The Class of 2011, Public Interest, Faculty and Alumni News - August 13th, 2008

On Monday, the class of 2011 arrived at the law school. This year's class continues our trend of enrolling intentionally smaller size classes of students with diverse backgrounds. The 162 members of the class come from 17 different states including Arizona, Illinois, Indiana, Minnesota, New Mexico, Texas and Utah. Alabama continues to be our largest feeder state but there are also significant numbers of students from Georgia, Florida and Tennessee. The class has an average LSAT of 156 and an average GPA of 3.24

The students spend this week in our Lawyering & Legal Reasoning course and on Monday they start their other classes as well. During this week, we also spend much time talking with them about what it means to be a lawyer and discussing the core values of our profession - integrity, competence, professionalism and service.

On Friday, we spend the entire day discussing the importance of service. To increase the opportunities for service, we are partnering with volunteer lawyers in Birmingham to create a HELP clinic which will provide basic legal assistance to the homeless. This clinic is part of a program developed by United States District Judge Jay Zainey who sits in New Orleans. The local force behind the project is Lisa Borden, a lawyer at Baker Donelson. Our law students will be assisting the homeless in filing for social security benefits. They will help the person obtain their medical records and then assist in preparing the application. The law student will then meet with the homeless person and the social security representative and present the representative with a completed application which includes medical records. Our students will be an integral part of speeding up the application process and will provide some meaningful assistance to the homeless community.

As you know, our faculty make presentations literally all over the globe. This year, Tom Stone, for example, who is a scholar in both law and economics presented papers at academic conferences in Berlin, Prague and Los Angeles. It is those kinds of activities that really help enhance our reputation.

One one alumni note, the United States Senate has confirmed Janet Cobb of the Cumberland Class of 1984 as a Brigadier General in the Army Reserve. General Cobb is the former commander of the 1184th Transportation Terminal Battalion which set records for its handling of cargo in Kuwait in 2002-2003. This is a tremendous honor and our congratulations go out her.

Have a great week.