- University News Archive - ��Vlog��ý Little Rock

��Vlog��ý Little Rock Bowen Law School, ��Vlog��ýPB create pipeline program

Ajani Oyindamola — Thu, 05 Dec 2019 16:02:58 +0000

The University of Arkansas at Little Rock William H. Bowen School of Law and the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff have created a 4+3 pipeline program to help undergraduate students earn a law degree. “Both schools have been working for several years to get this program in place,” said Bowen Dean Theresa Beiner. “Many of Bowen’s graduates are also ��Vlog��ýPB alumni. This program honors their paths to law school and paves the way for a long-term relationship with ��Vlog��ýPB and its students.” This new partnership recognizes ��Vlog��ýPB’s commitment to preparing students who aspire to law school and provides guaranteed acceptance to Bowen for ��Vlog��ýPB graduates who meet specific criteria. “Bowen consistently attracts quality applicants,” said Assistant Dean of Admissions Matthew Kerns. “With competition to enter the law school increasing, these programs reinforce our commitment to ��Vlog��ýPB students and the citizens of Arkansas and ensure that highly motivated graduates have spots at the law school.” The signing took place on the ��Vlog��ýPB campus on Dec. 3 and was attended by several students who took time away from their studies to come learn more about the program and to meet Dean Beiner and Dean Kerns. “This is going to be something great for our students to aspire to,” said Henry Brooks IV, instructor and program coordinator for the Political Science program at ��Vlog��ýPB. “We already have students who are interested in the Bowen School of Law.” Gabrielle Williams, a junior political science major at ��Vlog��ýPB, shared her excitement about the partnership and what it could mean for her legal career. “This is a stepping stone for students like me and the beginning of something great,” Williams said. ��Vlog��ýPB graduates qualify for the 4+3 program if they earn a minimum cumulative GPA of 3.4; scored a 154 or above on the LSAT; and have no character and fitness issues that would disqualify them from being admitted to the bar. Prospective students can apply to the law school through lsac.org. Students must apply to Bowen and satisfactorily complete all admissions requirements. “The 4+3 pipeline program between ��Vlog��ýPB and the Bowen School of Law will allow current ��Vlog��ýPB students pursuing a bachelor’s of science degree in political science to seamlessly pursue a law degree,” said Dr. Robert Carr Jr., provost and vice chancellor for academic affairs at ��Vlog��ýPB. “The beauty of this program is that it will set reasonable admissions requirements that students understand from day one. This is great for our students, ��Vlog��ýPB, the Bowen School of Law, and the state of Arkansas.” In addition to this program and other scholarship opportunities, Bowen offers a 25 percent tuition scholarship to accepted students who earned a bachelor’s degree from an historically black college or university in Arkansas. Bowen prepares students for a variety of careers, including roles as attorneys, judges, or other public service leadership positions. In the upper right photo, ��Vlog��ýPB Chancellor Laurence Alexander (left) and Bowen Dean Theresa Beiner (right) sign an agreement to create a 4+3 pipeline agreement between the schools. Photo by Richard Redus.

Bowen names classroom in honor of alum Sam Perroni

��Vlog��ý Little Rock — Mon, 28 Oct 2019 13:53:44 +0000

The University of Arkansas at Little Rock William H. Bowen School of Law has renamed one of its classrooms in honor of alumnus Sam Perroni. Perroni is such a legend in the Little Rock legal community that it’s difficult to believe he wasn’t always here. He grew up in Normal, Illinois, and always wanted to be a lawyer. “Don’t ask me where it came from. No one in my family was a lawyer. I didn’t know any lawyers,” Perroni said. He first applied to the University of Illinois Law School, but competition was fierce—3,000 applicants vied for 300 spots. Perroni was understandably disappointed when he wasn’t one of the 300. “I thought ‘Okay then, that’s it,’ and then my wife’s boss had a talk with me about persistence and encouraged me to apply to schools until I got accepted.” He worked for a small corporation for a year and waited for application periods to open. The University of Arkansas Law School was the first to accept him, but Perroni had misgivings. “Normal, Illinois, was a college town, and I didn’t want to be in Fayetteville without knowing anyone,” Perroni said. “It’s too difficult to get a job, and I was going to have to work while I was in law school.” However, he had the option of going to law school part-time in the Little Rock division of the University of Arkansas School of Law, which is now the ��Vlog��ý Little Rock William H. Bowen School of Law. He took the leap. “Best decision I ever made, other than marrying my wife,” he said. Perroni and his family arrived in Little Rock in 1971 and settled in southwest Little Rock. When registration day came, he went to the university’s main campus, but he couldn’t find the law school building. He had to find the address in the phone book. Then he headed downtown to the corner of Third Street and Broadway. “I looked everywhere on that corner until I spotted a meager black and white sign on the second floor of Everett’s Glass Shop,” he explains. “And then I thought, ‘what the hell have I done?’” Perroni stood in the parking lot for a moment and gave himself a pep talk. He decided it didn’t matter what the school looked like if it gave him a good legal education. He went into the glass shop and upstairs to register. “The student body association president was the first to greet me. He stuck out his hand and said, ‘Welcome to the law school,’” Perroni said. That personal experience continued during his time as a student. The law school and the law library were both housed on the second floor. “It was beyond unique. The professors’ doors were always open,” he said. “You could just walk down the hall to ask them questions. We all felt like the professors were interested in us. It was more like a giant family.” If Perroni needed any other reinforcement, it came when his friend Harold visited. Harold was one of the 300 accepted to the University of Illinois Law School. Harold was surprised at the access Perroni had to his professors. In contrast, Harold was completely on his own. “It also turned out that Glen Pasvogel, one of my professors, had also been Harold’s legal writing professor,” Perroni said. As a night student with a family, Perroni worked during the day as a freelance researcher/law clerk. “None of the attorneys could afford a full-time clerk, so I floated between assignments,” he said. “I researched in the law library and hand-wrote my briefs.” At some point during law school, Perroni worked for Judge Bill Wilson (who was then in private practice), Jack Holt Jr., Judge Henry Woods (at McMath Letherman & Woods), and Tom Bramhall. He was also taking 15 hours of classes each semester. “At that time, the ABA didn’t police the schools as strictly,” Perroni said. “I wasn’t the only student who did it, but it let me graduate in three years instead of four.” The summer he was studying for the bar exam, he was a clerk for the U.S. Attorney’s office. He got that position thanks to his determination, persistence, and freelance experiences. While his freelance clients couldn’t afford to hire him as an associate, they all wanted to help him succeed. Perroni already had been involved in several high-profile criminal cases, and he liked the work. Everyone told him the best way to be a good criminal defense lawyer was to start as a prosecutor. Perroni made an appointment to see U.S. Attorney Sonny Dillahunty, who worked out of the post office. At that time, the U.S. Attorney didn’t have a law clerk, and Perroni didn’t have his license yet. “I walked in and told him I’d work for free.” A few days later, Dillahunty called him back with an offer of a paying job. “For the next three months, I got excellent experience, and, when Sonny got permission to hire an Assistant U.S. Attorney, he found me in the library and offered me the job,” Perroni said. Two years later, Perroni began prosecuting white collar crime cases. Since there was a lot of focus on those cases beginning in 1976, he did little else for the next three years. When he went into private practice, he was the only lawyer who tried to specialize in white collar criminal defense. “I liked doing them, and I liked that most of my clients could pay,” he said. Also, because the cases were complex, he didn’t have a heavy caseload. Trials averaged two to four weeks each, so three active cases could mean up to three months in court each year. While working as an attorney, Perroni returned to law school at night, this time as an adjunct professor. “I felt that teaching in the law school was the highest calling in the profession. You’re molding future lawyers, and you can make good ones or bad based on what you teach them,” Perroni said. “I see my former students and the lawyers they’ve become, and I’m proud to have had a hand in it.” Nowadays, Perroni and his wife of 50 years, Patricia, live in northwest Arkansas to be closer to their family. They have a son, daughter, two grandsons, and a granddaughter. He’s continued researching and writing, but now as an author. His first novel, “Kind Eyes,” is a fictional retelling of Abraham Lincoln’s last case as a criminal defense attorney. “A lot of people don’t know this, but Lincoln was a very good criminal defense attorney,” Perroni said. “He tried nearly 20 murder cases in his 25-year career in private practice. He really liked it, and he told lots of stories about his cases.” Perroni just finished work on his second project, an investigation of actress Natalie Wood’s death. “I’ve been investigating it for four years, and I found a lot of new evidence,” he said. When he’s not at the computer, Perroni can be found at Perroni Field, the Little League practice diamond he built for his grandchildren, complete with concessions, an electronic scoreboard, foul poles, and dugouts. “Once all the coaches found out, they wanted to use it. Now we have six teams practicing and scrimmaging,” Perroni said. “We have baseball here every night. I work my concession stand when the boys are playing. It’s called Sam’s Shack.” When asked about his hope for the future of the legal profession, Perroni is guarded. “My practice revolved around the personal relationships I developed,” Perroni said. “Clients look to their attorney to help them make a decision, and that equals personal contact. That interaction is invaluable, and it builds a trust that you can’t forge through text messages and email. The profession is sacrificing those relationships in the name of speed. It’s troubling, and I hope future students are taught the value of building those relationships. I had a great experience as a student at Bowen. The school gave me a great start on my career. It helped me get to where I am today.”

From Colonel to Counsel: Air Force veteran starts second career in law

Janea Snyder — Tue, 22 Jan 2019 22:24:08 +0000

Lawyering runs in William “Goose” Changose’s family. His grandfather was an attorney, and his father went to law school. Changose liked law too, but law school would have to wait a few years. “After high school, I wanted to fly planes,” he said. In 1983 he graduated from the Air Force Academy, was commissioned as an officer, and then went to pilot training. For the next 23 years, he moved 16 times to bases across the U.S. and overseas. He spent lots of time in Little Rock, Japan, and the Philippines as well as Saudi Arabia and Iraq. He retired in 2006 as a colonel and commander of Hickam Air Force Base in Honolulu, Hawaii. Along the way, he earned a Bachelor of Science in economics from the U.S. Air Force Academy, an MBA from Golden Gate University, and a Master of Science in strategic planning from the Air War College. While law school still intrigued him, it was never the right time or place. “I was always in places where either the tuition was too high or the scheduling was impossible,” he said. “In 2005, my daughter started eighth grade in Hawaii. It was her sixth school, and she asked if she could go to the same high school for four years in a row.” He told her “Yes,” and knew it was time to retire from the military. The New York native was fortunate to get a job at Alltel Wireless and moved his family to Little Rock, where he discovered the William H. Bowen School of Law. Bowen has the state’s only part-time Juris Doctor program, which allows students to attend evening classes Monday through Thursday.

William “Goose” Changose, Jennifer Glover, and Jarred Kibbey were classmates in William H. Bowen School of Law’s part-time program, and now they work together at Natural State Law in Little Rock.

Changose enrolled in fall 2011, attending classes at night and working during the day as chief executive officer of Westrock Coffee Roasting. “While I was working for Westrock Coffee, tidbits of law would show up,” he said. “As CEO, I looked at contracts. My legal education was handy long before I even became a full-fledged lawyer.” Changose completed his law degree in 2015. “Bowen was a great experience for me,” he said. “From the first day I walked in, I liked it.” After law school, he continued working at Westrock, and fellow Bowen grad Jarred Kibbey was there too. “In the summer of 2017, we were working long days and producing a lot of coffee,” Changose recalled. “It was rewarding, but it didn’t fit with my long-term plan. One night I said to Jarred, ‘We have law degrees. Why don’t we open up a law firm?’ And Jarred said ‘Ok.’” That was the start of , which opened on May 1, 2018, with offices at 900 S. Shackleford Road in Little Rock. Changose and Kibbey were friends with Jennifer Glover, another Bowen classmate. She was already working at another law firm, but they convinced her to join them. As non-traditional students, each of the three attorneys had significant professional experience in diverse areas and have developed expertise in diverse areas of law. Changose focuses his practice on business law, veterans’ benefits, real estate zoning, aviation, and firearms law. Kibbey’s practice areas also include business law, veterans’ benefits, and firearms law as well as insurance, employment law, and HIPAA-related issues. Before law school, Kibbey had served as the senior policy advisor to the Arkansas Department of Health and as senior healthcare advisor to Gov. Asa Hutchinson. He has a Bachelor of Science in political science from UCA, a certificate in bioethics and health policy from Loyola University Chicago, and a Master of Public Health from the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences. Glover had worked eight years as a paralegal for a family law firm before law school. She also had been a caseworker for the Division of Children and Family Services, where she experienced firsthand the value of competent legal representation for children and families. Her practice areas include family law, probate, adoption, guardianship, estate planning, and small business-related issues. She earned a Bachelor of Arts in criminal justice from ��Vlog��ý Little Rock before attending Bowen School of Law. All three attorneys are members of the Arkansas Bar Association and the Pulaski County Bar Association. The team is already putting into practice one of Bowen’s core values of creating access to justice. Most of the state’s lawyers work in Pulaski County and in Washington County in northwest Arkansas while rural state residents often lack convenient access to a lawyer. Kibbey applied for and was accepted into Bowen’s Rural Practice Incubator Project, which provides support to Bowen alumni who start law practices in rural, underserved Arkansas communities. Kibbey had grown up in Glenwood, a small town of about 2,500 residents south of Hot Springs. Natural State Law now has an office in Glenwood, and the three attorneys take turns staffing the office two days a week. “We’re getting more and more clients,” Changose said. “People come to us with problems, and we’re finding that we’re able to do a lot of good.” For Changose, the timing was perfect for the new venture. “The coffee business was running smoothly with record revenue and profits, and both of my daughters had graduated from college,” he said. “There are very few times in life when you get a chance to make a big change without the risk of ruin. This was a chance to do something I’d always wanted to do.” Top photo right: William “Goose” Changose found a second career as an attorney after his 23-year military career. Photos by Benjamin Krain

Altheimer Symposium highlights the legal aspects of climate change

Janea Snyder — Wed, 31 Jan 2018 19:51:09 +0000

The ��Vlog��ý Little Rock Law Review and the Arkansas Bar Association will present the 2018 Altheimer Symposium, “The Law and Unnatural Disasters: Legal Adaptations to Climate Change” on Feb. 16 in the Friday Courtroom at the ��Vlog��ý Little Rock William H. Bowen School of Law. Registration is open, and participants are eligible for 5.50 hours of general Continuing Legal Education. Some of the most prominent scholars in environmental law will be presenting on the challenges of legal adaptation to climate change. Topics include:

The Science of Climate Change | Dr. Al Armendariz, The Sierra Club
Heat Waves: Legal Adaptations to the Most Lethal Climate Disaster (So Far) | Michael Gerrard, Columbia University
Government and the Governance of Wildfire in the Wildland-Urban Interface | Stephen, Miller, University of Idaho
Consenting to Disaster: Policy-making and Climate Change Denial in the Southern United States | Blake Hudson, University of Houston
The Hurricane Katrina Levee Breach Litigation: Lessons for Making Policy in a Time of Climate Change

Registration for Arkansas Bar Association members and Bowen alumni is $100. Bowen alumni who are not members of the Arkansas Bar Association should contact Emily Terry (emterry@ualr.edu) for the discount code. For all other attorneys, registration is $125. More information and registration links can be found at ualr.edu/lawreview/2018-symposium-registration/. The symposium presents a timely opportunity for scholars and practitioners to contribute to the discourse on climate change adaptation lawmaking in the United States. The number of billion-dollar-plus weather-related disasters has risen from an average of two per year in the 1980s to an annual average of 10.6 for the 2012 to 2016 period. In 2017 alone, the cost of weather and climate disasters is now estimated at $308 billion, according to the National Centers for Environmental Information. Although these figures capture much of the direct economic costs of disasters, they fail to reflect indirect and non-economic costs such as loss of life, displacement, and community disruption. The market has not spawned robust adaptation; development subsidized by federal insurance continues in vulnerable areas. Furthermore, no coherent body of law exists in the United States at either the federal or state level that is aimed at reducing vulnerability to climate change. Permanently endowed by the Ben J. Altheimer Foundation, the Ben J. Altheimer Symposium is an annual event at which the ��Vlog��ý Little Rock Law Review and the ��Vlog��ý Little Rock William H. Bowen School of Law invite prominent scholars and speakers to the law school to explore topics of interest to the legal and scholarly community. Selected symposium presenters also contribute scholarly articles to a special publication of the ��Vlog��ýLR Law Review that is devoted to the symposium topic.

��Vlog��ý Little Rock selects first female dean of Bowen Law School

Janea Snyder — Fri, 15 Dec 2017 17:32:27 +0000

Theresa Beiner, a nationally recognized law professor for innovative teaching and scholarship, has been selected after a national search as the first permanent female dean of the William H. Bowen School of Law at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock. ��Vlog��ý Little Rock Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost Velmer Burton today announced the appointment of Beiner, who is currently serving as associate dean for academic affairs at Bowen. She will assume the deanship July 1, 2018, succeeding John DiPippa, who will step down as interim dean on June 30. “The central Arkansas community is fortunate to have an accomplished teacher-scholar agree to lead our Bowen Law School,” said Provost Burton. “She brings a wealth of insight and experience to her new role at ��Vlog��ý Little Rock that will prove valuable to Bowen’s students, faculty, alumni, and the legal community.” Beiner has worked in numerous capacities at the law school since 1994, including associate dean for faculty development and as the Nadine H. Baum Distinguished Professor of Law. She received a Juris Doctor in 1989 from Northwestern University School of Law, graduating cum laude, and earned a B.A. with highest distinction from the University of Virginia in 1986. “Terri Beiner is the epitome of a scholar, teacher, servant, and colleague,” said DiPippa. “Her research garners national attention, and her teaching is innovative. She is devoted to her students and spends hours meeting with them outside of class. She is also a wonderful colleague.” Beiner, who became the school’s first associate dean for faculty development in 2010, worked with her colleagues to help each of them become the best teachers, scholars, and public servants they could be, DiPippa said. “I’m very excited to have the opportunity to help Bowen build on its strengths as a law school that is committed to creating a cutting edge curriculum that incorporates our core values of professionalism, public service, and access to justice,” Beiner said. Before becoming a professor, Beiner practiced civil litigation as an associate attorney for a San Francisco law firm after passing the bar in 1991. She is the author of numerous publications of subjects including diversity, gender equality and justice, employment discrimination, and civil procedure. She has presented at Continuing Legal Education seminars for the Arkansas Bar Association, the Wisconsin Law Review Symposium, and the Southeastern Association of Law Schools Conferences, among many other venues. She was awarded the university’s William H. Bowen School of Law’s Faculty Excellence Award for Scholarship in 1998, 2005, 2009 and 2016. She has served on the Arkansas Bar Association Task Force on Maintaining a Fair and Impartial Judiciary and is a past board president of Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families. She was an Arkansas delegate to the Infinity Project, an organization working to appoint more women to the bench in the Eighth Circuit. DiPippa, who joined the Bowen faculty in 1983, began serving as interim dean on July 1, 2017. He was Bowen dean from 2008 to 2012 before returning to the classroom as Dean Emeritus and Distinguished Professor of Law and Public Policy.

- University News Archive - ����Vlog��ý Little Rock