Professor Waysdorf Publishes Article in the University of Illinois School of Law's "Elder Law Journal"

Professor Susan Waysdorf's recently completed article, "The Aging of the AIDS Epidemic: Emerging Legal and Public Policy Issues for Elderly Persons Living with HIV/AIDS," has been accepted for publication in the University of Illinois School of Law's Elder Law Journal. The Journal is the premier national law review devoted to legal and public policy issues affecting the elderly. Professor Waysdorf's article will be published this May (2002), in the Journal's tenth anniversary issue. She completed the article during her sabbatical leave in the Fall 2001 semester. The article addresses the growing incidence of HIV and AIDS among the nation's elders, and the accompanying legal and public policy issues which are raised by the reality of elderly coping with the disease and its stigma.

By Professor Laurie Morin

What role should law school clinics play in helping aspiring entrepreneurs become successful business people? This question was the topic of an April 3rd workshop co-sponsored by the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation and the University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Law.

Quite a few law schools around the country have small business clinics. Here at UDC-DCSL, the Small Business Project falls under the umbrella of the Community Development Clinic directed by Professor Louise Howells. At this conference, clinicians from a variety of programs discussed a number of questions about the role law school clinics should play in the growing field of entrepreneurship law.

For example, what clients should law school clinics represent? Should they follow traditional legal service-type income guidelines or should the definition be expanded to include a wider range of start-up companies? Should clients only be accepted if they have well-formulated business plans and the clinic believes they have a reasonable chance of success? The clinics represented at this conference had widely divergent views on these questions. Some represent only low-income clients, some represent non-profit as well as for-profit clients, and still others represent a range of clients, including well-financed technology ventures. Participants agreed that the answer depends upon the clinic's goals, as well as the mission of the particular law school.

Other thorny questions revolve around multi-disciplinary approaches to problem-solving. To what extent should law school clinics partner with business schools, accountants, and other professionals to provide comprehensive advice to the budding entrepreneur? While collaboration may lead to better advice, it also raises ethical concerns about confidentiality, loyalty, and role boundaries. Participants agreed that these issues require more thought and scholarship. The most exciting thing about the conference was hearing about the wonderful clients represented by law school clinics. In Chicago, a man parlayed an old family recipe into a successful product carried in grocery stores around the country. In upper New York State, a law school clinic was successful in procuring a provisional patent for a budding inventor.

Participants talked about putting together a "virtual marketplace" where law school clinics could share their clients' products and success stories. I'm sure UDC-DCSL would have quite a few of its own to add to the list.

UDC-DCSL to Observe On-Line Conditional Admit Program

On March 22 & 23, Professor James Gray and Assistant Director of Admission Aaron Taylor participated in a two-day workshop at Nova Southeastern University Law School, observing its Alternative Admission Method Program for Legal Education (AAMPLE).

AAMPLE is a summer conditional admission program designed to evaluate the academic potential of students whose traditional indicators (LSAT and/or GPA) do not qualify them for admission to most accredited law schools. The goal of AAMPLE is to provide these students with "ample opportunity" to prove by their performance in two traditional courses that they will be successful if admitted to a rigorous legal academic program. Statistically, AAMPLE students' success in law school and on the bar parallels that of their regularly admitted classmates.

Until 2001, Nova operated AAMPLE exclusively as an on-campus program; but in an attempt to expand it nationwide, Nova recently began an online version. UDC-DCSL has agreed to be an official "observer school" of the program, with the opportunity of becoming a "Partner" school in 2003. Both Professor Gray and Mr. Taylor will be observing the online operation of the program this summer; and if the reviews are good, UDC-DCSL could be operating its own version of Online AAMPLE very soon.