirons and serving as an articles editor on the University of Colorado Law Review. She also worked at the Federal Trade Commission in Washington, D.C., as part of the Hatfield Scholars Program, which provides grants for summer internships in government or public interest in recognition of Dale Hatfield’s career.

“The FTC allowed me to split my time between privacy and antitrust,” she said. “On the privacy side, I was in a group that did investigations and acted on privacy issues. On the antitrust side, I worked on hospital mergers."

Littman’s interest in antitrust and business law led her to working in-house at Zayo Group, a tech company that provides communications infrastructure services. Her combination of knowledge of and interest in business law and telecom law made her an excellent fit.

“I spent my first year helping Zayo go public. After that, I focused on mergers and acquisitions, and then we started to focus, cleaning up our corporate entities and internationally," she said. "Last year, I became curious about the business side. Zayo agreed to give me opportunity to learn about being a business person. Since I had a really good handle on the corporate legal side, I was able to switch over completely to the business side, and I’m 100 percent working on strategy and product development now. I’m also considering going back to business school part time."

"I think it’s also refreshing for the business side to have someone who was trained differently. As attorneys, we’re critical thinkers and problem solvers. Lawyers tend to look ahead, given we’re used to working on the triage side of things."

Littman noted how her training and experience as an attorney has helped in the business department. "The in-house attorney department here is fairly small, and we have to be jack of all trades. We did contracts, regulatory work, mergers and acquisitions, and financing. You end up getting great inside knowledge of how the business works," she said. "I think it’s also refreshing for the business side to have someone who was trained differently. As attorneys, we’re critical thinkers and problem solvers. Lawyers tend to look ahead, given we’re used to working on the triage side of things," she said. "Business is focused on customers and sales but I’m also making sure the processes are done right the first time. I’m able to be part of the entire process of a deal. I’m learning more about the product but I’m also able to help through many of the steps, from pricing to contracts with customers. Whereas some of the business people tend to avoid working on contracts, I’m actually excited about working on the contract at the end of the deal."

This story originally appeared in the fall 2019 issue of Amicus.

We spoke to four alumni making their mark in entrepreneurial and business law.

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A Champion for Diversity

Anonymous — Fri, 11 Oct 2019 02:13:26 +0000

A Champion for Diversity Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 10/10/2019 - 20:13

Julia Roth

For Milly Danielson Oppenheimer, who helped open the door to law school for countless students underrepresented in the legal profession, working at Colorado Law was “the best, most rewarding job” of her life.

When Mildred "Milly" Danielson Oppenheimer’s husband, Philip Danielson ('55), died unexpectedly in August 1968, she needed a new direction to reshape her life.

Philip had practiced at Holland & Hart LLP and served as a CU regent from 1960 until 1966. He had also been active in the civil rights movement and sought to improve opportunities for minorities in Colorado. He, along with Russ Olin (’67) and Bill Rentfro, both former professors at Colorado Law, often talked about their dream of starting a program that would encourage more students from underrepresented groups to apply to and attend law school.

After Philip died, Oppenheimer was asked to apply for a job as placement director at Colorado Law, where she would eventually serve as assistant director of minority programs. This was also the start of what would eventually become the Minority Program.

From 1970 until 1981, Oppenheimer worked closely with diverse students who applied to Colorado Law. At a time when very few African Americans, Latinos, Native Americans, women, and other underrepresented groups were attending law school, Oppenheimer’s job was to diversify the student body by ensuring that deserving candidates knew that Colorado Law wanted them and would help them succeed.

As assistant director of minority programs, Oppenheimer served as a mentor, coach, and advocate for diverse law students, helping them overcome personal, professional, and educational hurdles. She helped them find housing and tutors. She also helped secure internships, clerkships, and summer paralegal work for students between each year of school.

While she initially leaned on her late husband’s connections at Holland & Hart and elsewhere, Oppenheimer quickly developed contacts of her own. She became known as a voice for minority students and a civil rights activist during an exciting and sometimes dangerous time, her daughter, Carrie Danielson, said.

“This program was met with resistance, of course; the same type of resistance that met any program perceived as giving special treatment to anyone based on race, gender, or ethnicity. They dealt with the same kind of attacks and questions that affirmative action met with throughout the nation,” Oppenheimer said. “But in the years of the program, many students who otherwise would not have applied to law school were brought through the three or more years, passed the bar, and became active members of the legal profession. Some became judges and politicians, some worked with legal aid programs, some became prosecutors, some defenders. Together, they changed the face of the Colorado Bar.”

Today, although Oppenheimer lives in California, she still keeps in touch with many of the law students she worked with, including Pen Tate ('68), Harold “Sonny” Flowers Jr. ('71), and Manuel Ramos ('73). She delights in seeing their names in the news doing important legal and social work, and seeing how many have became role models for today’s law students.

Oppenheimer’s relationships with law students also extended into her own family. Carrie recalls her brother’s wedding in Taos, New Mexico, in the 1970s, when her mother invited several law students who were in the area to attend.

“My life as a teenager was deeply enriched because I was surrounded by the presence and lively discussions of these students whenever I was with my mother,” Carrie said.

Paying it Forward

It is fitting that Oppenheimer was honored at this year’s Scholarship Reception on Sept. 19, one month after Colorado Law welcomed its most diverse class in the law school’s history.

"As the Minority Program changed and eventually ended, Milly and our whole family hope that the Philip and Mildred Danielson Scholarship continues to make it possible for diverse students to afford and succeed at the University of Colorado Law School. Ultimately we hope it continues to help change the face of Colorado’s justice system to include, support, and defend people of all communities,” Carrie said.

“It’s obvious that to make our democracy work, we have to include everyone and all segments of the population,” Oppenheimer said. “There have been many improvements since I was young in the 1920s and 30s, certainly with regard to minority, women, and LGBTQ rights. Younger people may not see the huge change, but from my perspective, things are much, much better. Yet we still have a long way to go. I hope my time at the University of Colorado Law School made some difference to both individuals and the state’s legal system."

Milly Danielson Oppenheimer with law students in the 1970s.

For Milly Danielson Oppenheimer, who helped open the door to law school for countless students underrepresented in the legal profession, working at Colorado Law was “the best, most rewarding job” of her life.

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Hitting the Trails To Hit the Books Harder

Anonymous — Fri, 11 Oct 2019 01:58:24 +0000

Hitting the Trails To Hit the Books Harder Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 10/10/2019 - 19:58

Andrew Sorensen

Katie Frayler ('16) might be a young lawyer, but she’s reaching some great heights—and not just in her career. Her hobbies include activities like high-lining (basically, high-altitude outdoor tightrope walking) that would petrify people with the slightest acrophobia.

Keeping up with both work and play is no easy feat when you travel as Frayler does.

“I go all over,” she explained. “I have lots of out-of-state clients: North and South Dakota, Utah, New Mexico, Arizona, Oklahoma.”

Frayler practices Indian law as an associate at Fredericks, Peebles & Patterson LLP in Louisville, Colorado. But she was able to hone some of her work-life balance skills in law school, thanks to the Stigler-Nelson Alpine Endeavors scholarship, which she received for her outdoor activities.

"Anywhere you can save money on post-grad debt is always appreciated, and I really liked that Colorado Law offered a scholarship like that. It motivated me to work really hard in school, but also to get outside and have fun.”
Katie Frayler ('16)

She’s not the first to navigate the space between book time and outdoor time at Colorado Law.

When Shawn Stigler and Alex Nelson earned their JDs in 2003, they felt lucky. It was a tough time in the economy, including for lawyers.

Yet, they both managed to land good jobs quickly after their time at Colorado Law. That’s a feat they credited, in part, to a work-life balance supported by the nearby Rocky Mountains.

Alex Nelson ('03) and Shawn Stigler ('03)

The pair formed tight bonds with classmates skiing and mountain biking off mountain passes like Loveland Pass and Rollins Pass. It’s not that they weren’t hitting the books. But they found spending a little time zipping down the slopes had a big positive effect on their study habits.

"The more I got outside, the better I did in school," Stigler said.

Nelson and Stigler decided to give that same opportunity to someone else by helping defray the cost of law school while nudging the student to take a breath outside of class. They set up the scholarship fund now known as Alpine Endeavors. 2Ls write an essay for a chance at the $2,000 scholarship, and a committee chooses the winner. So far, 15 students have received the scholarship, including Frayler.

While Nelson and Stigler have tapered off some of their more extreme outdoor adventures, they always enjoy looking back at the students they’ve helped, as well as their awardees’ pursuits in nature. The two now have more than a dozen thank-you notes and photos of recipients, often posed outside, saved in scrapbooks. They hope to compile decades’ worth of students’ stories by the time they’re done.

The scholarship amount may not cover the whole cost of tuition, but Nelson and Stigler believe it makes a difference.

“You can give an amount that’s significant to a student without seriously impacting your bottom line,” Nelson said. “Even a few hundred dollars between you and your friends can add up for a student who doesn’t know yet what their future looks like.”

The pair hopes the extra boost helps students pursue their passion for the law, without feeling pressured to recoup the full cost of law school. Frayler said that’s true for her.

“Working in Indian Country, a lot of times you’re working for underserved and low-income communities and populations,” she said. “So it’s helpful to have less debt. If I had more debt, I might need to work at a higher paying job in the private sector. Now I’m very happy with my job and my clients, and I love the work that I get to do.”

After being introduced to Indian law through Indian law classes and the American Indian Law Clinic, Frayler said this practice was a natural path for her. In her opinion, it is one of the most interesting careers an attorney could pursue.

“It’s like this little microcosm of federal law, and then each tribe has its own tribal laws as well,” she said. “So my days are varied and interesting all the time.”

And she still gets plenty of time outdoors. “I ski in the winter, I rock climb in the summer, I hike with my dog, I even ski with my dog sometimes,” Frayler said. Her advice to young lawyers: “Don’t let your work consume you. Get outside as much as you can.”

To learn more about scholarships at Colorado Law, please contact Peter Sanders, Assistant Dean for Advancement, at peter.sanders@colorado.edu or (303) 492-0752.

This story originally appeared in the fall 2019 issue of Amicus.

A scholarship established by Shawn Stigler ('03) and Alex Nelson ('03) helps defray the cost of law school while nudging students to take a breath outside of class.

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Protecting Water Rights for Colorado Farmers

Anonymous — Thu, 03 Oct 2019 19:38:26 +0000

Protecting Water Rights for Colorado Farmers Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 10/03/2019 - 13:38

Gregor MacGregor (’19)

Acequia Project Completes Multi-Year Case Assisting Southern Colorado Farmers

220 miles south of Denver—a stone’s throw from the New Mexico border—lies the small town of San Luis, Colorado, population 629. Established in 1851, San Luis is Colorado’s oldest town and is populated by the predominantly Hispanic families who settled there almost two centuries ago. The town remains close to its past, with many of its traditions still intact. Among those traditions are its acequias, or irrigation trenches, which reflect a centuries-old method of irrigation and community-based water sharing. Operated according to the principles of equity, communal governance, and mutual support, the acequias ensure that each family in the community has enough water for domestic use, gardening, and subsistence farming and ranching purposes.

Introduced by the Spanish and Mexican families who settled in the American Southwest before it became part of the United States, acequias operated informally for generations, with many remaining unincorporated and without bylaws. However, their future became unclear after the U.S. acquired these communities in 1848 with the Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo, and after Colorado became a state in 1876.

Colorado’s strict water law of prior appropriation—"first in time, first in right"—is fundamentally at odds with the equitable principles of acequia governance, which operate under the "one family, one vote" principle. With the mandatory adjudication of rights in water courts following Colorado’s principles, acequia communities faced a difficult question: how do they preserve an important tradition while living in modern times?

Some communities obtained decrees for their preexisting water rights, only to lose half of the water to promoters and speculators. Others never made the 40-mile trip to Alamosa to adjudicate their rights in court and continued to irrigate as their ancestors had for generations. Although Colorado’s territorial legislature had recognized the Spanish "right of thirst" (a pillar of acequia communities), the state’s new constitution made no mention of acequias, excluding them from Colorado’s legal framework. Acequias had to take on the guise of mutual ditch companies under law, even though they continued their traditional practices.

Professor Sarah Krakoff

This all changed in 2009 when Colorado passed the Acequia Recognition Law, which permitted community ditches established prior to Colorado statehood to incorporate as acequia ditch corporations. This was welcome news and granted acequias the legal power to preserve their traditional institutions, but Peter Nichols ('01), who worked on the legislation, recognized that acequia members in the San Luis Valley needed more than just the statute to keep their acequias alive and thriving. He called on Colorado Law Professor Sarah Krakoff for help.

"He asked, do you have a couple students who could write a handbook on Colorado water law for some communities down in the San Luis Valley?" Krakoff said.

What Krakoff and Nichols had envisioned would take a summer—drafting the handbook, which is now in its third edition—ended up taking more than two years to complete. "We quickly realized that just drafting the handbook was not going to give the farmers and irrigators the assistance they needed," Krakoff said.

In August 2012, Krakoff, Nichols, Sarah Parmar of Colorado Open Lands, and Ryan Golten, a former New Mexico Legal Services attorney, decided the best way to implement the Acequia Recognition Statute was to provide no-cost legal assistance to acequias. They would help them draft bylaws and affirm their water rights in water court.

The group presented the idea to the board of the Sangre de Cristo Acequia Association, a San Luis-based nonprofit representing more than 73 acequias, which supported the project. That fall they began to recruit students and paired them with pro bono attorneys. Since then, the teams having been helping acequia organizations incorporate, conducting governance reviews for existing acequia corporations, and helping individual irrigators understand and secure their water rights.

A Longtime Case Comes to a Close

Colorado Law students with Charlie Jacquez, a client of the Acequia Project.

The project recently completed one of its most ambitious and technical cases, spanning four years and nine law students. Charlie Jacquez, a descendent of one of the original settlers of San Luis and an acequia commissioner, reached out in 2015 for assistance drafting bylaws for his acequia, the Montez Ditch, but it was unclear who exactly had rights to the ditch. The team quickly recognized that this was not going to be an easy case. There were 22 properties on the Montez Ditch with potential water rights, each of which required a chain-of-title on their complex history, several groundwater springs, and legal questions about an upstream goldmine.

Water law attorneys Kelcey Nichols and Ryan Jarvis and paralegal Rebecca Moller joined the case as the students combed through records of the Costilla County Clerk and Recorder’s Office. Since the county had only digitized its most recent records, students needed to physically travel to its office. The team made eight-hour roundtrips to examine deeds reaching back to before Colorado’s statehood, often written in Spanish.

As students moved back in time through the indices, handwriting became harder to decipher, they discovered pages and whole books of records were missing, and they feared that the trail would be lost in a community where Anglo-American law and custom had been laid over Hispanic culture. Two years later, the students had assembled enough documents to write an opinion on each of the properties’ rights to water on the ditch. The final report totaled 400 pages, representing the group’s collective 875 hours of pro bono work.

"We could never have afforded this work on our own. We’ve gained a lot of administrative tools and can move forward with our work on the acequia. Before [working with the Acequia Project], the big fear was that we were going to lose our water, that someone with a lot of money was going to come in and grab our rights. We know now we can defend against that."
Charlie Jacquez, client

In April 2019, the Acequia Project came together to celebrate completing the Montez Ditch case and share what they had learned from the case with the law school community. Though the Montez Ditch case is complete, the Acequia Project’s work in southern Colorado remains ongoing. Students and their supervising attorneys continue to help acequias write their bylaws, bring unadjudicated water rights into court, and tackle important questions in the community through socially engaged scholarship.

Professor Sarah Krakoff, far left, and Peter Nichols ('01), far right, with Colorado Law students at the Sangre de Cristo Acequia Association's annual Congreso de Acequia in January 2019.

This story originally appeared in the fall 2019 issue of Amicus.

Colorado Law's Acequia Project completes a multi-year case assisting southern Colorado farmers.

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Training Lawyers with a Business Edge: The Colorado Law Way

Anonymous — Wed, 02 Oct 2019 22:59:16 +0000

Training Lawyers with a Business Edge: The Colorado Law Way Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 10/02/2019 - 16:59

Julia Roth

The skills needed to be a successful lawyer in 2019 and beyond are changing.

Law professors and practitioners agree: law practices today—as well as in the future—require broad and interdisciplinary skills that combine legal knowledge with an understanding of technology and data, problem-solving, collaboration, and personal effectiveness. In addition to the practice of law, clients expect new lawyers to also be competent in understanding the business of a client. Many schools, including Colorado Law, have responded to the shifting market demand for business and technology-savvy attorneys with specialized courses and clinics, partnerships with the business community, and opportunities for hands-on training.

When students leave Colorado Law, they not only have a legal skill set, they also are familiar with what makes and breaks a company, said Associate Professor Brad Bernthal ('01), who is at the forefront of Colorado Law’s entrepreneurial efforts. This is important in setting our graduates up for success, no matter their chosen area of practice, he said.

The "Colorado Law Way" of training attorneys combines a rigorous education, one that goes deep in the legal discipline, along with cultivating an entrepreneurial mindset, Bernthal said.

The foundation of the school’s success is rooted in high-caliber business law classroom work as well as clinical opportunities. Colorado Law further differentiates itself with an outward-facing emphasis. Students engage with the business community where they regularly interact with entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, and professional service providers. Further, Colorado Law’s affiliation with the University of Colorado, which Reuters named the 29th most innovative university in the world, puts the school in the right place at the right time for entrepreneurially minded lawyers.

Curriculum

Colorado Law’s curriculum provides its students a competitive advantage amid a changing legal landscape, where many of today’s employers focus on recruiting attorneys with a strong business orientation.

The building blocks for business law include courses such as Contracts, Corporations, and Securities Regulation. These foundational substantive areas remain table stakes for effective business attorneys. Professor Andrew Schwartz, who joined the Colorado Law faculty in 2008, offers the example of Akorn v. Fresenius, a corporate law case out of Delaware.

"Akorn was a landmark corporate case where the court allowed a corporate acquirer to walk away from a $5 billion merger agreement. But that merger agreement was itself just a type of contract, and so the court premised its ruling on foundational principles that we study every year at Colorado Law in the first-year Contracts course,” Schwartz said. (The court cited a UCLA Law Review article by Schwartz in its opinion.)

In addition, practical skills courses such as Transactional Drafting, Deals, Legal Negotiation, Venture Capital and Private Equity, Software Transactions, and Data Analytics require students to transfer skills to the real world. Such courses provide relevant, practical, and valuable information that students will use regardless of their chosen career path.

Venture Capital and Private Equity, taught by Bernthal and local venture capitalist Jason Mendelson since 2008, is a popular course for entrepreneurially minded students, as well as others without a business background who are interested in exploring the world of startups and investment. The course teaches the legal and financial principles relevant to representation of privately held companies, their founders and managers, and their investors.

"We cover startup finance," Bernthal said. “But Jason [Mendelson] is such a gifted communicator with deep expertise that the course could also be titled Startups 101 or How Startup Communities Work. For many students, the VC class provides access to a new world of opportunities surrounding emerging companies."

The VC course attracts a cross-campus mix of 60-70 graduate students each year, with roughly 50 percent of class participants from the law school, 40 percent from the MBA program, and 10 percent from engineering.

"Students respond in such an energetic way that the class has a jazz-like improvisation in the back-and-forth between students and professors," said Bernthal. "Each session has something unexpected and creative."

The course is so valued that students established an endowed scholarship fund in Bernthal’s name and created a separate campus entrepreneurship gift in Mendelson’s honor.

"The VC class was my first look at how businesses are funded and what startups are looking for to scale their businesses," said Jon Milgrom ('15), founder and partner at Milgrom & Daskam. "We negotiated terms for the purchase and sale of equity in a company. This is something I do nearly every day in my current practice. The class was super practical in terms of exposing you to deal structures, entity structures, and industry terms and terminology."

Several alumni of the class have gone on to work in investing or start their own firms or companies: Chris White ('14), founder and CEO of clothing company Shinesty; Cami Yuasa ('14), vice president of bank management at Goldman Sachs; Josh Fitch ('17) and Nick Troxel ('17), founders of Troxel Fitch, LLC; Ben Abell ('11), co-founder of sunglasses company goodr; Shannon Liston ('15), senior corporate counsel at Techstars; and Sierra Moller (’16), corporate counsel at Techstars, to name just a few.

Colorado Law’s business law curriculum also focuses on building students’ "transactional IQ." Transactional IQ is defined as the measure of an individual’s ability to serve as trusted business legal advisor. Colorado Law takes an innovative approach to integrating traditional doctrinal and experiential learning. In Transactional Drafting, a course designed and spearheaded by Legal Writing Professor Amy Bauer in 2010, students learn the principles of contemporary commercial drafting, gaining skills that are applicable to transactional practice and are also useful to future litigators.

"Transactional Drafting shows students how the skills they are learning transfer to the real world and provides relevant, practical, and valuable information that they will use regardless of their chosen career path," said Bauer, who created an Advanced Transactional Drafting course and regularly teaches Colorado Bar Association CLE courses on drafting. She frequently speaks with legal writing faculty at other law schools to encourage them to develop and offer their own drafting courses, as she did.

"Transactional Drafting shows students how the skills they are learning transfer to the real world and provides relevant, practical, and valuable information that they will use regardless of their chosen career path."
Legal Writing Professor Amy Bauer

"In Transactional Drafting, we actually wrote the contracts we analyzed only theoretically in a Contracts course,” said Ali Lipman ('14), an associate at Johnson & Repucci, LLP in ��«��Ƶ. "In each Legal Negotiation class, we simulated real-world negotiations, which helped us better understand how to effectuate a meaningful agreement. Both of these courses were hands-on and thus immensely helpful in preparing me for client work. Ultimately, these courses made me more confident in my law practice."

Entrepreneurial and business law faculty Sloan Speck, Andrew Schwartz, Mark Loewenstein, Erik Gerding, Amy Bauer, and Brad Bernthal.

Community

Beyond the classroom, experiential opportunities abound for Colorado Law students to hone their business skills. These experiences are enriched by Colorado Law’s location in ��«��Ƶ, one of the top U.S. cities for startup businesses, and the #GiveFirst mentality that permeates the entrepreneurial ecosystem in ��«��Ƶ.

#GiveFirst describes a norm of behavior in the Front Range, championed over the past decade by venture capital firm and entrepreneurial network Techstars. It refers to individuals helping others, without any expectation of direct payment in return. #GiveFirst is not pure philanthropy. Rather, it is participation in a system where an individual trusts that benefits provided to others will, over time, indirectly come back to the individual.

Thanks to the generosity of dozens of venture capitalists, entrepreneurs, and attorneys willing to lend an ear, hour, or email, Colorado Law students enjoy invaluable connections in the ��«��Ƶ-Denver area that often lead to internship, externship, and job opportunities.

"Along with mountains and sun, #GiveFirst is one of the attractions that motivates entrepreneurs to migrate to the Front Range," Bernthal said at a recent entrepreneurship conference hosted by Colorado Law’s Silicon Flatirons Center. "It is a mode of behavior about how exchanges work between people working in the startup scene. In my estimation, it facilitates what Brian Eno calls 'scenius,' which he defines as the communal form of genius."

Jon Milgrom ('15) cites his participation in the Deming Center Venture Fund, which supports emerging companies in ��«��Ƶ and surrounding communities, as one of his most formative law school experiences. Law students can join the student team, which serves as a venture fund for making seed investments in local companies. Working under the guidance of an experienced advisory board, including David DiGiacomo ('14) and Mike Dornik ('14), and local business leaders, students learn the ins and outs of venture capital and angel investing. Since the program was founded in 2009, nearly 40 Colorado Law students have served as team members and have gone on to work at companies like Zayo, Level III, Cooley LLP, Latham Watkins LLP, McKinsey & Company, Deloitte, Blackstone Entrepreneurs Network, Boomtown, DISH, Greenlite Labs, Greenmont Capital, and Oracle.

"You get pitches from all these different businesses and you have to break down their business plans. Working with an interdisciplinary team that includes students from business, architecture, journalism, and engineering, you collaborate to break down the business plans and ideas and provide entrepreneurship advice, listen to their pitches, and source deals. You’re doing basically what a venture fund does, except we’re making seed investments," Milgrom said.

Through its course offerings, programming, and community partnerships, Colorado Law is giving its students the tools they need to be better allies for the businesses they may one day represent.

"As an attorney, if you can relate to your clients—almost all of which are businesses—you can represent their interests much more effectively," Milgrom said. “This comes up on a daily basis. Understanding business helps you to know what they’re up against and advise them in a more meaningful way."

"As an attorney, if you can relate to your clients—almost all of which are businesses—you can represent their interests much more effectively."
Jon Milgrom ('15)
Founder and partner, Milgrom & Daskam

Sally Hatcher (’97), a serial entrepreneur who co-founded two companies after law school and now advises graduate students interested in pursuing companies, agrees: "Lawyers with business experience understand better than most lawyers what it’s like to be in the trenches and understand the decisions you have to make as an entrepreneur,” she said. “If you understand what your clients are going through, you are going to be a better lawyer because you are going to understand their needs better."

This story originally appeared in the fall 2019 issue of Amicus.

The skills needed to be a successful lawyer in 2019 and beyond are changing. Many schools, including Colorado Law, have responded to the shifting market demand for business and technology-savvy attorneys with specialized courses and clinics, partnerships with the business community, and opportunities for hands-on training.

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Amicus Fall 2019

A New Home for the Law Journals

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Holding Government Speech Accountable: Professor Norton Publishes Book on Government Speech and the Constitution

Q: First, let’s start with a definition. How do you define government speech?

Q: How is speech by the government different from when anyone else speaks?

Q: Why does the government’s speech deserve our attention right now?

Q: Are there ever instances when the government can lie to its citizens? Under what circumstances?

Q: You’ve written extensively about free speech as it relates to artificial intelligence, employers, and the government. What inspired you to write this book about government speech?

Q: How has writing the book influenced your future scholarship?

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Alumni in Focus: Entrepreneurial and Business Law Success Stories

Otto Hanson ('16) Staff Attorney, Davis Graham & Stubbs LLP Founder and CEO, TermScout

Sarah Boulden (JD/MBA '13) Senior Associate Attorney Silicon Legal Strategy

Christian Sederberg ('05) Founding Partner, Vicente Sederberg LLP

Laura Littman ('13) Senior Product Manager, Strategic Networks Zayo Group

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A Champion for Diversity

For Milly Danielson Oppenheimer, who helped open the door to law school for countless students underrepresented in the legal profession, working at Colorado Law was “the best, most rewarding job” of her life.

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Hitting the Trails To Hit the Books Harder

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Protecting Water Rights for Colorado Farmers

Acequia Project Completes Multi-Year Case Assisting Southern Colorado Farmers

A Longtime Case Comes to a Close

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Training Lawyers with a Business Edge: The Colorado Law Way

Curriculum

Community

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Otto Hanson ('16)
Staff Attorney, Davis Graham & Stubbs LLP
Founder and CEO, TermScout

Sarah Boulden (JD/MBA '13)
Senior Associate Attorney
Silicon Legal Strategy

Christian Sederberg ('05)
Founding Partner, Vicente Sederberg LLP

Laura Littman ('13)
Senior Product Manager, Strategic Networks
Zayo Group