Law students excel in national appellate contest

By Paul Janczewski Legal News Once again, students from Thomas M. Cooley's Auburn Hills campus have shown the legal world they can hold their own against big name law schools in national competitions. Serena Gray and Chris Endres, both third year law students, reached the Final Four in the 2010 Veteran's Law Appellate Advocacy Competition, held October 16-17 in Washington, D.C. at the George Washington Law School and the U.S. Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims. "The school is very proud of them," said Toree S. Randall, an assistant professor at Cooley who teaches research and writing. The competition involved researching a complicated legal problem involving an Army veteran, writing briefs on the legal issues, and orally arguing the case. Randall helped Gray and Endres prepare for the oral arguments with her feedback and suggestions, and recruited practice judges to prepare them for the competition. The Cooley assist team also included Professor Evelyn Calogero; Dean John Nussbaumer; Judge Harold Hood; Professors Mark Cooney and Chris Johnson; Adjunct Professors Kelly McDoniel and John Zevalking; and Erin Johnson, Dionnie Wynter and Lowell Johnson. Twelve teams from eight law schools competed at the event, including Florida A&M University College of Law, Florida Coastal School of Law, George Washington University Law School, John Marshall Law School, North Carolina Central University School of Law, Stetson University College of Law, and the University of Virginia School of Law. Stetson won the competition, defeating a team from George Washington. Endres and Gray reached the semi-finals, along with Florida A&M, based on total points earned for the brief and for performance in the two preliminary rounds of competition. Another Cooley team, Scott Nichol and Trent West, also put on a strong performance in the preliminary round, Nussbaumer said. Earlier this year, Cooley students Derek W. Levinsky and Lowell D. Johnson advanced to the finals of the American Bar Association's National Appellate Advocacy Competition after winning all five of their matches in the regional competition, which included teams from Stetson, Chicago-Kent, Thomas Jefferson, and UCLA. In the VLAAC competition, Gray and Endres, and the other teams, faced legal questions (which are greatly simplified here) surrounding the case of an Army mechanic who was injured on active duty and received service-connected benefits after being discharged, but later applied for disability benefits for obesity and was denied. The two-part problem centered on a 120-day waiting period for filing a Notice of Appeal to the U.S. Court of Appeals for Veterans Claim, and a VA delay in returning an NOA received in a certain time period; and does the VA have discretion to limit compensation for obesity secondary to a service-related injury with additional factors? "To create an effective brief and strong oral arguments for these issues, Chris and Serena had to read a large library of cases and statutes, and determine which authorities to use in support of their arguments," Randall said. "They had to educate themselves about Veterans' Law generally, as this is an area of law they had not studied in law school." Randall said the students rehearsed their arguments in practice rounds, which helped them "anticipate questions that the competition judges were likely to ask." And they had to know the case inside and out. In the preliminary round, each team argued the case "on" and "off" brief, or from both sides. Randall said Gray and Endres were selected for the competition based on their performance in Cooley's moot-court participation, and their performance in legal writing courses. "Gray was a particularly strong oralist, and Endres performed incredibly well in legal writing courses, so they made a good team and excelled in both aspects of the VLAAC--the oral argument rounds and the written brief." According to the competition's website, The Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims Bar Association began the VLAAC in 2009 to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the CAVC, and decided to make it a yearly event. It said judicial review of veterans' benefits claims did not exist until the CAVC began in 1989, and even now, there are few attorneys practicing veterans law and very few schools which offer classes in it, despite more than a million claims filed each year. Officials there hope to raise awareness of the rapidly growing area of veterans law through the competition, and persuade more attorneys to become involved and facilitate justice for veterans. "This is a very underserved area, and there is a need for more people to practice in this area," Randall said. Gray, 30, of Memphis, said she believes the competition will help her oral advocacy skills when she enters criminal law after graduation. She and Endres put in endless hours since September gearing up for the competition, and said that helped both overcome jitters in facing other law schools. "We were motivated to win," Gray said. "And we were very prepared." She said Randall played a "major role" in their success. "This will help me become a better litigator." Published: Wed, Nov 10, 2010

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