Prominent civil rights and employment law attorney Allison Jones returned to her alma mater on Friday, May 20, to deliver the commencement address to the LSU Law Class of 2022. Commencement exercises were held at 5 p.m. at the Pete Maravich Assembly Center on the LSU campus.

Jones, a 1985 LSU Law graduate and defense attorney at Downer, Jones, Marino & Wilhite in Shreveport, praised the Class of 2022 for persevering through law school during one of the most challenging periods in recent history.

“In March of 2020, in the middle of the spring semester of their 1L year, this class had their entire law school experience turned upside down when they were notified that they were no longer to attend classes in person and were to go online. Normal law school interaction changed,” Jones said, noting that along with adjusting to virtual and hybrid classes, the graduates also adapted to nontraditional clerkship experiences, field placements, and mock trial and moot court competitions. “This class faced hurdles that no other class had faced before. Lingering effects of the pandemic continued during the remainder of this law school class’s experience, but still, this class achieved.”

LSU Law awarded degrees to 200 students in the Class of 2022. Among the graduates, 165 earned a Juris Doctor (JD) and an optional Graduate Diploma in Comparative Law (CL), 28 earned a JD, and seven earned a Master of Laws (LLM). Additionally, 25 graduates earned an optional Graduate Certificate in Energy Law and Policy (GCELP). The LSU Law Class of 2022 represents 26 U.S. states and territories, four foreign countries, and 34 Louisiana parishes.

Professor Tracy L. M. Norton, a national and international leader in the fields of legal writing and legal education, will join the LSU Law faculty in the fall semester.

Norton comes to LSU Law from the Touro Law Center in Long Island, New York, where she has taught since 2007. She started her career in academia in 1997 at Texas Tech University School of Law, where she remained until 2001, when she joined the faculty at South Texas College of Law. Prior to teaching, Norton practiced criminal law in Texas for four years. She majored in political science at the University of North Texas before earning her juris doctor from Baylor University School of Law in 1994.

“I am inspired by LSU Law’s mission to provide a student-centered, practice-oriented legal education, and I am excited to join the faculty and begin meeting the students and my new colleagues,” said Norton, whose family is from Southwest Louisiana and East Texas. “After 15 years in New York, this is a homecoming of sorts for me and my family. We’re looking forward to Southern hospitality, Louisiana food, and great college football.”

At LSU Law, Norton will teach Legal Research & Writing I & II in the 2022-23 academic year. During her time at the Touro Law Center, Norton taught Legal Process I & II, Advanced Persuasive Strategies, Judicial Writing, Disaster Law & Policy, Criminal Law, and an Advanced Writing Requirement Workshop.

Twenty graduates in the LSU Law Class of 2022 have been selected for induction into The Order of the Coif, the highest honor a law student can receive.

Membership into the honorary law fraternity is strictly limited to the top 10% of each graduating class of law students. Of the nearly 200 American Bar Association accredited law schools in the country, LSU Law is one of just 86 with a chapter in The Order of the Coif. The LSU Law chapter of The Order of the Coif was established in 1942, with a purpose of stimulating scholarly work of the highest order and fostering a high standard of professional conduct.

“We are extremely proud of each and every one of the 200 graduates in the LSU Law Class of 2022 because all of them worked incredibly hard and made great sacrifices to earn a law degree,” said LSU Law Interim Dean Lee Ann Wheelis Lockridge. “Our graduates who have earned membership into The Order of the Coif in addition to their law degrees are most deserving of special recognition. This high honor reflects their unparalleled commitment to academic excellence, and we take immense pride in honoring their great achievement.”

The 2022 LSU Law inductees of The Order of the Coif, with their hometowns noted, are:

Ten LSU Law students in the Class of 2022 have been selected for induction into The Order of the Barristers, a national honorary organization whose purpose is the encouragement of oral advocacy and brief writing skills through effective law school oral advocacy programs.

The inductees, with their hometowns noted, are:

Each year, graduating LSU Law students who have excelled in moot court, mock trial, brief writing, oral advocacy, and other advocacy programs throughout their time at the Paul M. Hebert Law Center are invited to apply for membership in the LSU Law chapter of the Order. Applications are reviewed by a committee of faculty members, who then recommend the candidates for induction into the LSU Law chapter to the dean.

Sixty LSU Law students have been named Paul M. Hebert Scholars for their academic achievement in the Spring 2022 semester and 82 have been named Dean’s Scholars.

The Paul M. Hebert Scholar is awarded to the top 10% of LSU Law students earning 12 or more semester hours of credit in courses taken during an individual semester, and the Dean’s Scholar is awarded to the top 25% of students who earn at least 12 hours of credit during an individual semester. The awards are noted on students’ transcripts.

The annual Barristers’ Bowl game and cheerleading performance by LSU Law students returned from a three-year hiatus on March 4, with the Purple Team besting the Gold Team 36-0 in the full-tackle football game and the charity auction raising $16,000 for the Sexual Trauma Awareness and Response Center (STAR) in Baton Rouge.

On May 10, LSU Law 3L and Purple Team Captain Rory Luke, along with 3L and Gold Team Captain Christopher Melancon, 3L and Cheer Captain Hannah Wilson, and Professor Darlene Goring, presented a $16,000 check to STAR Staff Attorney Becca Wheelis and Managing Attorney Airzola Cleaves on the steps of the old Law Center.

LSU Law Director of Career Services Gwendolyn Ferrell has been elected to serve as the 2022-24 Vice President of Member Services and Education for the National Association for Law Placement (NALP). NALP is an association of over 2,500 legal career professionals from both schools and firms who advise law students, lawyers, law offices, and law schools in North American and beyond.

In the role, Ferrell will assist the NALP President in conducting the affairs of the association, assume the responsibility to attend all meetings of the Board of Directors, and serve as Chair of the Regional Leadership Council. In the absence of the President, she will also preside at business meetings of the Board of Directors, the regions, and/or the general membership.

Ferrell’s election to Vice President of Member Services and Education reflects her many years of dedicated service to the association. She has been an active member of NALP since 1999, has served in multiple leadership positions, and has presented at several conferences hosted by the association. She served on the NALP Board of Directors from 2019 to 2021.

In September of 1985, Edward J. Walters Jr. volunteered to help the Baton Rouge Bar Association create a new magazine to replace the one-page newsletter that was sent to members each month. The first issue of Around the Bar was published two months later, with the masthead listing Walters as assistant editor. Walters officially became editor of the magazine in April of the following year, and he would continue to serve in the position for more than three decades.

Shortly after wrapping up his tenure as editor at the close of 2019, Walters’ son, Ed Walters III—who is CEO of Washington, DC-based legal publishing company Fastcase and Full Court Press—began urging his dad to compile his writings into a career-spanning book. Though he was initially reluctant, the elder Walters was eventually convinced it might make for an interesting read, so he began combing through stacks of old magazines.

“It was a lot of fun to go back and read all the articles, many of which I didn’t even remember writing,” said Walters, a 1975 LSU Law graduate and member of the Walters, Papillion, Thomas, Cullens law firm in Baton Rouge. “And it was fascinating, too, because they really brought me back. As I was reading through many of the articles, I remembered so many things that were going on in our community and that I was involved in at the time when they were written.”

The result of the effort—aside from refreshing some old memories—is “Ipse Dixit: Ruminations on a Career at Law,” which was published in early April by Full Court Press. The book not only collects nearly all of Walters’ writings for Around the Bar (which is today titled The Baton Rouge Lawyer) but many of the articles he has written for the Louisiana State Bar Association’s magazine, Louisiana Bar Journal, throughout his more than 45-year legal career.

At slightly more than 300 pages, it also includes 16 interviews that Walters conducted with other prominent attorneys and judges, as well as a small sampling of his many seminar presentation papers. The selections in the book were all originally published between 1985 and 2021, and Walters has added a brief intro to some of the articles to provide updated context.

Walters said he wanted his first book “to be enjoyable for non-lawyers and lawyers alike,” and it is. That’s primarily due to the conversational and humorous tone of his pithy writing on lawyering, which leans more on insightful anecdotes than it does academic analysis, but it’s also due to the brevity of the selections. Most of the more than 75 articles, papers, and interviews included in the collection are a handful of pages or less. Additionally, the four seminar papers in the book focus on topics that will be of interest to any type of lawyer, such as tips for being organized in the courtroom, analyzing the merits of a case, and conducting oneself with professionalism the courtroom.

“Ipse Dixit: Ruminations on a Career at Law” is available for purchase in a number of formats from Full Court Press and from Amazon. Most generously, Walters is pledging all royalties from sales of his book to the LSU Law Classroom to Courtroom Campaign, which he and fellow LSU Law alum and Adjunct Professor Frank Holthaus (’75) launched in 2019.

LSU Law alumna Veronica O. Koclanes ('91) has become the first female Clerk of Court in the Louisiana Supreme Court’s 208-year history.

The Louisiana Supreme Court held the official investiture ceremony for Koclanes on May 9 at a ceremony in the Supreme Court courtroom at the Chief Justice Pascal F. Calogero, Jr. Courthouse. With her husband, children, parents, close family, and friends in attendance, Koclanes was sworn in by Louisiana Supreme Court Chief Justice John L. Weimer (’80) after an introduction by Justice Jay B. McCallum (’85).

“I am honored to serve as Louisiana Supreme Court Clerk of Court and I appreciate the confidence entrusted in me by the Justices and this court,” said Koclanes. “I am also grateful to my husband and children who inspire me daily; my parents, who instilled in me the fortitude to set and reach goals; and my close family, who consistently supports my efforts. I look forward to years of continued service to the Supreme Court and to the people of our great state.”

LSU Law alumna and retired Orleans Parish Juvenile Court Judge Ernestine S. Gray ('76) has become the first Louisianan to receive the prestigious American Bar Association Mark Hardin Award for Child Welfare Legal Scholarship and Systems Change, in recognition of her work to improve the welfare of children through legal representation and advocacy.

The Louisiana Supreme Court recently presented the award to Gray, who was first elected to the Orleans Parish Juvenile Court in 1984 and served on the bench until her retirement in 2020.

“Judge Gray’s career, which includes 36 years on the Orleans Juvenile Court bench, has been dedicated to the improvement and welfare of the lives of children in Louisiana and this honor is fitting,” said Louisiana Supreme Court Chief Justice John L. Weimer (’80). “Though retired, she serves as the Louisiana Court Improvement Program Judicial Fellow, where she provides technical assistance to state judges in matters concerning child welfare litigation. She additionally assists the Louisiana Supreme Court with its Court Improvement Strategic Plan and continues to be committed to bettering children’s lives throughout the state.”

It’s safe to say that the month of May 2022 will be one of the most memorable of Austin Pottorff’s life. Just one week after celebrating his graduation from LSU Law with his classmates as their Student Bar Association Class President on May 20, Pottorff got married.

Now, the Sulphur-native is preparing to take the Louisiana Bar Exam and return home to launch his legal career with Fuerst, Carrier & Ogden, a Lake Charles-based firm that specializes in family law.

“I wanted to become a lawyer to give children somebody who is going to fight for them,” said Pottorff, who earned his undergraduate degree in criminal justice at McNeese State University. “I know that with divorce, adoption, or any kind of lawsuit involving children, the children are the ones who normally take the biggest hit. My little sister was adopted when she was four and she has been a constant inspiration for me to become a lawyer.”

Learn more about Pottorff and find out how you can support outstanding students like him through scholarships at LSU Law »

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