Welcome to all of our new J.D., LLM and JSD students, and welcome back to our returning 2L, 3L, LLM and JSD students!
There will be a lot going on in the coming weeks and months, so please keep your eye on the Sounding Block, our weekly newsletter, for important announcements. Our goal is to make your experience at Nebraska Law rich and exciting both in class and out. I encourage you to attend as many of the lectures, CLE’s, networking and other events as you can. All of this will contribute to your legal education and increase value of your experience in law school.
The big news is that as you arrive this week, is that construction will be starting on an addition to our building to house our clinical programs. The new building is going on the southwest side of McCollum Hall, right by the main entrance to the College and the student parking lot. There will be fencing around most of the area leading up to that entrance but you will still be able to enter through those main doors by getting there along the sidewalk that goes up from the east side of the parking lot. We do not anticipate losing very many parking spots, but if you are not able to find parking on any given day, there is more parking south of our lot, in a new lot where student housing units used to be. You can enter that lot only by a road into the east campus from Holdrege street at 43rd street. From that lot, you can walk through the law college student parking lot and into the building. And of course all of the other entrances to the law college will remain open.
This is going to be a beautiful addition to our facility that will allow us to house all of our clinics in the same place (though the Criminal Clinic will continue to operate primarily from downtown). It will provide an entrance to the clinics for clients so that they do not have to walk through the building to reach the clinic, and it will have conference rooms, interview rooms, a mock courtroom, a classroom, ample workspace for students, and faculty offices. The construction should be complete by November 2016. You will see construction updates in the Sounding Block the first week of each month, and any urgent or temporary changes will be posted on the monitors outside the Dean’s Office. In addition, we will be maintaining a webpage with information, the building plans, and progress photos, at http://law.unl.edu/clinic-addition. Please let someone in the Dean’s office know if you encounter any problems having to do with the construction.
Throughout this coming year, I encourage you to take advantage of all that is going on at the College. There will be many speakers coming to the Law College, and I hope you will take advantage of the opportunity, usually over the noon hour, to learn something new and expand your horizons by attending their presentations. There are many different kinds of student organizations and competitions that provide opportunities for you to hone a variety of skills. The Career Services Office has many employers coming to the Law College to make presentations and meet you, so I hope you will take advantage of those opportunities as well as you prepare for your careers.
There are many ways to get to know and learn from the faculty beyond the classroom. You are always encouraged to visit your professors in their offices during office hours if you have any questions about a class. But here are some other opportunities:
The College hosts a very special series called S.T.I.R. Talks. This acronym stands for Share, Think, Inspire, Relax. A few times each semester, a faculty member will do a short and entertaining presentation in the late afternoon in the student lounge about his or her research interests. These presentations are 15 minutes long (modeled on TED talks), and will be followed by a social hour with refreshments. This is a fun and entertaining way for the faculty to discuss with students some really interesting issues in the law, and provide an opportunity to socialize in a relaxed setting.
Another way to get to know the faculty is to participate in our TYPO program. TYPO stands for Take Your Professor Out. If you want to take one of your professors or a dean or director out to lunch, the Dean's Office would be pleased to reimburse you for up to $25. This should be enough to cover all of the cost for two students and a professor (given Lincoln's generally reasonable lunch prices) and most of the cost for larger groups. In general, there are only two requirements: 1) each lunch must include at least one professor and at least two students and 2) each student is eligible for only one free lunch. Just pick up a reimbursement form from Patty Cavanagh, the receptionist in the Dean’s office, before you go to lunch, and then return the completed form and an itemized receipt to Patty.
Another way to get to know the faculty is through our series called Table For Ten. This is a very informal series of lunches and conversations where one faculty member will sit over the noon hour with 9 students and discuss a legal issue that is topical and in the news. Everyone brings his or her own lunch and you can engage in a conversation about an important issue of the day. There will be plenty of advance notice and time to sign up for these lunch conversations.
So again, welcome, and welcome back! I will again hold weekly office hours this year, so please check the video boards each week for the time. I will move the time around so that there are no permanent class conflicts. Please stop by with your questions, ideas, concerns, or just to say hello.
I wish you all the best for a wonderful year at Nebraska Law!