News

Minnesota Law student Alex Lloyd ’25 has received the 2025 Bernard P. Becker Law Student Volunteer Award from the Minnesota State Bar Association (MSBA). This award recognizes Lloyd’s unique and outstanding service to the legal profession and community in connection with providing legal services to low-income and vulnerable Minnesotans.

Minnesota Governor Tim Walz will deliver the keynote address at Minnesota Law’s 137th commencement exercises for the Class of 2025. Law School commencement is scheduled at Northrop at 10 a.m. on Saturday, May 17, 2025.

Tim Walz is Minnesota’s 41st governor. He was first elected in 2018 and won re-election in 2022. In 2024, he ran for vice president on the Democratic presidential ticket alongside former Vice President Kamala Harris.

The University of Minnesota Law School took first place in the 2025 National Patent Application Drafting Competition, hosted by the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). After triumphing in the Midwest Regional Competition, Minnesota Law progressed to the final national rounds, competing against the top four teams at USPTO headquarters in Alexandria, Virginia. The regional rounds featured up to 75 teams divided into five regions.

Professor Susanna Blumenthal, William L. Prosser in Law, professor in history, and co-director of Minnesota Law’s Program in Law and History, has been named a Laurance S. Rockefeller visiting faculty fellow for 2025-26 at Princeton University’s Center for Human Values. Blumenthal is a scholar of law and history, specializing in the modern United States. Her scholarship is concerned with the problematics of personhood, focusing on conceptions of identity, agency, and responsibility.

Professor Claire Hill, James L. Krusemark Chair in Law and founding director of the Minnesota Law’s Institute for Law and Rationality, and co-author Yaron Nili (Duke University Law School) have won the Outstanding Senior Scholar Paper Award from ComplanceNet for their paper, “Independence Reconceived.” Hill and Nili will be recognized at the 2025 ComplianceNet conference.

Professor Brett McDonnell, Dorsey & Whitney Chair in Law, received the University of Minnesota’s 2025 Award for Excellence in Academic Unit Service for his outstanding contributions to the Law School. In its second year, this award is a collaborative initiative of the Provost’s Office and the Faculty Consultative Committee. It recognizes Professor McDonnell’s many contributions to the Law School.

Two teams of Minnesota Law students performed exceptionally well at the ABA’s National Appellate Advocacy Competition (NAAC), held in Los Angeles, California, from February 20 to 23, 2025. Both teams advanced past the preliminary rounds for the first time in over a decade, with one team reaching the final round and the other advancing to the national competition. This marks the first time Minnesota Law sent a team to the national rounds of the ABA's NAAC in nearly twenty years.

 Jonathan Daniel Eoloff ’04, passed away on October 21, 2024, at his home in Atlanta, at age 55. A native of St. Paul, Eoloff was active in international human rights beginning after college with his work in Guatemala. His passion for human rights began there when he taught in a village school while working on development projects and caring for orphans whose parents had disappeared. Throughout his career, Eoloff had an unwavering commitment to justice, compassion, and the pursuit of equality for all.