News

A team of four Minnesota Law students took second place in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) National Patent Application Drafting Competition.

Dear Law School Community: 

I am writing to follow up on President Gabel’s message about the recent killing of Brooklyn Center, Minnesota resident Daunte Wright, yet another unarmed Black man killed by the police. I’m saddened and angry that our community must yet again endure this incredible personal pain.

Manuel Cervantes ‘80, who served twice as a Minnesota Workers’ Compensation Court of Appeals judge, died on March 31, 2021 at the age of 70 after a long battle with cancer.

After graduating from Minnesota Law, he served as an attorney at the AFL-CIO. In 1986, he was appointed to be a judge on the Minnesota Workers' Compensation. From 1992-2002 he was a referee in Ramsey County District Court, presiding over cases in family, juvenile, domestic abuse court. He was named as St. Paul City Attorney and state administrative law judge. 

Professor Michael Tonry has been awarded a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship.

The highly competitive, annual national fellowship was awarded to 174 American and Canadian scholars, writers, and artists selected from among more nearly 3,000 applicants. The foundation awarded fellowships this year to 184 American and Canadian scientists, scholars in the social sciences and humanities, and writers and artists of all kinds, selected from a field of almost 3,000 applicants.

President Biden today nominated Robert (Bob) Anderson '83 to serve as solicitor of the U.S. Department of the Interior. Anderson has served as Interior’s principal deputy solicitor since January 20. 

James R. Cho '99 has been appointed a U.S. magistrate judge in the Eastern District of New York.

Erin Abramovitz, a current 3L student at Minnesota Law, has always had a passion for helping people, especially empowering marginalized individuals and families. After working in social work for almost five years as a case manager for foster care families, Abramovitz had seen the powerful impact lawyers made in the lives of the kids whose cases she had worked on—for better or worse. She witnessed firsthand the areas of the legal system that are lacking and felt limited in the ways she could make a difference through social work.

Minnesota Law 1s Tony Sanchez, Emanual Williams, and Mica Standing Soldier were recently hired for three newly created public-interest clerkships at the Legal Rights Center. Now and through the summer they will coordinate public education and civic engagement efforts relating to the trials of Derek Chauvin and the other three former Minneapolis police officers charged in the killing of George Floyd. The clerkships are part of a unique collaboration between the LRC and Minnesota Law.

Paul Feinman ‘85, the first openly LGBT judge to serve on New York's highest court, has died.

Feinman, 61, had a judicial career that spanned 25 years before stepping down from the New York Court of Appeals on March 23, 2021, due to his health. Before joining the N.Y Court of Appeals bench in 2017, Feinman sat on the Appellate Division of the New York Supreme Court’s First Department in Manhattan.

CaringBridge Chief Executive Officer Liwanag Ojala ’98 will be the Law School’s 2021 commencement speaker.

CaringBridge is a nonprofit organization that has more than 43 million unique users across all 50 states and 236 countries and territories around the world. Ojala joined CaringBridge in 2014, first as chief operating officer, and then becoming CEO in 2016, with a goal to reinvigorate all aspects of the pioneering organization, leveraging her previous legal and ecommerce experience.