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SUFFOLK

LAW
ALUMNI MAGAZINE

THE

$1M GIFT

Suffolk Law changed Barry C.
Cosgrove’s life; now he’s giving back

“ON SHIFTING SAND”
Four legal experts weigh in on the
immigration crisis

WINTER 2020

GREEN
DIVIDE

EMBRACING THE CHALLENGES OF
A BUDDING CANNABIS INDUSTRY

TABLE OF
CONTENTS

LAW
ALUMNI MAGAZINE

$1M
GIFT

Suffolk Law changed
Barry C. Cosgrove’s life;
now he’s giving back

“ON
SHIFTING
SAND”
Four legal experts
weigh in on the
immigration crisis

THE

GREEN
DIVIDE

EMBRACING THE CHALLENGES OF
A BUDDING CANNABIS INDUSTRY

WINTER 2020

ON THE COVER:
Laury Lucien
JD’15

12

$1M DONATION TO SUFFOLK
HONORS AN INFLUENTIAL
GRANDMOTHER

30

“I AM STANDING
ON SHIFTING SAND”

Reflecting on the challenges of
immigration law

34

THE CANNABIS CONUNDRUM

Graduates inspired by the emerging
industry push on despite challenges

DEPARTMENTS

SUFFOLK

FEATURES

Ingrid and Barry C. Cosgrove
JD’85 generously donated
$1 million to Suffolk Law.
Read their story on page 12.

02

A MESSAGE FROM
DEAN ANDREW
PERLMAN
Impressive
employment
outcomes; 21stcentury skills; news
from the national
rankings; and more

04

LAW BRIEFS
News and notes
from the headlines
and hallways

11

SUFFOLK LAW LOOKS
TO THE FUTURE
A breakdown
of recent
achievements in
innovation

14

Next Generation

SPOT ON:
EASING ACCESS
TO LEGAL INFO
Improving the civil
legal system

15

Next Generation

WHEN CULTURAL
SURVIVAL IS AT STAKE
Clinic student
takes case to UN in
Geneva

16

Impactful Alumni

JOSH KOSKOFF
TAKES ON THE AR-15
It’s an uphill battle,
he says, but worth
the fight

SUFFOLK

LAW

DEAN
ANDREW PERLMAN

B. Stephanie
Siegmann JD’97.
Read her story on
page 20.



22

28

HOOP DREAMS
COME TRUE FOR
DAVID DUQUETTE
Team counsel for
NBA’s Charlotte
Hornets shares how he
got there

SUFFOLK LAW FACULTY
WEIGH IN ON WORKPLACE
BULLYING LEGISLATION,
POSITIVE PSYCHOLOGY,
AND A TOOL FOR MINDFUL
LAWYERING

YOU WANT TO GIVE,
BUT YOU’RE NOT
SURE HOW OR WHEN
Prof. Philip C. Kaplan
on a little known tool:
the CRUT

19

Impactful Alumni

THE CONNECTOR:
CARMEN ARCE-BOWEN
One graduate’s
quest to build a more
inclusive Boston

20

Impactful Alumni

B. STEPHANIE SIEGMANN
IS TENACIOUS AGAINST
TERRORISM
The first female chief of
the National Security Unit
of the Massachusetts
U.S. Attorney’s Office
opens up

21

Thought Leaders

WHY MASSACHUSETTS
SHOULD PASS THE
FACIAL RECOGNITION
MORATORIUM ACT

GREG GATLIN

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
MICHAEL

18

Impactful Alumni

EXECUTIVE EDITOR

Thought Leaders

24

Thought Leaders

TOUGH GIG: DOES
TRADEMARK LAW
NEED A MAKEOVER?
Associate Dean Leah
Chan Grinvald on
rethinking
trademark law for the
“gig economy”

25

Giving Back

MARIE-LOUISE SKAFTE
TRAVELS TO NEW
SUCCESSES
Alumna credits former
dean with academic
opportunity

26

Giving Back

SUFFOLK LEADER
HELPING LAW STUDENTS
NAVIGATE THE
INNOVATION ECONOMY
Trustee Mark Sullivan
gifts $250,000 for IP
effort

28

Giving Back

A RECORD-BREAKING
REUNION
Class of 1969 pays it
forward at 50-year mark

Giving Back

29

Giving Back

KEVIN FITZGERALD
ON BEING AN
“UNFASHIONABLE
SUCCESS”

29

Giving Back

DEAN’S GROUP LAUNCHES
FOR RECENT GRADS
Larry Nussbaum gives
back by joining the
Dean’s Associates

37

CLASS NOTES
Professional and
personal milestones
from Suffolk alumni

42

DEAN’S CABINET
Committed alumni
invest in the future of
Suffolk Law

44

ALUMNI EVENTS
Capturing memorable
moments from school
gatherings



ASSOCIATE EDITOR

FISCH

KATY IBSEN

DESIGN
JENNI LEISTE
CONTRIBUTING WRITERS

SHANNON DOOLING


JON GOREY





SETH JONES
BILL MARCUS
STEPHANIE SCHOROW

MICHAEL CARPENTER
KATHY CHAPMAN

MICHAEL J. CLARKE

ADAM DETOUR

BEN GEBO

JOHN GILLOOLY

KENT SMITH

BRYCE VICKMARK

MARK WILSON
CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHERS





COPY EDITOR

JANET PARKINSON

Suffolk Law Alumni Magazine is published
once a year by Suffolk University Law
School. The magazine is printed by Lane
Press in Burlington, VT. We welcome readers’
comments. Contact us at 617-573-5751,
mfisch@suffolk.edu, or at Editor, Suffolk Law
Alumni Magazine, 73 Tremont St., Ste. 1308,
Boston, MA 02108-4977. c 2020 by Suffolk
University. All publication rights reserved.

01

SUFFOLK LAW
ALUMNI MAGAZINE
Winter 2020

A MESSAGE FROM

Photograph: Michael J. Clarke

DEAN
ANDREW
PERLMAN

F
02

SUFFOLK LAW
ALUMNI MAGAZINE
Winter 2020

or more than a century, Suffolk
Law has prepared its graduates
for professional success. This
issue of the Suffolk Law Alumni
Magazine tells just a few of their
stories and highlights some of the ways that
the Law School continues to prepare students
for success today.
What you will discover from these stories
and from conversations with current students
is that Suffolk Law remains committed to
its rich tradition of practice-oriented legal
education. That focus is making a difference,
and I’m delighted to update you on some
notable accomplishments:
Increased applications. The quality of a
Suffolk Law education and the achievements
of our alumni are major attractions for
aspiring lawyers. Applications have increased
in four of the last five years, and the two most
recent entering classes had the strongest
academic credentials in eight years.
A national leader in skills training.
When students arrive, they find skills
training that is unmatched in the nation.
Suffolk Law has long been known as a place
that trains outstanding lawyers, and the rest

of the country is taking notice. We are the
only law school in the nation that, for four
years in a row, has had four top-20 ranked
skills programs in U.S. News & World Report
(clinics, dispute resolution, legal writing, and
trial advocacy).
Positioning for the 21st century.
We also are a leader in teaching the new
knowledge and skills that lawyers need in
the 21st century. Suffolk Law is ranked No.
1 for legal tech, and our work in this area is
receiving international recognition. (p. 11)
Near-record employment outcomes.
Our students are leveraging their legal
education to find impressive professional
opportunities. Last year’s graduates had the
second-strongest employment outcomes in
the last 30 years. (p. 5)
Bar passage on the rise. The Law
School’s first-time bar pass rate on the July
2019 Massachusetts bar exam improved
to 70.5%, up from 64.5% last year. The 6
percentage point increase is the largest jump
we have seen in 14 years, reflecting numerous
recent bar-related initiatives. Moreover, our
ABA ultimate bar pass rate within two years
of graduation is 84%.

Alumni giving back. Alumni appreciate
how much their Suffolk Law education has
contributed to their success, and they are giving
back. This fall, we received a landmark $1
million commitment from alumnus Barry C.
Cosgrove JD’85 and his wife, Ingrid Cosgrove,
to establish the Graciela Rojas-Trabal Term
Scholarship. (p. 12) We have seen a dramatic
increase in the size of our Dean’s Cabinet,
which now has 40 members, each of whom has
committed at least $50,000 in philanthropic
support. (p. 42) We saw a 29% increase in
money raised over the prior year and a 20%
increase in the number of Summa donors, who
give $1,000 or more. And the Class of 1969
added nearly $500,000 to their already recordbreaking class scholarship fund in honor of
their 50th reunion. (p. 28)
I hope you share my pride in the progress
we are making at Suffolk Law. Together we
are advancing our longstanding mission of
offering students an impactful legal education
that has a transformative impact on their lives
and careers.

THE NUMBERS ARE CLEAR

1 13
ONLY

#

ONE

Suffolk Law was
ranked number
one in the nation
for legal tech.
(National Jurist)

Suffolk Law is the only
school with four top20 ranked legal skills
specialties—clinics, legal
writing, trial advocacy, and
dispute resolution—for four
consecutive years. (U.S.
News & World Report)

OF

Suffolk Law is one of only three
schools ranked in the top 20
in all four legal skills specialty
areas in the 2020 edition of
U.S. News & World Report.

ONLY 10
BEST
GRAD
SCHOOLS

LAW

LAW

ONLY 10 HAVE MORE TOP-20
SPECIALTY PROGRAMS THAN
SUFFOLK LAW. ( U.S. NEWS &
WORLD REPORT )

LAW

LAW
2020

LEGAL
WRITING

TRIAL
ADVOCACY

DISPUTE
RESOLUTION

2020

2020

2020

3

#

15

#

16

#

CLINICAL
TRAINING

19

#

LAW
BRIEFS

NEWS
AND NOTES
FROM THE
HEADLINES
AND
HALLWAYS

ALUMNA
CONFIRMED FOR
SEAT ON U.S.
DISTRICT COURT

QUICK FACT

04

SUFFOLK LAW
ALUMNI MAGAZINE
Winter 2020

30% OF RECENT
BAY STATE JUDICIAL
NOMINEES WERE
SUFFOLK ALUMNI
Gov. Baker’s “crown jewel”

Thirty percent of the judges nominated in 2017 and 2018 by Massachusetts
Governor Charlie Baker are Suffolk Law alumni. He nominated 89 judges
during those two years; 28 graduated from the Law School. In remarks made
at Suffolk University, Baker said, “As somebody who appreciates and believes
in the difference that public service can make, I find Suffolk University to be
one of the true crown jewels in the Commonwealth’s constellation of higher
education institutions.”

From left: Shutterstock, Courtesy of Isabel Stern

Federal courthouse in
Providence, Rhode Island

Mary S. McElroy JD’92, Rhode Island’s top
public defender, was confirmed to the Rhode Island
U.S. District Court by the United States Senate on
September 11, 2019.
McElroy has the unusual distinction of having
been nominated by both President Donald
Trump and President Barack Obama for the
position. Both nominations had stalled, however,
languishing in what the Boston Globe called “the
morass of Beltway gridlock.”
Before her confirmation, McElroy served as
public defender for the State of Rhode Island from
2012 to 2019. She previously spent six years as
federal defender for the districts of Massachusetts,
New Hampshire, and Rhode Island and served
as an assistant public defender with the Rhode
Island Public Defender’s Office for 12 years. Before
stepping into that role, she worked for Tate & Elias
LLC as an associate, after a clerkship for Justice
Donald Shea on the Rhode Island Supreme Court.
McElroy joins Chief Judge William E. Smith,
Judge John J. McConnell, Jr., and Magistrate Judges
Lincoln Almond and Patricia Sullivan in the U.S.
District Court for the District of Rhode Island.

Last year’s graduates had the secondbest employment outcomes in 30
years. Why? From individualized
career coaching sessions to large-scale
recruitment programs in both the
public and private sectors, Suffolk
Law’s innovative professional and
career development program prepares
students and graduates to enter a rapidly
evolving legal job market.

TOP AREAS
OF EMPLOYMENT

33

% 15%
%
12%
in firms of 101+

5

IN FIRMS OF 2-100

21%
in business

LAW BRIEFS

SUFFOLK
GRADS FIND
SUCCESS IN
JOB MARKET

IN
CLERKSHIPS

in government
& public interest

COMING FULL CIRCLE
LAW STUDENTS HELP HIGH SCHOOLER WIN NATIONAL MOOT COURT COMPETITION

Sam DeLong JD/LLM’19,
Isabel Stern, and 3L Sam Faisal

You might think that most high school
students’ eyes would glaze over when asked
to read and discuss the pages of a 1969
Supreme Court case, but that’s not how it
turned out, says Suffolk Law 3L Sam Faisal.
As he helped 20 teens untie the knotty issues
in Tinker v. Des Moines, a case that decided
whether a group of public high school
students could be suspended for wearing
anti-Vietnam War armbands, his students
were energized and impassioned.
Faisal’s presence in a high school
classroom teaching constitutional law and
his work as a moot court mentor bring him
full circle. In 2011, when he was a junior in
high school, Suffolk Law students serving
in the Marshall-Brennan Constitutional
Literacy Project taught con law in his own
classroom at public magnet school Another
Course to College in Hyde Park.
Last academic year, Faisal and Sam
DeLong JD/LLM’19 traveled twice a week
to Cambridge Rindge & Latin, a public high
school in Cambridge, to serve as teachers,
coaches, and mentors in the same program.
They and other Suffolk Law students fanned

out to Boston-area public high schools to
teach the concepts of search and seizure and
free expression.
As a mentee and competitor in the
Marshall-Brennan Moot Court Competition
in 2011, Faisal realized that the law was
important, so much more important than
he had imagined, with rulings that seemed
to touch on every aspect of human conflict.
“In high school, my thinking was that
I wanted to be a police officer. My parents
wanted me to be a doctor or an engineer,”
he said. “But the Marshall-Brennan
training made me ask myself: ‘What could
I accomplish as a lawyer? What could I
accomplish using the structure of the law?’”
Through the spring of 2019, DeLong
and Faisal prepared Rindge & Latin
students, including Isabel Stern, for the
program’s high-profile capstone, a moot
court competition for teen litigators
across the country. During the National
Competition in Washington, D.C., Stern
had the opportunity to appear and argue
before federal judges in the final round. She
was honored as the best oral advocate.

05

SUFFOLK LAW
ALUMNI MAGAZINE
Winter 2020

LAW BRIEFS

GET
KONNECTED!
HONORS
BOSTON’S BEST,
INCLUDING
SUFFOLK LAW
ALUMNI
On April 30, Get Konnected!, in
partnership with Mintz, celebrated Greater
Boston’s 50 Most Influential Attorneys of
Color. The Get Konnected! website describes
the award winners as “some of the best legal
minds in Greater Boston … making their
mark in the legal profession, while serving as
role models for the next generation.”
The following Suffolk Law alumni were
honored:

Sheriece Perry

DEAN TOUTS LEGAL
TECHNOLOGY
PROGRAM ON
CAPITOL HILL

Damian Wilmot

Stephen Hall

GOVERNMENT
Sheriece Perry JD’08, Acting CoDirector, Department of Support Services,
Massachusetts Trial Courts Office of Court
Management

Macey Russell

Damian Wilmot JD’00, Senior Vice
President, Chief Risk and Compliance Officer,
Vertex Pharmaceuticals
Jasmine Jean-Louis

LAW FIRM
Stephen Hall JD’10, Senior Counsel,
Holland & Knight

PIONEER
Macey Russell JD’83, Trustee; Partner,
Choate; former Chair of the Judicial
Nominating Commission; Advisory Board
Member, Institute for Inclusion in the Legal
Profession

Keerthi Sugumaran

RISING STARS

06

SUFFOLK LAW
ALUMNI MAGAZINE
Winter 2020

Jasmine Jean-Louis JD’15, Attorney,
Massachusetts Attorney General’s Office
Keerthi Sugumaran JD’11, Associate,
Jackson Lewis PC; President, South Asian Bar
Association of Greater Boston
Elke Trilla-Bamani JD’12, Associate,
Morgan Lewis
Cherina Wright JD/MBA’17, Director of
Student Engagement and Inclusion, Suffolk
Law

Elke Trilla-Bamani

Cherina Wright

Dean Andrew Perlman spoke to Congressional
staffers on the role law schools can play in curbing a
growing crisis in access to legal services among low- and
middle-income families. The May 21 briefing included
remarks by Congressman Joe Kennedy III, recipient of
an honorary JD from Suffolk in 2019.
“Law schools need to teach future lawyers how to
develop innovative and more cost-effective approaches
to delivering legal services,” said Dean Perlman.
Suffolk Law’s top-ranked program in legal technology
has been leading the nation in this area with cuttingedge courses, a legal design lab, and online training, he
told staffers. He also referenced the school’s Acceleratorto-Practice program, which trains students in legal
technology and sound business practices, making it
possible to serve moderate-income clients in ways that
are financially sustainable.
The panel was spearheaded by the American
Academy of Arts & Sciences and the U.S. House of
Representatives’ Access to Civil Legal Services Caucus.

From left: Courtesy of Get Konnected (8), Shutterstock, Michael J. Clarke (2)

IN-HOUSE COUNSEL

LAW BRIEFS

LEARNING THE
ART OF SUPERVISION

INNOCENCE
CLINIC
OFFERS NEW
OPPORTUNITY
Suffolk Law’s Innocence Clinic, now in its third
year of operation, teams up with the New England
Innocence Project (NEIP) and the Committee
for Public Counsel Services (CPCS) to review
claims of innocence on behalf of incarcerated
individuals. The cases are an outstanding vehicle
for students to delve deeply into legal, evidentiary,
and ethical issues associated with criminal cases.
This past year, for example, students uncovered
evidence that suggests a man serving time for
armed robbery had been framed by his ex-wife—
and it was evidence the jury never saw. As a
result of the students’ work, their client may have
grounds for a new trial.

Students involved in the
Innocence Clinic discuss
cases with Clinical Adjunct
Professor Shira Diner.

Shai Myers CAS’20 and
Julianne Jeha BA’16, JD’19

Law school clinics teach law students the invaluable skills associated with client
representation, but few provide students with the opportunity to learn the skills of
delegation and supervision. Now, some of Suffolk Law’s clinics do just that.
Appearing in Chelsea District Court, Julianne Jeha BA’16, JD’19 successfully sought
a restraining order on behalf of a client in Suffolk’s Family Advocacy Clinic (FAC). The
complex domestic abuse and custody matter was the first case Jeha had presented before
a judge—but she wasn’t alone. Thanks to a pioneering partnership with Suffolk’s College
of Arts & Sciences, students in FAC have the opportunity to team up with undergraduate
students who serve as paralegals.
In this restraining order case, Jeha had the help of Suffolk undergrad Shai Myers
(Class of 2020)—and Myers’ help was invaluable. For example, Myers created a detailed
timeline of the client’s many Department of Children & Families records, police reports,
and court orders. Beyond that, Myers was another set of eyes and ears who provided
valuable input.
Suffolk Law’s clinics have been ranked among the nation’s best for more than a
decade, and a primary reason for their success is their focus on innovative pedagogy. The
partnership with Suffolk’s College of Arts & Sciences now offers Suffolk Law students
the opportunity to delegate tasks and supervise the undergrads in a professional setting.
The undergraduates organize documents for hearings, take notes at client preparation
meetings, attend court hearings, file pleadings, conduct non-legal research, and act as
sounding boards for law students during practice presentations.
Associate Dean for Experiential Learning Kim McLaurin says the cooperative
effort helps student attorneys find the right balance between supervision and
micromanagement. Delegation is a skill that has to be learned, she says. “When I was an
attorney who hired people, those who struggled were the ones who couldn’t work well
with the paralegals and other support staff.”
Clients appreciate having a full, supportive team working on their cases, she adds. “It’s
a win for everyone.”

07

SUFFOLK LAW
ALUMNI MAGAZINE
Winter 2020

LAW BRIEFS

Suffolk Law School

ACCELERATED JD
PROGRAM ENABLES
DEGREES IN LESS TIME

08

SUFFOLK LAW
ALUMNI MAGAZINE
Winter 2020

Suffolk Law got its start in 1906
as an evening law school that offered
students the flexibility they needed to
get a legal education while continuing
to work. Student needs continue to
evolve, and the Law School’s new
Accelerated JD program seeks to
address one of those needs: finishing
law school faster.
Accelerated JD students graduate
more quickly than traditional JD
students—two years instead of three
for the full-time program or two and
a half to three years instead of four for
the part-time evening program. The
Accelerated JD caters to those who
have already spent some years in a
professional setting before returning to
study law, such as students who have a
PhD and are working as patent agents.
The requirements are the same as
for the traditional JD program—same
number of credits, same tuition, same
required courses. Students finish faster
by taking classes the summer before

the 1L year and by taking classes in
subsequent summers.
Admission into the Accelerated
JD program is competitive, and
students must have even stronger
academic credentials than the typical
first-year law student. The Law
School launched the program in
2018, and the first class of students
will earn their degrees in 2020.
Suffolk Law was the first law
school in Massachusetts to launch an
accelerated JD program, and one of
only 21 nationwide at the time.
“Suffolk Law was founded on
the idea that aspiring lawyers should
have some flexibility in how they
obtain a legal education,” Associate
Dean of Admission Matthew Gavin
said. “In 1906, that meant offering
classes at night so law students could
work during the day. In 2020, that
means letting law students earn their
degree faster, so they can rejoin the
workforce sooner.”

Dr. Sonia Guterman JD’00 was cited by the Nobel
Committee for Chemistry when it announced two winners of
the 2018 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. Her co-invented patent in
the area of protein engineering helped lay the groundwork for
later innovations by George P. Smith and Gregory P. Winter,
who won for their work in “the phage display of peptides and
antibodies.” Guterman was cited in a Nobel Committee paper
laying out the history of advances in the laureates’ field of
research.
Guterman, originally a biochemist, and her then-associate
Robert C. Ladner created and licensed a library of mutated
proteins, which enabled researchers to create more effective
medicines. Work in this area of chemistry began in the
1940s, said Dr. Guterman, who in 1971 received her PhD in
microbiology from MIT after studying under Nobel laureate
Salvadore E. Luria, an Italian-born bacteriologist.
After earning her PhD, Guterman served as vice president
for research at biopharmaceutical firm Protein Engineering
Corp., which later became the Dyax Corporation. She
returned to school in 1996, receiving her JD in 2000 while
working full-time. She was named partner and chair of the
Patent Group at Lawson & Weitzen LLP, and she now serves
as principal at intellectual property law firm Armis.
“I love Suffolk Law, and Suffolk Law made me into a
lawyer,” she said. “The satisfaction of being a lawyer is different
from being in science, and also wonderful—thrilling, actually.
“Suffolk Law was collegial from the first day. We were all
in it together. I remember that September in 1996, professors
showed us the library—how to do legal research. We were
given the tools and taught how to use them. When I studied
science for my PhD, it was like being thrown into a pond
without knowing how to swim.”

From left: Michael J. Clarke, Adobe Stock, student submitted

NOBEL COMMITTEE
LAUDS ALUMNA’S
PATENT WORK

LAW BRIEFS

Suffolk Law students in
Connemara, County Galway

SPAIN, IRELAND
PROGRAMS GIVE
STUDENTS A
GLOBAL VIEW
REAL MADRID
Approximately 25 law students will head to Suffolk
University’s Madrid campus during spring break to learn
about Spanish law and its relationship to the European
Union, among other topics. The campus, founded in 1995,
sits just four miles from Madrid’s city center.
The Madrid visit is part of a new course that starts in
Boston with classes on the Spanish and EU legal systems.
Field trips will include visits with European Union officials
at the EU’s Madrid offices.

GALWAY DAYS
In May, students in the Suffolk Law summer course at the National
University of Ireland (NUI) Galway wrestled with some complex legal
questions. An example: whether the EU’s bylaws will allow it to maintain its
pollution emissions requirements post-Brexit and despite some EU countries’
reliance on coal.
Professor Sara Dillon, director of international programs at the Law
School, and Suffolk Law alumnus Lawrence “Larry” Donnelly JD’99, an
Irish American attorney and director of NUI Galway’s clinical program, have
been instrumental in organizing the summer program and helping Suffolk’s
students land valuable internships at major Irish nonprofits and government
organizations. The course included a visit to the Dublin headquarters of
Twitter to meet with the company’s chief legal officer for Europe, the Middle
East, and Asia, who discussed legal issues facing the company arising from
bots and hacking.
“The work of lawyers is increasingly focusing on transnational issues—digital
privacy rights and climate change are good examples,” says Dillon. “We’re
asking our Galway and Madrid program students to delve into matters that
cross borders, cultures, legal systems. It’s complex, sophisticated, and important
work—and for many students, it can also be life changing.”

09

SUFFOLK LAW
ALUMNI MAGAZINE
Winter 2020

Former NFL star Nick Buoniconti JD’68, HLLD’93
died July 30, 2019, leaving behind a notable legacy.
Among other contributions, he had an impact on research
into paralysis and chronic traumatic encephalopathy
(CTE) that is impossible to measure.
After attending the University of Notre Dame,
Buoniconti was selected by the Boston Patriots in the
13th round of the AFL draft in 1962. He was inducted
into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 2001 after a
remarkable football career that included winning two
Super Bowls with the Miami Dolphins and covering the
sport as a commentator for 23 years.
While Buoniconti was still playing for the Boston
Patriots, he managed to make time to attend Suffolk
Law. He earned his JD in 1968, was a member of the bar
in Florida and Massachusetts, and received an honorary
doctor of laws in 1993.
After Buoniconti’s son, Marc, suffered a paralyzing
injury while playing football at The Citadel, the two
resolved to increase paralysis research, creating the Miami
Project to Cure Paralysis and the Buoniconti Fund to Cure
Paralysis, which have raised over $450 million. In 2017,
Buoniconti announced an especially personal pledge:
donating his brain and spinal cord to CTE research,
citing the damage his own body had endured as a result of
repeated head collisions in football.
Truly a champion in so many ways, Buoniconti said of
his donation: “I don’t do this for myself … I do it for the
thousands of others who will follow me.”

10

SUFFOLK LAW
ALUMNI MAGAZINE
Winter 2020

Suffolk President
John Fenton;
Nick Buoniconti
JD’68, HLLD’93;
and his wife,
Teresa Marie
Salamano,
at the 1968
commencement

STUDENTS ARGUE BEFORE
U.S. SUPREME COURT JUSTICE
In a national securities law competition judged by U.S. Supreme Court Justice
Samuel Alito and other federal court judges, Suffolk Law students won the
award for best brief and finished second overall among 30 schools. The Kaufman
Competition was held in March at Fordham University.
“It was quite the radical transformation to get me to a place where I could take
hardball questions from circuit court judges and Justice Alito,” says 3L Dylan
Woods. In his first oral argument practice with Professor Joseph Franco, a former
attorney in the office of the General Counsel of the Securities and Exchange
Commission, Woods made some classic mistakes: “I came up with a fully typed,
several page speech, which I read robotically line by line, swaying, gripping the
podium. Professor Franco, week after week, got me to look him in the eye and make
my argument.”
The National Trial Team was also victorious last spring, winning the regional
championships of the National Trial Competition in Portland, Maine. Jake Hasson
JD’19 walked away with the Best Advocate award.
The Suffolk Law team won the Duberstein Bankruptcy National Moot Court
regional championship as well. Armand Santaniello JD’19 received the outstanding
oralist award.

YOU MIGHT CALL IT A DYNASTY
The Law School’s trial teams have won the regionals of the National Trial
Competition or the American Association for Justice’s Student Trial Advocacy
Competition 29 times in the last 34 years.
Our Trial Advocacy Program placed 15th in the country in U.S. News & World
Report’s 2020 rankings guide, its fourth year in a row in the top 20.

From left: Suffolk Law archives, Michael Carpenter

LAW BRIEFS

REMEMBERING
NICK BUONICONTI:
SUFFOLK GRAD
AND NFL LEGEND

SUFFOLK LAW

LOOKS TO
THE FUTURE
A BREAKDOWN OF RECENT
ACHIEVEMENTS IN INNOVATION

LEGAL
TECHNOLOGY

LEGAL INNOVATION LEADER
National Jurist/preLaw named Suffolk the best
school in the U.S. for legal tech.

GOING
MOBILE
The ABA’s Center
for Innovation
NextGen Fellow
and LIT Fellow
Nicole Siino JD’18
created a mobile
tool for judges
and lawyers to
help juveniles
avoid jail time.

Brian Kuhn JD’07
is partner, co-founder,
and global leader of
Watson Legal, IBM’s
artificial intelligence
legal platform.

–preLaw Magazine

The Legal Innovation & Technology (LIT) Lab is
Suffolk’s consultancy and R&D shop, working
with attorneys, courts, and legal aid agencies to
offer legal tech and data science solutions.

NEXT-GENERATION JOBS
Legal Innovation and Technology Concentration
graduates have landed jobs that did not exist 10
years ago: legal innovation advisor, legal solutions
architect, legal project manager, and NextGen Fellow.

INNOVACTION
AWARD
WINNER

ALUMNI
SPOTLIGHT

“SUFFOLK IS ONE OF THE MOST INNOVATIVE
FORCES IN LEGAL EDUCATION”

SUFFOLK
LAW R&D

We’re preparing students for 21st-century
legal employment through a range of cuttingedge curricular initiatives. The nerve center
is our Institute on Legal Innovation and
Technology (LIT).

BLOOMBERG
COVERAGE:
“RETRAINING
LEGAL
INDUSTRY”
In 2018, Suffolk Law
launched its online
Legal Innovation
& Technology
Certificate program
taught by legal
industry leaders.
The program has
drawn students
from five different
continents.
Bloomberg covered
the launch.

The LIT Lab
was named
a 2019
InnovAction
Award Winner
by the College
of Law Practice
Management
in recognition
of the Lab’s
cutting-edge
public service,
data science,
and artificial
intelligence
projects.

GLOBAL
GAMECHANGER
The LIT Lab’s crowdsourcing tool Learned
Hands, co-developed with Stanford’s Legal
Design Lab, was one of 30 World Justice
Challenge finalists—a shortlist of the world’s
most innovative access-to-justice projects.

PEW GRANT
FOR AI
PROJECT
The LIT Lab recently received a
grant—its second—from the Pew
Charitable Trusts. The funding will
help create an algorithm that can
spot legal issues in the language
a layperson uses when searching
online for legal information.

11

SUFFOLK LAW
ALUMNI MAGAZINE
Winter 2020

The Cosgroves look over the tree they
planted in honor of Graciela Rojas-Trabal,
near the lakeside home in Wareham where
she was a summer guest.

$1M Donation
to Suffolk honors an influential grandmother

This column,
by Thomas
Farragher,
appeared in the
Boston Globe
on September 5,
2019.

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ALUMNI MAGAZINE
Winter 2020

Her treasure was not kept in a bank
account. It could not be measured in
stocks and bonds.
It was simpler than that. Closer.
Within arm’s reach.
Her big family. Her grandchildren.
A home that became a haven to
anyone who needed a meal, a spare
bed, or a sympathetic smile during
the rough patches of life.
What did Graciela Rojas-Trabal’s
family learn from her?
“To be respectful. To be loyal,’’ her
granddaughter Ingrid Cosgrove told
me the other day on the porch of her
family’s home here. “She was a loving
woman. She was not rich. She worked
in poverty. She was a poor woman,
but if she had one hundred dollars
and she knew you needed forty, she
would give it to you.

“If she knew you were struggling
with something, she would be there
for you. And she would help you.’’
Graciela died in 2017 at the age
of 86, but now her family has found
a way to keep her legacy alive. It’s a
remarkable gift that will carry her
name and will honor the woman
who prayed the holy rosary each
afternoon at 3 o’clock, a woman
whose welcoming message was
always this: Come in. Have a seat.
Let’s share a meal.
Suffolk University Law School in
September announced a $1 million
gift that Ingrid Cosgrove’s husband,
health care venture capitalist Barry
C. Cosgrove JD’85, said will help
students like him, the son of a single
mom who has become one of the Law
School’s most generous supporters.

“Hopefully, there will be a lot of
kids like me from Brockton who
have promise, but don’t have the
confidence and don’t have the means
to go to a place like Suffolk where
there is rigor, but they also care,’’
Cosgrove said. “That’s a nice formula.’’
It’s a formula born out of a
relationship
that
blossomed,
remarkably enough, during the Red
Sox historic 2004 championship
season, when the New York Yankees
won the first three games of a sevengame series before fortunes turned,
history was made, and a curse was
broken.
Barry and Ingrid watched one
of the games of that titanic series in
Miami, where from across a hotel
lobby they first caught each other’s
attention.

Photograph by David L. Ryan

She grew up in poverty, the mother of seven, grandmother of 14, and the matriarch of
a close-knit neighborhood in her native Dominican Republic, where she taught others
what genuine riches really look like.

“I thought she was beautiful,’’ Cosgrove, 62, told me the other day. “She didn’t speak
English. I didn’t speak Spanish. She had four kids. Who would believe that we would
meet? It was meant to be.’’
By the time they met, Ingrid, 50, was a widow with four children. They fell in love
and got married in 2009. By then, Barry had met the woman at the center of his new
love’s universe: Graciela.
“She helped me raise my kids,’’ Ingrid said of her grandmother. “They call her
grandma. For them, she’s their grandma. You can’t say anything bad about my grandma
with them. They just love her.’’
Her children recall Suffolk University’s newest scholarship namesake as the sweet
soul who taught them about faith, about kindness, about what loving your neighbor
really looks like. As they grew, their grandmother became their confidant, their friend,
and their true north. When she took out the rosary beads each afternoon at 3:00, they
witnessed how unwavering faith is practiced.
For Barry Cosgrove, whose own father abandoned his family when Cosgrove was
just a little boy, she personified what family life should be.
Cosgrove is the founder of a dialysis company and has spent much of his time trying
to figure out how to improve the lives of others.
“She had a remarkable and genuine ability to make people know she cared about
them,’’ he said. “She raised her own kids and other people’s kids as well. She was a giver,
not a taker. This gift will continue her giving.’’
When she died in late January 2017, there were nine days of services in Santo
Domingo. More than 200 mourners lined up at the family home. Some slept in chairs
or on couches. Buses transported her friends and family to the cemetery after her
funeral Mass.
They recalled the woman whose morning greeting never changed.
“Bendición,’’ she would say. “Blessings.’’
“We have tried to keep her house the way she had it,’’ Ingrid Cosgrove said.
“Everybody who goes on vacation in the Dominican, they go there to stay. She always
told everyone, ‘This is the maternal house. This is the house for everyone.’’’
Money from the $1 million scholarship fund will soon be disbursed. Suffolk is
looking for applications. It would be wonderful if the applicants are required to learn a
little something about the woman whose name adorns that scholarship.
Barry Cosgrove, who once swept the floors at Cardinal Spellman High School in
Brockton, would like that.
And so would Dean Andrew Perlman of the Suffolk Law School.
“What I love about this gift is that it’s so true to Suffolk’s identity,’’ Perlman told me
the other day. “Suffolk got started as a school in 1906 and was intended to provide an
opportunity for students to get an education when they otherwise wouldn’t have one,
either because of their race, religion, or national origin. Discrimination was rampant
back then. Suffolk was a place that opened doors for people who otherwise didn’t have
a chance.’’
Now those doors are being held open by a Dominican woman who quietly, in
dozens of small ways, made a huge impression.
“The way Barry is honoring his wife’s grandmother represents the kind of person
who we have tried to give opportunity to,’’ the Law School dean said. “She was a
giving person, and the idea that something is being created in her name that will give
opportunity to young people for education is true to our founding vision.’’
Her family knows what Graciela Rojas-Trabal would have to say about all of this.
“Bendición.’’

“Hopefully, there
will be a lot of
kids like me from
Brockton who have
promise, but don’t
have the confidence
and don’t have the
means to go to a
place like Suffolk
where there is
rigor, but they also
care,’’ Cosgrove
said. “That’s a nice
formula.’’
From The Boston Globe. © 2019 Boston Globe Media
Partners. All rights reserved. Used under license.

13

SUFFOLK LAW
ALUMNI MAGAZINE
Winter 2020

NEXT
GENERATION
By
Bill Marcus
Photography by
Kathy Chapman

Jessica Promes
JD’19; LIT Lab
Director David
Colarusso;
Chantal
Choi JD’19;
Nicole Siino
JD’18; and
Dean Andrew
Perlman

SPOT ON:

EASING ACCESS
TO LEGAL INFO

G

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ALUMNI MAGAZINE
Winter 2020

etting useful legal information from court and other
government websites is a challenge, especially for people
who are not lawyers. The sites try to match users with the
right resources, but individuals often don’t know exactly what to
search for. Complicating matters further, laypeople and legal experts
use different language, making it hard to match a user’s question with a
court official’s or lawyer’s expertise.
As the director of the Legal Innovation and Technology (LIT)
Lab at Suffolk Law, David Colarusso is working to change this,
thanks to funding from the Pew Charitable Trusts. Along with
his LIT Lab students, Colarusso is developing a machine-based
algorithm that understands legal queries couched in lay terms,
improving access to justice.
Known as Spot, the software will be made publicly available via an
application programming interface, or API. It builds on work from
2018, when the Pew Charitable Trusts funded the development of an
online game, Learned Hands, created by the LIT Lab and its partners
at Stanford Law School’s Legal Design Lab. Lawyers, students, and
other gamers playing Learned Hands identify and label legal questions
posed by laypeople. Each time they play, they’re training a machine to
spot and sort legal issues.
With this new grant to develop the Spot tool, someone could type a
plain-English search query such as: “My apartment is so moldy I can’t
stay there anymore. Is there anything I can do?” The search results
would reveal that the query is highly likely to be related to a housing
issue or, more specifically, to the legal term “constructive eviction.”
“You know you have a housing problem. But very few people think
about their housing problems in terms of something like constructive
eviction,” explains Colarusso. “The idea is to have the tool be able to
spot those issues based upon people’s own language.”

Improving
the civil
legal
system

Colarusso and his students envision Spot being used by courts,
legal offices, and nonprofits to direct people to the most appropriate
resources—and in some cases even to software, similar to TurboTax,
that would walk users through filling out and submitting legal
documents. This fall, the LIT Lab was recognized for its gamechanging approach with a top honor, the InnovAction Award, from
the College of Law Practice Management.
The Lab’s API will be available at no charge to those working on
access-to-justice issues, says Colarusso.
Erika Rickard, senior official of Civil Legal System Modernization
at Pew Charitable Trusts, says the civil legal system is increasingly
navigated by people who don’t have legal help. Pew has set a goal to
modernize the courts’ relationship with users and make the legal
system more effective and accessible to all, especially low- to moderateincome populations.
“For those people, identifying and understanding their legal issues
are the first steps in tackling the problem,” she says. “By incorporating
Spot, legal information portals can better help these populations
successfully navigate the nation’s civil courts.”

GAINING GLOBAL ATTENTION
The LIT Lab’s Learned Hands crowdsourcing tool,
co-created with the Legal Design Lab at Stanford, was
shortlisted among 30 of the most innovative access-tojustice projects in the world by the World Justice Project
(WJP). The LIT Lab earned an invitation to The Hague for
the WJP’s World Justice Forum.

NEXT
GENERATION

WHEN

CULTURAL
SURVIVAL

Clinic
student
takes case
to UN in
Geneva

By
Michael Fisch
Photograph
courtesy of
Nicole Friederichs

IS AT STAKE

Student
Attorney Cara
Libman JD’19
(second from
left) with HRIPC
Director Nicole
Friederichs
(far right) and
clients at the
United Nations
Office in
Geneva.

B

razil and its environmental news
are far away, but Cara Libman
JD’19 is playing a role closer to
the center of the fray. In April, she crossed
time zones and language barriers as a
student attorney in the Human Rights
and Indigenous Peoples Clinic (HRIPC).
Her mission: help an indigenous
community facing hardships caused by
environmental change.
Libman and Nicole Friederichs JD’03,
the director of the HRIPC, traveled to
Geneva, Switzerland, this past spring
to advocate before a United Nations
treaty body. While there, they joined
leaders of indigenous communities from
central Brazil who were laying out their
case for halting and rethinking massive
agribusiness infrastructure projects.

“The approach to
development is
unbalanced, and there’s
a culture at stake.”
“Indigenous communities living in the
savannah in Mato Grosso [a state about
800 miles from Brasilia, the capital] are
up against a booming agricultural export
business,” Libman explains. Most of that
business is related to soybean exports,
and the consequent roads, railroads,
and trucking routes being built in and
around areas that indigenous people
have historically claimed. One road that’s
in development will abut the spiritual
center of one indigenous group—the
home of its origin story.
As one indigenous leader argued in a
letter to the UN:

“The savannah is the source of our strength. Agribusiness doesn’t just destroy the forest that
surrounds our territories. It pollutes the rivers where we perform our rituals, that we bathe in, and
the water we drink. It contaminates the air. Because of this, agribusiness is destroying our dreams,
the source of our spirituality, and our future. Agribusiness contaminates the animals we eat and the
game that is essential for our rituals. Without game, we cannot perform our wedding ceremonies.
Agribusiness unbalances the world, the savannah, and threatens the very existence of our people.”
In 2019, before the Geneva trip, the HRIPC, working with indigenous community leaders,
submitted a communication to the UN treaty body outlining serious violations of indigenous
people’s rights to lands, natural resources, religion, and culture. The document also expressed
concerns about the Brazilian government’s commitment to consulting with indigenous groups about
the infrastructure projects—as evidenced by the weakening of FUNAI, the Brazilian government
authority responsible for protecting the rights of indigenous peoples.
“When the Brazilian government presents its infrastructure plans, building roads and railroad
lines, there’s never been an opportunity to reach a consensus,” Friederichs says. “When I talk about
the survival of the indigenous peoples of Mato Grosso, it’s cultural, physical, and spiritual. The land
is being destroyed where people gather and hunt; the environment is polluted; and the spiritual and
cultural life becomes impossible to sustain.”
This May, a month after the Clinic’s advocacy in Geneva, the UN treaty body issued a letter to
the Brazilian government calling on it to suspend the infrastructure projects in Matto Grosso until it
has properly consulted with the affected indigenous communities and obtained their free, prior, and
informed consent.
The Bolsonaro administration may not heed the letter’s findings, but it’s important to put the
government on notice that they’re being watched, Friederichs says.
“I understand that there are benefits for agribusiness exporters,” Libman adds, “but the indigenous
people aren’t negotiating on a level playing field.” Forests are clear-cut at a time of massive fires in the
Amazon; agricultural runoff is contaminating waterways; and plant and animal life is being destroyed,
she says. “The approach to development is unbalanced, and there’s a culture at stake.” Through her
Suffolk Law clinic experience, Libman is lending her voice to help balance the scales.
[Editor’s note: Nicole Friederichs JD’03, Director of the Human Rights and Indigenous Peoples Clinic, asked that the indigenous
group, indigenous leader, and United Nations body not be named to protect the clinic’s clients from possible retaliation.]

15

SUFFOLK LAW
ALUMNI MAGAZINE
Winter 2020

IMPACTFUL
ALUMNI
By
Jon Gorey
Photography by
Associated Press

JOSH KOSKOFF
TAKES ON THE

AR-15
It’s an uphill battle, he says, but worth the fight

O

16

SUFFOLK LAW
ALUMNI MAGAZINE
Winter 2020

ne advertisement for the AR-15 Bushmaster rifle
used to kill 20 first-graders and six educators at Sandy
Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., read:
“Consider your man card re-issued.” Another said: “Forces of
opposition, bow down.”
In a case that’s earning much media attention and, predictably,
generating both political polarization and emotional intensity,
attorney Josh Koskoff JD’94 is leading a lawsuit against
Remington, the manufacturer of the Bushmaster.
Filed on behalf of some of the Newtown victims’ families, the
suit argues that Remington irresponsibly marketed its weapon
to at-risk young men. The case received an important green light
in November when the U.S. Supreme Court rejected an appeal
from Remington arguing that a 2005 federal law shielded it
from liability. The case will now be sent back to the trial court in
Connecticut and proceed with the discovery process.
Koskoff wanted to help after talking to a family friend of slain
school teacher Vicki Soto, though he knew next to nothing
about gun cases at the time. “The Sandy Hook case really found
me, I didn’t find it,” he says. The case would later prove to be a
tipping point in his legal career, which had previously centered
mostly on medical malpractice.
“In the Sandy Hook case you have families whose lives have
been turned upside down,” he says. “They’re facing huge legal
challenges, but if they can get out of bed in the morning after
losing a child, then we have an obligation to help. I find it to be
a core motivating belief that I have about how the law should
be used.”

Koskoff is also representing Sandy Hook families in a
defamation suit against Alex Jones, the far-right conspiracy
theorist who for years insisted the all-too-real horror in
Newtown was a “giant hoax.” Those continual false claims took
root, leading to sustained harassment, stalking, and even death
threats against the already grieving parents.
In another case, Koskoff is suing eight different gunmakers
on behalf of a victim of the 2017 Las Vegas mass shooting that
left 58 concertgoers dead and more than 500 injured. That
shooter had an arsenal of guns stockpiled, but relied entirely
on a dozen AR-15s from eight manufacturers to carry out the
attack, according to Koskoff. “And they were all equipped with
a bump stock,” he adds, a simple modification that can make a
semi-automatic rifle fire continuously like a machine gun.
Koskoff’s suit alleges that “with a reckless lack of regard
for public safety, defendant manufacturers courted buyers by
advertising their AR-15s as military weapons and signaling
the weapon’s ability to be simply modified.” In response, the
manufacturers are likely to argue that the gun is for hunting,
self-protection, and target practice and that under current law
manufacturers can’t be held liable for a gun’s illegal misuse.

A LAW SHIELDING GUN MANUFACTURERS
The manufacturers have a strong defense. That’s partly
because in 2005, Congress passed the Protection of Lawful
Commerce in Arms Act (PLCAA), a law intended to shield
gun manufacturers from blame when their weapons are used in
a crime. Among other arguments, proponents of the PLCAA

“In the Sandy
Hook case you
have families
whose lives have
been turned
upside down,”
he says. “They’re
facing huge legal
challenges, but if
they can get out of
bed in the morning
after losing a child,
then we have an
obligation to help.
I find it to be a
core motivating
belief that I have
about how the law
should be used.”

argued that it was necessary to protect the
gun industry from the high costs incurred in
defending unfounded lawsuits.
Koskoff was stunned to learn about
the PLCAA, and one thing he hopes to
accomplish by filing these suits, he says, is
to “shatter the perception” among lawyers,
judges, and the firearms industry itself that
gunmakers can’t be held accountable for
reckless behavior.
The law has some exceptions. According to
the New York Times, “[t]he [PLCAA] law does
allow for [lawsuits] for sale and marketing
practices that violate state or federal laws and
instances of so-called negligent entrustment,
in which a gun is carelessly given or sold to a
person posing a high risk of using it.”
Koskoff seeks to broaden the courts’
understanding of those exceptions, which
he believes will have a positive effect. “[The
law] gives the industry the sense that there’s
no conduct too reckless or too unethical
or amoral, that they can just do anything
regardless of public safety because they can’t
get sued,” he says. “Whether that’s true or not,
the perception is dangerous.”

THE LAW AS EQUALIZER
Long before Josh Koskoff enrolled at
Suffolk Law, he was drawn to a vision of the law
shaped by his father and grandfather—trial
lawyers in Connecticut who once represented
the Black Panthers in New Haven and helped
integrate the Bridgeport Police Department
during the Civil Rights era.
“They saw the role of the law, in its most
idealistic and important way, as the institution
that protects individuals from corporate or
government abuses, and really as the great
equalizer,” Koskoff says. “They seemed to be
always on the side of the underdog. It seemed
to me an incredibly noble profession.”
Suffolk Law was a great fit for him, he adds.
He appreciated that there was a whole cohort

of students who found a way to work during
the day and succeed at law school at night,
as well as the school’s practical approach.
“Suffolk really encouraged you to go out and
participate as early as you could in going to
court and getting your sea legs under you as a
lawyer—feeling what it was like.”

THE FAMILY FIRM
When Koskoff joined the firm founded
by his grandfather, Theodore Koskoff, who
received an honorary JD from Suffolk in
1980, it took him some time to find his
footing as he worked alongside his father,
Michael Koskoff.
“I did feel early on a sense of total
inadequacy, like I was going to torpedo the
good family name,” Koskoff reflects. “It took
a long time, but over many years we became
more like colleagues at work who enjoyed
challenging each other and coming up with
different ideas for cases. But we didn’t work on
a lot of cases together.”
That changed after Koskoff’s father was
diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. The
prominent attorney passed away in April at
the age of 77, but before he did, he asked his
son to work with him on one last lawsuit.
“When he got sick, he wanted to make sure
the case was in good shape, and it was my
incredible honor to work with him on it,”
Koskoff says.
He hasn’t forgotten his father’s idealism
and belief in the promise of the law to
protect everyone.
“There’s definitely a perception that the law
is unfair, that it favors the rich and powerful,
that it’s weighted against minorities—and
that perception is not invalid,” he says. “But
any case I could handle that could change
that perception, that could give people more
confidence that the law exists for everybody
and not just a few people at the top, I’ll take
that chance.”

17

SUFFOLK LAW
ALUMNI MAGAZINE
Winter 2020

IMPACTFUL
ALUMNI
By
Seth Jones
Photography by
Kent Smith

HOOP DREAMS
COME TRUE FOR

DAVID
DUQUETTE
Team counsel for NBA’s Charlotte Hornets shares how he got there

I

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SUFFOLK LAW
ALUMNI MAGAZINE
Winter 2020

t was a 1-in-1,000 shot, but David Duquette JD/
MBA’10 was willing to take it—again and again—
until he succeeded.
“My first three years in Boston, I probably wrote a
couple hundred letters and sent them out to various
NBA teams, just trying to make contact and get my
foot in the door,” Duquette says. “I wasn’t sure if I’d get
a break or not.”
Today, Duquette works as the director of basketball
strategy/team counsel for the NBA’s Charlotte
Hornets in North Carolina.
He has served in multiple roles for the Hornets
as his job has evolved and grown. Using his legal
background, his primary duties are player contracts
and acting as a liaison with the league office. But
Duquette also scouts both pro and college players and
does background research on players. Establishing the
Greensboro Swarm, the Hornets’ minor league team,
was another responsibility.
It’s a long way from Duquette’s unpaid internship
with the Minnesota Timberwolves. Over the years, he
had made a connection with longtime
NBA executive Rob Babcock (recently
deceased) of the Timberwolves. In
2009, Babcock called out of the blue
and asked Duquette, who was in his
first year at Suffolk Law, “How soon can
you be here?”
Duquette’s response was the right
one: “How soon do you need me?” The
answer: in three days.
“I said, ‘Sure, I’ll be there,’”
Duquette recalls. “This was the break
I was looking for. I picked up my
life and moved to Minnesota for the
summer.”

Duquette worked hard that summer and was offered a paid internship—
minimum wage—as the team’s basketball operations intern. He took classes
at the University of Minnesota as a visiting student and traveled back to
Suffolk to take three- and four-day intensive courses. After passing the bar,
Duquette was hired full-time by the Timberwolves as a basketball operations
assistant. In 2011, he accepted the same position with the Charlotte Hornets.
“For somebody who didn’t have any connection to this world, it’s a dream
come true,” he says. “The NBA is very much an apprenticeship kind of league.
Whether you played or came into the league some other way, most people
start at the bottom ... and once your foot is in the door, it’s up to you how high
you’re going to go.”
Duquette’s target was always the NBA. He interned with a sports agent
and also worked for the LPGA Tour, but professional basketball was his
No. 1 goal.
“For someone like myself who grew up idolizing Michael [Jordan] as a kid,
it’s pretty surreal for the last eight years to work for him,” Duquette says of
Michael Jordan, a six-time NBA champion, who also is principal owner of
the Hornets. “You hear that voice, it’s very iconic. He’s been awesome as an
owner; he’s admirable from a number of different perspectives.”
Looking back at his time at Suffolk, Duquette says his goal may have
seemed unlikely, but no one ever discouraged him from going for it. Suffolk
“positioned me perfectly. They gave me
the resources and the latitude to pursue
the passion,” he says. “Everyone was
always positive about me pursuing this,
always supportive.”
Now that he is living the basketball
life, Duquette, a married father of one,
says he wouldn’t change a thing about
his hoop dreams career.
“Most people go to law school and
they find the field that they enjoy ...
corporate law, tax law, you’re a litigator,”
Duquette says. “For me, the subject
matter is NBA players. Everything
about the NBA is enjoyable to me.”

“The NBA is very much
an apprenticeship kind
of league. Whether you
played or came into
the league some other
way, most people start
at the bottom.”

IMPACTFUL
ALUMNI
By
Katy Ibsen

THE CONNECTOR:

CARMEN
ARCE-BOWEN
One graduate’s quest to build a more inclusive Boston

M

entoring is cyclical. And in
Boston, it’s possible that no one
knows that more than Carmen
Arce-Bowen LLM’06.
Arce-Bowen serves as the chief operating
officer of The Partnership Inc., a nonprofit
organization dedicated to the development
of increased diversity in Boston businesses
and corporate America—which is a
simple way to describe the impact she
has made on Boston’s multicultural and
underrepresented communities.
“Boston is a majority-minority city, and
we know that diversity spikes innovation,
and we know that we’re better off when
we are together,” she says, highlighting the
importance of a more diverse workforce,
especially in leadership positions. With the
U.S. Census Bureau estimating that people
of color in the United States will outnumber
Caucasians by 2042, corporate leadership
that reflects the actual population is vital to
business success, she argues.
In her role as COO, Arce-Bowen manages
finances, events, program content, and
recruitment for The Partnership’s leadership
development programs. The organization was
founded in 1987 to focus on the advancement
of African Americans in corporate Boston, an
issue that has long been a challenge for the city
and its business community. Over time, The
Partnership has evolved to focus on helping a
broad range of organizations build racially and
ethnically diverse leadership pipelines while
helping multicultural professionals rise and
thrive in the workforce.

Arce-Bowen is emerging as an important
voice among a new generation of leaders
in Boston who are focused on increasing
opportunities for professionals of color.
Arce-Bowen mentors a diverse group of
people, helping them tap into networks and
find opportunities to work with corporations,
nonprofits, political organizations, and, most
importantly, the communities they represent.
“That is something that in many ways
comes naturally to me—that’s what other
people have done for me,” she says.
Elizabeth Tran, director of constituent
affairs at the Massachusetts State Senate, met
Arce-Bowen through a career mentoring
program. Tran says Arce-Bowen helped her
consider opportunities ranging from applying
to the Peace Corps to exploring graduate
programs and attending Asian American
political advocacy events.
“The incredible characteristic of Carmen
as a mentor is that she listens to my goals
and then digs into her expansive network to
connect me with helpful people and resources
that can provide guidance and information,”
Tran says. “I am incredibly fortunate to have
her as my career mentor.”
In the arc of her own career, Arce-Bowen
notes the influence of Carol Fulp, former
president of The Partnership. “Carol has been
the most impactful mentor I have had in my
career. She is a person who deeply cares about
developing the next generation of leaders in
our community,” she says.
Fulp, who received an honorary doctorate
from Suffolk’s Sawyer Business School in

2017, is now CEO of her own diversity consultancy.
Fulp explains that Arce-Bowen reflects the next
generation of leaders in Boston. “She is diverse,
energetic, innovative, and global in her thinking.
She’s incredibly committed, and brings a broad
perspective,” says Fulp of Arce-Bowen.
When Arce-Bowen moved to the U.S. from
Mexico in 2005, she struggled at first to understand
the challenges and racial disparities facing American
communities of color. “We talk about class more
than about race,” she says of her native land. “When
I came here, I didn’t have all these thoughts about
race—or preconceptions … When [my peers]
faced a challenge, at the beginning I asked them,
‘Why is that happening?’” And she wondered,
would she start to have similar experiences?
She saw race issues through a slightly different
lens, and that view has ultimately become an
advantage.
“I almost feel like I’m able to see race relations
from the outside and then from inside,” she says.
That ability to be both outsider and insider,
sometimes simultaneously, may stem from the
communities she has embraced over the years.
There’s her family in Mazatlán, Mexico; her academic
community in Guadalajara, Mexico, where she
earned her LLB at Universidad Panamericana
and met her now-husband, James Bowen JD’06;
her Suffolk Law community; and the professional
communities she developed as director of personnel
and administration for Massachusetts Governor
Deval Patrick.
Arce-Bowen has long felt a pull toward
community building, which led her toward
nonprofit service and work with a number of social
justice and grassroots organizations. Suffolk Law’s
deep roots in local communities were an important
draw for her, she says.
Arce-Bowen says it’s never too early to start setting
goals and building a network.
She’s determined that her 9-year-old daughter,
Pilar, will understand that the sky isn’t even a limit.
As a family, they are exploring Pilar’s current dream
job: space researcher.
“I just want her to know that anything that she
wants is possible as long as she really wants it. And
she can always find a way to make those hopes and
those dreams come true,” Arce-Bowen says.
And you’re never too young to start making your
way. When Pilar gripes about only being 9, her
mother responds, “Kid, I want you to start learning
how to tap into your own network!”

Photography by
Mark Wilson

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SUFFOLK LAW
ALUMNI MAGAZINE
Winter 2020

IMPACTFUL
ALUMNI
By
Stephanie
Schorow
Photography by
Mark Wilson

B. STEPHANIE SIEGMANN
IS TENACIOUS

AGAINST
TERRORISM
The first female chief of the National Security Unit of the Massachusetts U.S. Attorney’s Office opens up

P

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ALUMNI MAGAZINE
Winter 2020

oliticians talk about fighting terrorism, but B.
Stephanie Siegmann JD’97 has looked dangerous
extremists square in the eyes and figured out how to
get them behind bars.
One of the nation’s top anti-terrorism prosecutors, she
serves as the chief of the National Security Unit of the
Massachusetts U.S. Attorney’s Office, the first woman to serve
in the prestigious position.
“Democracy is under attack by these individuals,” says
Siegmann, with an edge to her voice. “I don’t know how long
that will continue. But this does shake you and make you want
to do something positive to help prevent future attacks.”
In an interview, Siegmann overflows with enthusiasm;
words pour out of her in gusts. When asked about this
intensity, she says, “I think it all comes from my background. I
had to fight so hard to get here, and it was always a struggle. So
I look at each day as a new opportunity. What can I do today?”
Siegmann’s desire to be a lawyer dates to her youth growing
up in New Jersey. When she was only 10 months old, her
father, an enlisted service member in the Air Force, was killed
by a drunk driver. Her mother told her details of her father’s
death when she was 12 years old and that he had hoped to
become a lawyer. Stephanie resolved to become a lawyer to
honor his memory. Her path would not be easy.
Her mother and stepfather were not well off, and no one
in her family had attended college. Three months before she
entered Boston University as a freshman, her stepfather lost
his job. By Siegmann’s sophomore year, she was deep in debt
and was asked to leave the university.
She began working full time as a paralegal and was admitted
into the University of Massachusetts Boston in 1991. In her
senior year, she came home to find her roommate gone and
learned that she had stolen all the money Siegmann had given
her for rent. Just three months before graduation, she owed
$3,000 and faced eviction. Siegmann marshaled her energy,

asked the university for help getting a loan, and graduated on time in May 1994,
heading straight to law school.
“Suffolk opened up a whole new world for me,” she says. She was selected for the
Suffolk University Law Review and graduated magna cum laude. She then served as
a lieutenant in the Judge Advocate General’s Corps in the U.S. Navy for three years,
prosecuting cases ranging from murder to rape to child abuse.
After joining the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the District of Massachusetts as an
assistant U.S. attorney in 2003, she quickly became known for her tenacity. She
didn’t waste time jockeying for prominent cases—instead she took on cases in
areas like export control. It wasn’t “sexy,” but she told herself, “I have to work harder
than anybody else to prove myself.”
Her attitude paid off. Siegmann went on to prosecute numerous high-profile
domestic and international terrorism cases, including the Boston Marathon
bombing obstruction case and
cases of conspiracy to provide
material support to ISIS and
“Don’t waste your time
al Qaeda. She also successfully
fighting over high-profile
prosecuted a case involving
a Chinese citizen who ran a
cases; you can make your
network supplying material to
mark in taking on something
Iran’s nuclear weapons program.
In June 2018, she was named
that maybe no one else has
chief of the National Security
done but where you can
Unit, the unit in which she has
worked since 2004.
prove yourself.”
Former Acting U.S. Attorney
William “Bill” Weinreb served
as the lead prosecutor on United
States v. Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and supervised Siegmann’s work. He calls her one of
the country’s most experienced national security prosecutors and a leading expert
in cases involving the illegal export of controlled technology.
“She has also been a leader in helping DOJ, other government agencies, and
private industry work together to maximize the effectiveness of government
enforcement efforts,” he says. “She is a star in the courtroom, in the classroom, and
in the conference room—she does it all.”

THOUGHT
LEADERS
WHY MASSACHUSETTS
SHOULD PASS THE

Commentary by
Gabe Teninbaum,
Professor and
Director of the
Legal Innovation
& Technology
Institute

FACIAL
RECOGNITION
MORATORIUM
ACT

M

assachusetts recently marked the 150th anniversary of one of the most damaging
errors in scientific history. In 1868, a French scientist, Étienne Léopold Trouvelot,
imported a new breed of caterpillar to the state. He knew that American silk-spinning
caterpillars were susceptible to disease, so he hoped to hybridize them with new imports. In
actuality, he imported gypsy moths. The moths promptly escaped, spread, and became an
environmental scourge. Now, they defoliate 1 million acres of American forest a year, costing
$868 million.
As a professor focused on teaching law students how to deploy new technologies, I have seen
the digital equivalent of gypsy moths unleashed at a scale unimaginable in the 19th century. The
proliferation of face and biometric recognition technologies are particularly concerning. These
tools secretly record us when we’re in public, and then store our information in databases to make
us instantly recognizable by our voice, retinas, face, or gait. Police in Massachusetts are currently
using biometric recognition technology—scanning photos in the Registry of Motor Vehicles’
database to search for suspects in criminal investigations, for instance—without any legislative
approval or judicial oversight.
Biometric recognition tools are not only in use here. They have
also been used in China, where the government deploys them to
efficiently round up religious minorities and police petty crimes
like jaywalking. If you think that sort of abuse is unimaginable in
America, consider the recent revelation that federal authorities
distributed a secret list of activists, lawyers, and reporters to stop
for added scrutiny at the border because of their criticism of the
current administration’s policies.
In addition to raising privacy concerns, these tools can also be
inaccurate. In one recent test, Amazon’s facial recognition tool falsely
identified 28 members of Congress. It also disproportionately
misidentified people of color, tagging them as people who had been
arrested for a crime. The tools not only steal our anonymity—they
may tell police we are someone we are not.
Even tech companies that stand to profit are sounding the
alarm. Google recently announced it would not release a general face surveillance product
“before working through the important technology and policy questions.” Microsoft’s president
published a blog post calling for the government to step in and regulate the technology.
We should heed these warnings, before the situation spirals out of control. Thankfully,
lawmakers in Massachusetts have introduced a bill, known as the Face Surveillance Moratorium
Act, that recognizes the dangers unregulated biometric surveillance poses to our basic rights and
freedoms. The bill says that, before we use these tools, we need to debate how, when, and why
they’re to be used, and decide who will have oversight to prevent abuse. Notably, the act doesn’t
permanently ban the technology. Instead, it follows the path recommended by the tech giants

Photograph Shutterstock

“We
should
heed these
warnings,
before the
situation
spirals out
of control.”

who created them: Consider their use carefully,
and legislate accordingly.
The proper balance between authority and
privacy is personal for me, not only because I
care about democracy, but also because of my
own background in law enforcement.
As a young man, I served as an operations
support technician in the U.S. Secret Service,
spanning the period before and after 9/11.
Protecting our highest officials and supporting
criminal investigations was among the highest
honors in my life. But more than a decade after
returning my badge and gun, I received an
alarming letter from the federal government. It
said the government had been hacked by foreign
agents, and I was one of millions of federal
employees whose security forms had been
stolen. A foreign, hostile government had gotten
our complete files, including dozens of pages
detailing employees’ backgrounds, beliefs, family
and friendships, and financial information.
My file was supposedly kept in a “secure”
computer database. Reality proved otherwise.
In the end, the Chinese government got my
secrets and Uncle Sam gave me five years of
free credit monitoring for my trouble. I wish
our government had paused to analyze the
safeguards that were supposed to have kept my
confidential data safe.
From gypsy moths to privacy-invading
technologies, the butterfly effect can morph a
tiny ripple into a hugely destructive force. In the
case of face recognition software, we still have
time to pause, and we should do so by passing
the Face Surveillance Moratorium Act.
This essay was originally published on Cognoscenti, wbur.
org’s ideas and opinion page. It was reposted with permission.
You can read the original piece at www.wbur.org/cognoscenti.

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Winter 2020

THOUGHT
LEADERS
Story by
Michael Fisch
Photography by
Michael J. Clarke

Professor David Yamada

LEADING AT THE INTERSECTION OF

WELL-BEING AND THE LAW
Suffolk Law faculty share insights on workplace bullying legislation,
positive psychology, and a tool for mindful lawyering

P

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Winter 2020

eriodic scientific surveys conducted
by the Workplace Bullying Institute
estimate that one-third of America’s
workers have been a target of workplace
bullying at some point during their careers—
but unlike most countries in Europe and
South America, the U.S. lacks laws to address
the phenomenon.
In Massachusetts, 109 of the state’s 200
legislators have co-sponsored the Healthy
Workplace Bill, written by Professor David
Yamada, director of the Institute. The
legislation gives severely bullied workers a
cause of action and creates legal incentives
for employers to prevent and respond to
workplace bullying.
Yamada’s legislation is just one of many
reasons he received the Bruce Winick Award

for outstanding contributions to the field of
therapeutic jurisprudence this past summer at
the International Congress on Law and Mental
Health in Rome. Therapeutic jurisprudence
analyzes whether laws and legal systems
promote or detract from the advancement of
psychological well-being and human dignity.
The field uses research and insights to
produce practical legal and policy outcomes,
Yamada says: ”Look at bureaucratic forms,
for example. Do they lead to resolution
of a problem or promote conflict? One
therapeutic jurisprudence study looks at
ways to improve a state’s marital dissolution
form and revises it to promote a peaceful and
less stressful resolution.”
The workplace bullying bill’s language is
modeled on the law of sexual harassment

under Title VII and doesn’t make it overly easy
to sue. “I set the bar higher for recovery—you
need to show intent to harm,” Yamada says.
“We need to open this door carefully.”
One of Yamada’s former students,
Massachusetts
State
Representative
Danielle Gregoire JD’06, says that the law
professor’s policy efforts have had a ripple
effect across the country: “It was at his
urging that I co-sponsored his legislation
to ban workplace bullying, and I’m happy
to continue our work together to see this
bill become law so we can better protect
Bay State employees.”
The legislation is a good example of
the practical nature of the therapeutic
jurisprudence movement, Yamada says:
“There’s not a lot of pretension in the field.”

THOUGHT
LEADERS

MORE ON WELL-BEING
AND THE LAW

THINK LIKE A LAWYER—
BUT NOT AT YOUR OWN EXPENSE

MINDFUL, FOCUSED—AND A LAW STUDENT
Mindful Lawyering: The Key to Creative Problem
Solving

Professors Kathleen Elliott Vinson JD’95,
Samantha Alexis Moppett JD’95, and Shailini
Jandial George
Professors Vinson, Moppett, and George wrote
their book, Mindful Lawyering: The Key to Creative
Problem Solving, as a practical tool to help law students
and attorneys develop focus and creative approaches to
solving problems—in a climate dominated by mobile
phones, constant interruptions, and stressful deadlines.
Lessons from the book are applied as part of the Law
School’s Wellness Wednesdays program, which Vinson
pioneered. The program teaches students strategies to
cope with stress, enhance focus, develop healthy habits,
and increase community.

Professor Lisle Baker
“Integrating Positive Psychology Into Legal
Education”
48 Southwestern Law Review 295 (2019)
“Positive psychology” may sound like a phrase from a
sunny self-help book, but it’s actually the scientific study
of well-being. And it can be used to help law students
have a healthier educational experience and outlook.
Since 2017, Professor Lisle Baker has led a national
conference at the Law School, “Integrating Positive
Psychology Into Legal Education.” Baker earned a
master’s degree in the discipline from the University of
Pennsylvania in 2016.
So how might the field’s work help law students?
Baker’s Southwestern Law Review article explores ideas
offered by positive psychology conference participants,
including an insight shared by psychologist Dr. Larry
Richard, an expert on lawyer behavior.
Richard argued that attorneys’ skepticism, which
can be so helpful in court, may not be as helpful at
home or, even worse, counterproductive if turned
inward excessively. Richard reported that skepticism is
a characteristic of 90% of the attorneys he has surveyed
over the years, far higher than the norm for other
occupational groups.
Based on that insight, professors and support staff
might remind law students that they are being trained
to be professional skeptics and to use that particular tool
consciously, when it’s specifically needed.
Making use of insights from applied positive
psychology is important at Suffolk, which has signed on
to the American Bar Association’s Well-Being Pledge, a
national effort to reduce the levels of stress and substance
abuse in the legal profession. The pledge has been
endorsed by many leading law firms as well as the Office
of the Massachusetts Attorney General.

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ALUMNI MAGAZINE
Winter 2020

THOUGHT
LEADERS
By
Michael Fisch
Photography by
Ben Gebo

Associate Dean Leah
Chan Grinvald

TOUGH GIG:
DOES TRADEMARK LAW NEED A MAKEOVER?
Associate Dean Leah Chan Grinvald on rethinking
trademark law for the “gig economy”
In a new world where millions work for “gig economy” platforms like Uber and food-delivery service
DoorDash, the courts are trying to sort out who’s an employee and who’s a contractor. However, another
critical digital commerce question is getting less attention: Does the structure of these platforms require
a new set of trademark laws?
Associate Dean and Intellectual Property Professor Leah Chan Grinvald addresses this question in
“Platform Law and the Brand Enterprise” (Berkeley Technology Law Journal, Vol. 32, 2018, with Professor
Sonia Katyal). We spoke with Grinvald this fall.
WHAT PROBLEM DOES YOUR ARTICLE ADDRESS?

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Winter 2020

In our paper, Sonia and I refer to platforms like Airbnb, Etsy, and Uber as “macrobrands.” These sites
host a bunch of smaller businesses that we call “microbrands”—the people driving for Uber or renting
out their homes on Airbnb, for example.
Many companies are sending the macrobrands takedown notices, alleging trademark violations
on the part of individual gig workers—the microbrands. For example, Airbnb might receive a notice
from Marriott to take down a listing by someone with the last name of Marriott who is hosting their
room or house on the platform. Those allegations are frequently unsupported by the facts; but
because there’s no efficient or economical legal process available to assess and challenge allegations, the
hosts—the macrobrands—honor the takedown requests.
Macrobrands won’t be able to survive if they’re regularly forced to take down the pages of the
small businesses that are the heart of their enterprises. And gig economy workers find their lives
turned upside down.
CAN YOU GIVE US AN EXAMPLE OF HOW THIS PLAYS OUT IN THE REAL WORLD?

One example involves an artist who was selling Frida Kahlo dolls on Etsy. The Frida Kahlo
Corporation sent a takedown notice. Etsy complied, even though the case is extremely complex and
it’s not clear at all that the Kahlo estate actually has the rights to the trademark. And if they do have
rights, it’s still not clear that the Kahlo trademark has been infringed by this artist. Etsy’s position is that
current trademark law forces them to take down their users’ sites or face legal challenges, possibly even
monetary damages.

ARE THE MACROBRANDS TRYING
TO CHANGE TRADEMARK LAW?

Yes. Etsy teamed up with Foursquare,
Kickstarter, Meetup, and Shapeways
to ask the government for a change
in trademark law that would provide
a new set of legal protections for
macrobrands—similar to the existing
rules in copyright law.
One of the macrobrands looked at all
of the takedown requests it had received
in a year and argued that a large majority
of those requests were marginal. The
macrobrand nevertheless felt compelled
to comply because it didn’t have the
resources to fight so many requests.
The current system, essentially
automatic takedown on request,
regardless of validity, isn’t fair—and it’s
not economically sustainable. It places
macrobrands in a situation where they’re
working against their own business
model and often ignoring the important
goals of trademark laws. One of those
goals is to balance a trademark owner’s
rights with the individual right to satirize
and make political statements, a careful
balance that is ignored when platforms
don’t fight back.
Our paper lays out a set of
recommendations for changes in the
law that we think would help level the
playing field for microbrands, protect
free speech, and still protect trademark
holders.

GIVING
BACK
Law school and three jobs

Global Citizen

PAYS IT
FORWARD
Marie-Louise Skafte
credits former dean with
academic opportunity

Dean’s Cabinet member Marie-Louise
Skafte JD’96 has travelled the world
during her notable legal career, but she
almost didn’t make it through law school.
At a moment when she feared she would
be unable to continue to pay for her legal
studies because of the unavailability of
financial aid for international students
at the time, then-dean Paul Sugarman
HLLD’89 helped Skafte secure a trustee’s
loan. His kindness made all the difference
in keeping Skafte’s dreams of her legal
career alive, she says. And like so many
Suffolk Law alumni, she took advantage
of the opportunity.

Global citizen and lawyer

If you sketch out the course of Skafte’s
life and career, you’re covering a lot of
territory. Places she has lived include
Vancouver (twice); Taulov, Denmark,
where she spoke both Danish and
English; Toronto; Koko Kai, Hawaii;
Waterloo, Ontario; Ithaca, N.Y.; Boston;
San Francisco; and Fort Lauderdale,
punctuated by regular travels to London
and various cities across Europe, Asia, the
Middle East, South America, and Africa.

Over the years, Skafte has worked as general
counsel and corporate secretary for DHL
Canada (now Deutsche Post DHL – Canada)
as well as general counsel and head of human
resources and corporate compliance for Cronos
Limited, a leading global marine container
leasing company. At Cronos, she led operations
for 19 countries and was appointed head of
office in the U.S. She now runs her own global
consulting firm and enjoys traveling so much
that she is in the final stages of obtaining a
commercial pilot’s license.
Skafte’s work in international logistics—
vastly simplified, getting products from one
country to some other far-flung spot—brought
her to meetings with indigenous peoples on
their sacred lands. One pro bono trip led a group
of South Africans to show their gratitude by
breaking into local gospel songs. But the most
unusual gathering, she says, was at the famed
Blue Lagoon, a geothermal spa in southwestern
Iceland, during the dark winter months.
“We met with our clients in the afternoon,
but it was already pitch black, except for a super
bright moon. I can still see it: There was steam
coming up from the water. We were in this
caravan type situation, walking together in the
darkness, in our swimsuits.”

Her time at Suffolk Law was far more
modest. To stay afloat, Skafte worked three
jobs, including stints as an intern at Massport,
where she later took a full-time position as the
airport business office’s first attorney. Her office
building was right on the tarmac, she says. “I
remember taking down some photo frames
and there were huge black outlines on the wall
around the frames—and then realizing that it
was jet exhaust.”
Air quality aside, she adds, the Massport
jobs were great building blocks for her;
they taught her about the intersection of
government, logistics, and business. Since
she continued working a part-time side job
as a flight attendant (she started after her
first year in law school), her office’s location
at the airport was helpful. It was easy to
trade her work clothes for her flight uniform.
Other jobs in law school included modeling,
working in an Italian restaurant handling
take-out orders, and serving as a legal intern
to the general counsel at a restaurant chain.
Given her strenuous schedule, getting
through law school was itself a logistical
challenge, but Skafte says she appreciated the
pragmatic nature of her Suffolk Law education.
“It prepared me well,” she says. “The Legal
Practice Skills class taught us how to write briefs
and memos in a way that was so relatable. When
I got to Massport and the deputy GC gave me
my first assignment and said, ‘Can you brief me
on that?,’ I was ready.”

By
Michael Fisch
Photograph
courtesy of
Marie-Louise
Skafte

Paying it forward

Now Skafte wants to pay it forward. She has
created a $100,000 scholarship for Suffolk Law
students—with first preference for students
who have international backgrounds and are
struggling, as she did, to keep up with tuition.
One reason for the scholarship is her
appreciation for Suffolk Law students. She recalls
how welcoming her classmates were: “They knew
that I was coming from Canada and didn’t know
much about Boston, and I was just blown away by
the embracing nature of the students.”
Skafte also wants to show the kind of
generosity that Suffolk Law showed to her
when she needed it the most. She recently
reconnected with former dean Paul Sugarman
and told him that the loan he arranged and the
encouragement he gave “changed the course of
my career and my life.”

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ALUMNI MAGAZINE
Winter 2020

GIVING
BACK
By
Michael Fisch
Photography by
Michael J. Clarke

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ALUMNI MAGAZINE
Winter 2020

Mark Sullivan JD’79

GIVING
BACK

INNOVATION
ECONOMY
Suffolk Leader Helps Students Navigate the

Trustee Mark Sullivan’s $250,000 gift supports
education at the nexus of business and IP

When audio giant Bose Corporation introduces
a new product, says the company’s retired chief legal
officer, Mark Sullivan JD’79, engineers from some
competing companies have been known to take
the product apart and study it, piece by piece, to
understand the innovations housed within.
It’s not hyperbole on Sullivan’s part. Bose is known
for disruptive innovations, including noise-canceling
headphones, audio speakers designed for a specific
car’s cabin acoustics, and small, easy-to-hang cube
speakers that produce big-speaker sound. Sullivan
was tasked with protecting all that ingenuity.
In the late 1990s, he and his team wrested $8.2
million in patent infringement and legal damages
from JBL, a division of Harman Kardon. Over the
decades, Sullivan regularly faced the challenge of
knock-offs of patented Bose technologies.
In 2016, after 35 years at Bose, Sullivan retired
from that prestigious job and its directive “to protect
the lifeblood of the company, Bose technological
advancements, and to bring Bose’s innovative
products to customers throughout the world.”
His career at the company began with
accounting and tax law and then grew to include
a wide range of legal issues, including negotiating
manufacturing and sales deals with government
officials around the globe and a stream of patent
and counterfeiting issues.
While Sullivan is quick to deflect attention from
himself—and not in the “humble brag” manner
common these days—some quick research shows
his years at Bose were marked by growth, both for
those around him and for the company as a whole.
During his tenure, the company’s sales revenue
shot up from $50 million to approximately $4
billion. The legal department grew from a one-man

operation, Sullivan, to 28 lawyers, including six
based in Europe and Asia.

“They don’t have
to be engineers”

The evolution of his career helped him better
understand a critical nexus: IP law, business
investment, and innovation. Sullivan, who serves
as Vice Chair of Suffolk’s Board of Trustees, has
donated $250,000 to the Law School with an eye
toward creating a growing cohort of graduates who
are “comfortable and conversant in IP—and able to
speak intelligently with engineers, entrepreneurs,
and investors.”
“They don’t have to be engineers themselves,”
he adds, “but they do need some broad knowledge
about how innovations and trademarks are
protected.” That know-how will give students a
leg up in the job market. He says: “The need for
IP knowledge is spreading to so many areas of the
law, and it’s where a lot of the financial investment
is made.”

How to hinder
counterfeiting?

One example of the importance of protecting
IP, he says, was figuring out how to get Bose’s
products into the massive Asian market without a
huge loss from counterfeiting or crippling customs
duties. Over the years, it had become abundantly
clear that protecting innovations would be nearimpossible to manage in China.
The solution? Producing products at a new Bose
plant in Malaysia, a country known for its strong legal
system based on English common law and its low
tariff arrangement with the Chinese government.

A lesson from
Shark Tank

The value of IP knowledge, while
oversimplified, is underscored
on national television, Sullivan
says, on shows like Shark Tank, in
which famous investors bombard
entrepreneurs with questions about
patents and trademark protection.
The entrepreneurs quickly come
to understand that they generally
can’t get funding if their ideas can’t
be protected.
Suffolk is known for its sizable
footprint in patent law, and
Sullivan notes that the school’s
graduates make up 30% of the
top IP firm patent partners in
Greater Boston—and its IP
concentration and downtown
location make it ideal for law
students to land internships with
corporations and startups.
Sullivan, who grew up in
Roslindale, Mass., and attended
Boston public schools, says of
Suffolk: “It’s a school with a
working-class heart, great teachers,
and a unique, we’ll-get-throughthis-together camaraderie among
the students. I wouldn’t be where I
am today without my Suffolk legal
education.
“The school gave me the
opportunity to combine business
and legal skill, which was critical
to my career trajectory. I had great
faculty teaching me corporations,
agency, a host of tax law courses.
“But it’s been a long time since
I graduated,” Sullivan adds. “Each
decade brings its own wrinkle
in terms of the combination of
knowledge and experience you
need to succeed as a lawyer. For
many new graduates, they’ll need
to operate comfortably in the
innovation economy. Suffolk Law
can help them get ahead in an
economy that cycles new products
in months versus years.”

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GIVING
BACK

YOU WANT
TO GIVE,
but You’re Not Sure
How or When

Prof. Philip C. Kaplan on a little-known
tool: the CRUT

RECORDBREAKING
REUNION

Class of 1969 makes extraordinary
effort at 50-year mark

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The Suffolk Law Class of 1969 commemorated its 50th reunion with an outpouring of
generosity, raising a record-breaking $449,300 to fund scholarships for the next generation
of Suffolk Law alumni. On May 31, 2019, more than 75 members of the Class of ’69
gathered at Boston’s Omni Parker House for an evening of celebration and philanthropy.
Eight members of the Class of 1969—Hon. Carmine M. Bravo (ret.), Henry Kara,
Paul Kaufman, Rich Rubino, Lew Sassoon, Ted Schwartz, Jim Sokolove, and Mario
Zangari—led the exceptional fundraising efforts. Wanting to honor the world-class
legal education that enabled their professional careers, the Class of 1969 donors
committed to providing future law students with the same opportunity at Suffolk.
“The impact of this event has been extraordinary. It has renewed relationships and given
us a greater sense of love and commitment to the school, and an unprecedented sense of
pride in our past,” said Schwartz.
The Class of 1969 has a history of paying it forward. In honor of their 35th reunion,
members of the class raised $320,000 to establish their scholarship fund, a record no other
class has broken.
Law School Dean Andrew Perlman hosted a reception to honor the class members,
who were inducted into the Half-Century Club. To conclude the evening, two recent
recipients of the Class of 1969 Scholarship, Adam S. Rizk JD’13 and Tara Q. Higgins
JD’18, spoke of the impact of the support they had received.
“That freedom led me to broaden my horizons, hone my skills, and obtain two
clerkship opportunities with two incredible judges, one of whom is a fellow Suffolk
alum,” said Higgins.

Professor Philip C.
Kaplan JD’88

From left: John Gillooly, Michael J. Clarke, Gleb Budilovsky

Left to right: Anthony DeLuca JD’69; Alan Kraut JD’69;
J. David Damico JD’69; Jerry Scarano JD’69; Dean Andrew Perlman; Theodore
Schwartz JD’69; Paul Kaufman JD’69; and Hon. Carmine M. Bravo (ret.) JD’69

Suffolk Law Professor Philip C. Kaplan JD’88 had a
dilemma. He wanted his estate to provide for his loved
ones, but he also wondered how he could give back to
the law school he had graduated from and taught at
for decades. Could he help Suffolk Law students with
financial needs pay for school?
“My desire to provide for Suffolk Law seemed to
conflict with my desire to provide for my beneficiaries,”
he said. The solution: an estate-planning tool called a
CRUT—a charitable remainder unitrust.
The trust will provide income to his beneficiaries
for life and then pay the remaining principal to the
charities he’s chosen, including the Law School, he
explains. A significant portion of Kaplan’s estate will
one day fund a Suffolk Law scholarship in his name.
“Most people have never heard of a CRUT and
don’t know that the Law School will provide an
attorney at no charge to execute the agreement,” he
said. “I want people to know that they can provide for
their families and still give back to the Law School.
That conflict about how to do both can be resolved.
“I appreciate the opportunities the Law School has
given me,” he continued. “I appreciate the students
and want to help more students be able to afford law
school. I just needed a way to do both.”

GIVING
BACK
Kevin Fitzgerald
JD’82

Dean’s Group Launches for

RECENT
GRADS

Larry Nussbaum gives back by
joining the Dean’s Associates

Kevin Fitzgerald on Being

“AN UNFASHIONABLE
SUCCESS”

How do you take a Boston-based regional law firm with roughly 100 attorneys and turn it
into an Am Law 100 member with 650 lawyers, 16 offices spanning New York to Shanghai,
and more than half a billion dollars in gross revenue? The right person to ask is Dean’s Cabinet
member Kevin M. Fitzgerald JD’82, a key leader of Nixon Peabody for nearly 30 years.

Outside the circle

The Nixon Peabody growth story, Fitzgerald says, involves bringing together smart and
hard-working attorneys, most of them outside the small circle of the most prestigious firms in
the country. “In Britain, they call those firms the ‘Magic Circle,’” he says. “If you’re outside the
circle but still successful, you’re called an ‘unfashionable success,’ and that’s what we became.”

A nose for business

So how does one become an unfashionable success? The firm requires a relentless focus
on “occasionally unsexy but essential work: understanding the business climate and its
relationship to the legal economy; networking effectively; the nuts-and-bolts elements of
running a practice,” Fitzgerald notes. And two ever-present questions—“What’s our plan
for generating revenue? Where’s the business going to come from?” Those critical questions
have become part of the firm’s culture “and helped define an archetypal hire—a person with
both a fine legal mind and a nose for where business might come from.”

Hanging out with the justice

Fitzgerald, a partner at the firm and long-time chair of Nixon Peabody’s Policy Committee,
looks back fondly on his years at Suffolk Law, describing a camaraderie among students and
an overarching feeling that good things would happen, that “like so many of the good and
successful alumni, you could be successful too.”
That esprit de corps has long been a hallmark of the school. One of Fitzgerald’s many
examples: “I was in a class with Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court Justice Joseph Nolan,
and he would hang out after class and talk with us. I was excited to be found sufficiently
interesting for the justice—someone who was so wise and had accomplished so much in his
field—to stick around and have conversations and care about my responses.”
As to why he joined the Dean’s Cabinet, Fitzgerald says, “I wanted to go back to the people
and the places that helped me succeed and thank them. The successes I’ve had are directly a
function of the experience I had at the Law School.” He adds, “Suffolk Law is similar to Nixon
Peabody in a way, I suppose. Perhaps not in the Magic Circle of the most elite institutions, yet
no less an unfashionable success.”

The Law School recently launched a new
group, the Dean’s Associates, for alumni who
have graduated within the last 10 years and make
a financial commitment to the school of at least
$25,000, which can be satisfied over five years.
Group members support Law School initiatives
and serve as ambassadors of the school.
Founding member Larry Nussbaum JD’11,
a personal injury attorney and principal of
Nussbaum Law Group, says, “I committed to
joining the group because the Law School allowed
me to make a name for myself. I knew that once
I was able to have some success, I wanted to give
back to the school that allowed that to happen.”
Nussbaum recalls that his most memorable
courses at Suffolk covered real-world skills, such as
Professor Richard Pizzano BA’63, JD’66 offering
insights into how to handle clients and how to talk
to judges. And he learned personal lessons from
faculty such as Professor Karen Blum JD’74, who
taught his civil procedure course. “She taught me it
was okay to be myself and do it my own way, and I
still lean on her for advice,” he says.
Nussbaum says joining the Dean’s Associates
will allow members to build relationships with
successful lawyers in a variety of fields and to
nurture those relationships. The group will meet
with members of the Dean’s Cabinet annually.
For more information about this leadership
opportunity, please contact Kathy Tricca
BSBA’82, Director of the Summa Leadership
Giving Program, at ktricca@suffolk.edu.

Larry Nussbaum
JD’11

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“I Am Standing on

Shifting Sand”
Reflecting on the challenges of immigration law
By Shannon Dooling | Photography by Bryce Vickmark

It may be impossible to overstate the complexities of the immigration crisis playing out along the U.S. southern border.
There are the legalities associated with the apprehension of hundreds of thousands of migrants during a surge this year
that overwhelmed border facilities, along with changes in the asylum application process. The immigration system itself is
facing unprecedented pressures, and all of this is playing out in a politically polarized environment.

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We reached out to three alumnae in the field and the head of Suffolk Law’s immigration clinic to better understand these
challenges and how they view the future.

“It Changes You”
Maybe it was the 18-hour work days or the sight of mothers and
children clinging to one another in fear. It could have been the scent of
petrol wafting through the surrounding fracking fields or the scathing term
“baby jail” used by some to describe the facility. Whatever the reason,
the week Alexandra Peredo Carroll JD’06 volunteered at an immigrant
detention center in Dilley, Texas, in 2015 was an eye-opener, even for the
experienced immigration attorney.
That year, federal judge Dolly M. Gee found that the two detention
centers in Texas that the Obama administration opened failed to meet
minimum legal requirements for facilities housing children.
“Being witness to those conditions and the way people are treated in
our own country changes your perspective in life—it changes you,” Peredo
Carroll says.
She went to Texas with a group of immigration attorneys from the
New England Chapter of the American Immigration Lawyers Association
(AILA). Their days at the South Texas Family Residential Center, which
opened in 2014 to house women and children from Central America,
were spent at the detention facility working with clients. In the evenings,
attorneys prepped for bond hearings and “credible fear” interviews. During
the latter, individuals attempt to demonstrate that they have a credible fear
of returning to their home country.
“I think we all came out of that trip as different people. It was during
that week that I realized I wanted to work at a nonprofit doing this kind of
work,” Peredo Carroll says.
Three months later, she interviewed for a pro bono coordinating
attorney position with the Boston office of Kids in Need of Defense
(KIND), whose mission is to “represent unaccompanied immigrant and
refugee children in their deportation proceedings.” Her work for KIND
took her back to the border in 2018, to the Port Isabel Detention Center
in Harlingen, Texas, after the Trump administration’s decision to separate
migrant children from families who were detained as they attempted
to enter the U.S. illegally. The Trump administration contended that
separation would deter families from making the hazardous journey to the
United States.
“I thought that I would be prepared,” she says. “But what I witnessed,
working with mothers and fathers who had their children forcibly
separated from them, was truly the worst thing I have ever seen in my life.
Nothing in the world could have prepared me for that.”
As managing attorney for KIND’s Boston office, Peredo Carroll now
helps to train and mentor pro bono attorneys representing children in
removal proceedings. When asked if she’s hopeful about the future of
immigration law, she answers without hesitation: “Always hope. I do think
there’s always hope that the justice system will prevail.”
Alexandra Peredo
Carroll JD’06

Lawyers,
the Most
Powerful
Tool

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Rachel Self JD’04

Rachel Self JD’04, a legal analyst for Fox News and CNN,
has a private practice in Boston specializing in what she calls
“crimmigration,” the intersection of criminal law and immigration
law. She splits her time between criminal trial work, deportation
defense, adjustment of status cases, and other immigration matters.
Over the last 15 years, Self says she’s developed valuable relationships
with government officials and prides herself on maintaining them
during a tumultuous period for U.S. immigration policy.
Self’s approach to representing clients has changed from the past,
when she could recommend some clients fill out an application on
their own. Now, she says, that suggestion is almost laughable: “For
one thing, forms that used to be one or two pages are now in excess
of 20 pages, and in some cases there are 10 to 12 different forms that
need to be submitted.”
In February 2018, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services
(CIS), the Department of Homeland Security agency that
oversees adjustment of immigration status, changed its mission
statement, eliminating the phrase describing the U.S. as a “nation
of immigrants.” A new statement on the agency’s website says the
office focuses on administering “the nation’s lawful immigration
system.” This change was not lost on immigration advocates and
attorneys like Self.
L. Francis Cissna, then-director of CIS, described the revision
as a “simple, straightforward statement” that “clearly defines the
agency’s role in our country’s lawful immigration system and the
commitment we have to the American people.”
“Over the last two years, I’ve noticed a significant shift within
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, away from the spirit of
an agency that exists to provide a service,” Self says.
So Self throws everything she can at a case. That could mean
proactively sending additional application materials before they
have been requested, knowing that the process for something
like a green card or a visa application has become unpredictably
complicated.
“People are paying $2,000 in filing fees just to file applications
in many cases, and because the agency is so busy and has so many
new directives, there are needless errors being made, which are
completely avoidable, and devastating to the client,” she explains,
citing issues like paperwork that has already been submitted being
overlooked and materials being filed under incorrect names. Each
error or oversight can derail a process that already takes months or
years.
Self believes many of the career government employees tasked
with executing rapid-fire policy changes and new procedures are
just as confused and frustrated as the attorneys and clients who are
forced to adjust.
“I am standing on shifting sand, which means my feet are moving
and my advice could change next week,” she says.
Individuals who support more restrictive immigration policies
often argue that the immigration system is too easily exploited by
people who do not have legitimate claims to enter or remain in
the U.S. But that doesn’t mean one should ignore due process and
constitutional violations that result from policy changes, Self argues.
“The way we fight back,” she says, “is through the courts.”

Janeth Moreno LLM’09

“it makes
everything

worth it”
Janeth Moreno LLM’09 is empowering immigrant communities with the tools they need
to know their rights. The founder of Moreno Law in downtown Boston, she’s been in private
practice for three years. The bulk of her cases are asylum claims, a facet of immigration law
that has seen some of the most fundamental changes under the current administration.
In June 2018, then-Attorney General of the United States Jeff Sessions summarily reversed
the finding that women fleeing domestic violence from certain countries could qualify as
a special social class when applying for asylum in the U.S. Moreno says the announcement
immediately eliminated what many immigration attorneys considered a crucial adjudication
strategy.
In issuing the decision, Sessions wrote that asylum claims had expanded too broadly to
include victims of “private violence,” like domestic violence or gangs, so he narrowed the
type of asylum requests allowed.
“We’ve seen more restrictions, more restrictive venues. We don’t have the law on our side
right now,” Moreno says.
Perhaps no system has undergone more upheaval in the last three years than the asylum
application process. The Trump administration—citing a system of loopholes that it
contends are readily abused—has made it more difficult for people to apply for asylum,
instituting in January 2019 what it calls the Migrant Protection Protocols, also known as the
“remain in Mexico” policy. This new process requires people to wait at the southern border
for their chance to begin the asylum application process. A recent series of agreements struck
with the governments of Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador is part of a plan to prevent
Central American migrants from applying for asylum in the U.S. if they have not first done
so in another country.
These additional challenges mean Moreno needs to be sure her clients are even better
prepared. To that end, Moreno not only works with local consulates of Colombia, Mexico,
Guatemala, and El Salvador but also connects directly with immigrant communities in New
England, bringing “Know Your Rights” sessions into neighborhood churches. One lesson
shared at the sessions is that immigrants facing ICE agents have the right to remain silent and
to speak to a lawyer.
She says it is empowering to share information in an informal group setting, where
people feel safe: “I’ve seen the impact in the communities, it’s making a difference. It makes
everything worth it.”

Ragini Shah, Clinical
Professor of Law

The Path

Forward

Clinical Professor of Law Ragini Shah sees the potential for
students to play a critical role in the immigration system. Shah came
to Suffolk Law 11 years ago to found its Immigration Clinic, which
represents detained immigrants facing removal from the U.S. While
there’s always been a healthy student interest in the clinic, Shah is
seeing an increased interest from incoming students who say they
know immigration law is their path.
“Immigration policy has always been sort of harsh, particularly
for the population we serve at the clinic, but this administration has
brought it into the public discourse in a way that we’ve never seen,”
she says. And aspiring lawyers are paying attention. For better or
worse, the rhetoric out of Washington, D.C., is sparking dialogue.
Shah’s goal in the Immigration Clinic is to select cases for students
that help illuminate a larger issue—such as the factors that drive
migration from Central America and the human consequences of
something like the “remain in Mexico” policy.
She says keeping one’s bearings in a dramatically shifting landscape
can be challenging, so she wants to make sure her students can feel
grounded while they’re learning.
“I spend a lot more time reading decisions that are coming down,
not just for my own knowledge,” she says. “But I’m trying to give my
students a sense that, even though policy is rapidly changing, there are
legal anchors, so let’s find those anchors together.”
It’s easy to get discouraged working within a complicated system
when every day seems to bring changes. Yet Shah finds hope in the
community of lawyers sharing advice and banding together to file
class action lawsuits against the Department of Homeland Security
and other government agencies.
The biggest takeaway for Shah’s students often is the connection
with their clients. For Shah, it’s her connection to her students: “Being
a part of this moment and being a part of their journey to becoming
better lawyers, I feel privileged.”

Laury Lucien JD’15 is chief
legal strategist at Greenlight
Business Solutions.

THE

CANNABIS

CONUNDRUM
Graduates inspired by the
emerging industry push
on despite challenges
By Jon Gorey | Photography by Adam DeTour

I

t’s rare to see entrenched opposition to an
illegal substance collapse in real time. But
such is the case with marijuana, where the
foundations of criminalization are cracking
and giving way to legalization, one state at a time.
Rarer still is the opportunity to build an entirely
new industry and legal landscape from the rubble.
Several Suffolk Law alumni have embraced this
unusual opportunity to become trailblazers in
the nascent and legally complex recreational
cannabis industry in Massachusetts.
The changes came so quickly that none of them
could have anticipated their work in the field just
a few years ago.

A standout student at Suffolk Law, Laury Lucien
JD’15 spent her first two and a half years after law
school at the prestigious firm Holland & Knight,
where she focused on mergers and acquisitions as
well as corporate healthcare law. She worked closely
with regulators and municipal agencies, ideal training
for her next and unexpected career venture—into the
highly regulated cannabis industry.
Today, Lucien, who grew up in Haiti, is chief legal
strategist at Greenlight Business Solutions, one of six
organizations recently chosen by the Massachusetts
Cannabis Control Commission (CCC) to help train
cannabis entrepreneurs and professionals. She’s also a
founder of Major Bloom, a business that will cultivate,
manufacture, and sell cannabis.
Lucien sits on the Board of Advisors of the
Massachusetts Recreational Consumer Council,
which works to ensure a safe marijuana industry. And
she teaches Cannabis Law at Suffolk. She cites her
own law school education in preparing her to navigate
the challenges of the budding industry. “Cannabis
is multidisciplinary—you need to know banking
law, securities law, you need to know real estate and
municipal law, corporate law. You need all those
pieces,” she says.
You also need access to capital. That doesn’t
come easy in an industry selling a substance that
remains federally prohibited. The federal ban means
entrepreneurs don’t have access to traditional
commercial bank lending.
Lacking those resources, it can be nearly impossible
to start a cannabis company—something Lucien
learned firsthand. She had previously pursued a
medical-use cannabis license in Massachusetts, but
found the costs of entry out of reach. “You had to
prove that you had half a million dollars just to apply
for a license, so it basically kicked us out,” she says.
“We were having tremendous difficulty raising funds
as people who weren’t born into privilege.”
After striking out in medical marijuana, Lucien
didn’t give up. She joined forces with a core group of
partners, and in 2017, she founded Major Bloom. The
company focuses on the adult-use market and is 98%
owned by people of color.
LEVELING THE PLAYING FIELD
When Massachusetts legalized recreational cannabis
in 2016, the law included an economic empowerment
mandate and a first-in-the-nation social equity
component. The provisions are aimed at encouraging
“full participation” in the regulated cannabis industry by
minority-led businesses and people from communities

that have been disproportionately harmed by drug laws.
Social attitudes toward cannabis may be shifting,
but that hasn’t erased the damage done by decades
of discriminatory enforcement of marijuana laws,
says Suffolk Law Professor Emeritus Eric Blumenson.
“Research shows that white and black populations
use marijuana at about the same rate, but arrests,
convictions, and jail sentences have been many times
higher for black communities,” he says. The peak
of the decades-long war on drugs that packed U.S.
prisons saw 800,000 marijuana arrests annually. And
while many of those arrested for cannabis initially
dodged jail time, many others “ultimately went to jail
for inconsequential probation violations based on the
original conviction,” Blumenson says.
From his perch atop the state’s Cannabis Control
Commission, Shawn Collins sees a major policy
challenge in figuring out how to create an equitable
industry. Collins is executive director of the CCC, which
regulates the industry in the state. He’s also a double
Ram, who earned his BS in Government from Suffolk
University in 2008 and his JD from Suffolk Law in
2013. He went on to work on healthcare policy in state
government and became legislative and policy director
for State Treasurer Deb Goldberg, whose office oversees
alcohol policy. With the 2016 legalization ballot question
pending, it fell to Collins to figure out the most effective
and efficient ways to regulate cannabis.
“That’s really how I got introduced to cannabis
policy,” he said. The independent CCC was created,
and Collins was a natural for the executive director
post. When he started two years ago, there were no
desks, no phone numbers, no employees, not even an
address, mirroring the state of Massachusetts’ fledgling
cannabis industry. Today the Commission has grown
from just Collins to 60 employees, though they are still
in temporary office space. He’s spent much of his time
building the nuts and bolts of the agency, which has a
bureaucratic role as a licensing and regulatory agency.
But Collins adds that the cannabis statute, shaped
by the ballot question, also includes a mission—that
the industry, as it develops, should be inclusive and
represent the communities where facilities are located.
“It acknowledges, frankly, that while cannabis has
been illegal, both federally and locally, there are folks
that have been disproportionately harmed by the
enforcement of those laws,” Collins says.
Part of the Commission’s focus is on fostering
economic empowerment, including making it easier
for small operators and entrepreneurs to launch their
businesses. But Collins says the federal prohibition is
inhibiting those startups: “If you want to open up a bar

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Left to right:
Andrea Cabral
JD’86, CEO
of Ascend
Mass LLC and
MassGrow LLC;
and Shawn
Collins BS’08,
JD’13, executive
director of
Massachusetts’
Cannabis Control
Commission

or a restaurant or an ice cream shop, HVAC or plumbing,
or any small business—you name it—you can get a bank
loan, and you can present your business plan. You cannot
do that in the cannabis context.”
Andrea Cabral JD’86 says writing social equity into the
regulations was the right thing to do, but adds that the
execution still needs improvement. Cabral, former Suffolk
County sheriff and Massachusetts secretary of public
safety, now serves as chief executive of Ascend Mass LLC,
a subsidiary of the multi-state cannabis retail operator
Ascend Wellness. “You can write it down, and you can
make it the law, but the real issue in leveling the playing
field is access to capital,” Cabral says.
Despite a decades-long career in law enforcement,
Cabral says she never understood the villainizing of
cannabis. She sees alcohol as far more destructive. “A lot
has to do with their respective histories, but it just always
struck me as unfair,” she says.
In legalized cannabis, Cabral saw a once-in-a-lifetime
opportunity to enter an industry at the ground level.
“You can go through your entire life, through generations,
and never have a brand-new industry to consider being a
part of,” she said. “There aren’t that many industries, new
or otherwise, that present that kind of opportunity for
women or a person of color that this one presents.”
Still, like Lucien, Cabral adds that it is nearly impossible
to start a cannabis company without the help of private
equity, an issue that she says needs to be resolved.
IT HELPS TO KNOW THE LAW
While she says it’s imperfect, Lucien credits the social
equity mandate with opening at least some avenues

for minority entrepreneurs to get into the industry—
including herself. But she has also relied heavily on the
experience she has gained along the way, including her
Suffolk Law education. Without knowledge of the law,
problems can quickly arise, she explains. For example,
without access to traditional banking, cannabis operators
often turn to friends and family for funding, not realizing
that those investments may be considered offerings
prohibited by securities law. Real estate law proves useful
when negotiating a lease or sale agreement or navigating
the special permit process. Corporate law is essential
when forming a company among partners, and tax law is
crucial. “The amount you have to pay in taxes is insane,
and you need to know tax law. You have to have a great
accounting team,” she says.
In the end, Collins says successfully creating an equitable
industry will require assistance from private industry,
specifically, access to banks. In the meantime, the CCC is
working toward building a strong infrastructure as well as
sustainable equity programs so that if and when banks can
come to the table, they will be more willing to lend.
All say they are hopeful that federal prohibition will be
lifted in favor of a clear, consistent system of regulation
that is accompanied by public health and safety measures.
And while Cabral expects federal prohibition to fall, full
legalization may happen in fits and starts, leaving a legal
hodgepodge in the interim. To groundbreaking pot
pioneers like Lucien and Cabral, that means hard work
ahead, but also an exciting challenge. “It presents a lot
of great opportunities to think outside the box and be
creative,” Cabral says, “because the path has not been trod
already on a lot of this stuff.”

CLASS

NOTES
PROFESSIONAL
AND PERSONAL
MILESTONES FROM
SUFFOLK ALUMNI

Andrew S. Mullin JD’91

IN-HOUSE
LEADERS
ANDREW S. MULLIN JD’91 and DAMIAN W.
WILMOT JD’00 have been recognized as 2019 InHouse Leader honorees by Massachusetts Lawyers
Weekly and New England In-House for outstanding
professional accomplishments in the legal field.
The class of 25 general counsels and staff attorneys
are nominated by colleagues, clients, and legal
professionals and selected by Massachusetts
Lawyers Weekly’s editorial department.
Mullin serves as vice president and chief
counsel for BAE Systems Electronic Systems,
where he is responsible for managing the sector’s
legal department, consisting of in-house attorneys
and staff, and the export and ethics functions.
At Vertex Pharmaceuticals Inc., Wilmot serves
as the senior vice president and chief risk and
compliance officer. He is responsible for leading
the company’s global compliance, global litigation
and enterprise risk management, and quality
assurance organizations.

Damian W. Wilmot JD’00

1970
ROBERT H. ROWE, retired
attorney and former New
Hampshire special justice,
received special recognition
from the New Hampshire Bar
Association for his 18 years of
service to the state as a member
of the New Hampshire
House of Representatives.
He currently serves as an
elected Hillsborough County
commissioner. Rowe is the
author of two histories and one
historical novel and resides in
Amherst, NH.

1975
BRIAN M. HURLEY, of the
real estate litigation practice
for Rackemann, Sawyer &
Brewster, was named to The
Best Lawyers in America 2020.

1977
KENNETH A. GRAHAM, retired assistant attorney general
for the State of Connecticut, has been reappointed by
the Chief Justice of the Connecticut Supreme Court to
a seventh term of office as Superior Court trial referee.
He was also reappointed to a three-year term of office as
Superior Court arbitrator/fact finder. He took his oaths
of office on June 12, 2019, the 42nd anniversary of his
graduation from Suffolk University Law School.
SARAH HALL LUICK was honored for over 35
years of service as a board member for the national
nonprofit the Animal Legal Defense Fund. The Fund
is celebrating its 40th year working to protect the lives
and advance the interests of animals in the legal system.

1981
DAVID E. CHERNY was selected for inclusion in The Best
Lawyers in America 2020 in the field of family law. He
is a partner in the Boston firm Atwood & Cherny PC,
where he concentrates his practice in the area of complex
matrimonial and family law litigation at the trial and
appellate court levels.

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CLASS

NOTES

1982
ROBERT P. AVOLIO has joined
Eckert Seamans’ Litigation division in
Princeton, NJ.

1983
MICHAEL MAZZONE has been named
cochair of the litigation practice group
at Haynes and Boone LLP.

1985
THOMAS M. BOND was named vice
president of the Massachusetts Bar
Association for its 2019-20 year.

1986
ELLEN M. HARRINGTON, of
Rackemann, Sawyer & Brewster,
was named to The Best Lawyers in
America 2020. She serves on the firm’s
Executive Committee and chairs
Rackemann’s Trusts and Estates
Department.

1991
LISA CUKIER was named a 2019 “Top
Woman of Law” by Massachusetts Lawyers
Weekly. She is a partner and executive
member at Boston-based Burns & Levinson.
GARY MERKEN, an attorney with the Large
Business & International Division of the
IRS Office of Chief Counsel in Philadelphia,
was acknowledged for his contributions to
the 11th edition of Black’s Law Dictionary,
published in June 2019.
ROBERT RIVERS JR. was selected as 2019
Boston Family Law’s “Lawyer of the Year” by
Best Lawyers. He is a partner at Lee & Rivers
LLP in Boston.

1992
MEL PASSARELLI has joined Aspera
Technologies as its new president and
CEO. He has over 30 years of experience in
corporate strategy and growth.

1988
DENISE I. MURPHY was named
president-elect of the Massachusetts
Bar Association for its 2019-20 year.

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SHELDON CRAIG TOPLITT has been
appointed chair of the Massachusetts
Bar Association in the Real Estate
Section Council for the 2019-2020
year.

THOMAS TUTTLE was appointed bar and
policy compliance specialist in the Office of
General Counsel of Ropes & Gray LLP.

1994
ANN MARIE MACCARONE was appointed to
the Cranston (RI) City Planning Commission
for a four-year term by Cranston Mayor Allan
Fung JD’95.

1995
ERIN M.
BOUCHER was
named partner
at Morrison
Mahoney LLP.

JENNIFER
PARENT has
become a fellow
of the American
College of Trial
Lawyers. She
is a director
at McLane
Middleton and
chair of the firm’s Litigation Department.

1997

1989
JOHN C. LA LIBERTE, partner at Sherin
and Lodgen LLP, was named to The Best
Lawyers in America 2020. He is chair of
the firm’s bankruptcy and creditor rights
group, as well as cochair of the business
litigation, construction law, and real
estate litigation practice groups.

1993

LYNNE F. RILEY was named a 2019 “Top
Woman of Law” by Massachusetts Lawyers
Weekly. She is a partner in Casner & Edwards’
bankruptcy and restructuring group. Riley
has argued numerous appeals before the First
Circuit Court of Appeals and the Bankruptcy
Appellate Panel for the First Circuit and
has authored amicus briefs for the United
States Supreme Court, the First Circuit,
and the Ninth Circuit Courts of Appeals on
significant bankruptcy issues.

MEREDITH
COOK was
appointed
chancellor of
the Roman
Catholic
Diocese of
Manchester,
NH. She
has been
a member of the New Hampshire Bar
Association for more than 20 years. In 2001,
she received the Saint Thomas More Award,
presented by the Catholic Lawyers Guild of
New Hampshire to a lawyer or judge who
is a practicing Catholic and who embodies
the spirit of Saint Thomas More in his or her
courage, dedication, integrity, civility, and
compassion toward others.

CLASS

NOTES

JESSICA GRAF has joined
Sullivan and Worcester LLP’s
real estate group as counsel
in Boston. Previously with
Seyfarth Shaw LLP, Graf
counsels clients on all aspects
of environmental law.
UYEN MONG TRAN
was appointed assistant
attorney general in the
Massachusetts Attorney
General’s Office and
chair of the Contributory
Retirement Appeal Board
on July 22, 2019.
ADAM P. WHITNEY was
selected to Super Lawyers for
2019. He is the founder and
owner of the Law Office
of Adam P. Whitney in
Boston.

2000
MICHAEL J. FENCER
BS’97 has been named
to The Best Lawyers
in America 2020. He
focuses on bankruptcy,
creditor and debtor rights,
insolvency, construction,
and reorganization law with
Casner & Edwards LLP.

2001
KEVIN MALTBY was
sworn in as associate
justice of the Northampton
(MA) District Court on
September 12, 2018.

2003
ELIZABETH K. LEVINE, an
employment lawyer and litigator with
Boston firm Goulston & Storrs, has
been promoted to shareholder.
The Insurance Library Association of
Boston has named PAUL TETRAULT as
the organization’s new executive director.

2004
SETH BONNEAU has joined DLA
Piper’s finance practice as a partner in
the Boston office.
HEATHER
GAMACHE
has joined
Rackemann,
Sawyer &
Brewster as
a director
in the firm’s
litigation
practice.
Previously,
she served
as a partner at the Boston-based law firm
Prince Lobel Tye.

2005
MIA B. FRIEDMAN has joined Fish
& Richardson as pro bono manager.
Friedman will lead and manage the
firm’s pro bono practice for Fish’s 11
U.S. offices.
MARIAH L. HEPPE has joined Estate
Preservation Law Offices (EPLO),
Worcester,
MA, as an
attorney.
Her practice
at EPLO
concentrates
on estate
planning and
elder law.

RACHEL MOYNIHAN has been promoted to
member (partner) at Eckert Seamans. She
focuses her practice on commercial litigation,
employment law, and product liability and
handles employment, trade secret, real estate, and
trust litigation.

2006
KEVIN POWERS of the Law Offices of Kevin J.
Powers, together with Andrew M. Fischer JD’80
and Andrew J. Brodie III JD’04, both of the Law
Offices of Jeffrey S. Glassman LLC in Boston,
briefed and argued Meyer v. Veolia Energy North
America on behalf of plaintiff Richard Meyer. On
May 8, 2019, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial
Court decided in favor of Meyer. The case, which
clarified the law regarding the right of a plaintiff
to bring a claim for injuries resulting from road
defects, is a watershed moment in Massachusetts
tort law.
MICHAEL RUEDA has been named a partner at
global firm Withers LLP. Based in New York, he is
head of US sports and entertainment for the firm.
Goulston & Storrs director TIMOTHY W.
SULLIVAN MBA’06 was named a 2019 “40 Under
40” honoree by the Boston Business Journal. Sullivan
is the only lawyer on the 2019 list who specializes in
real estate law.

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CLASS

NOTES

2007
KELLY B. CASTRIOTTA was promoted to
regional head of product development for
financial lines, North America, for Allianz
Global Corporate and Specialty.

KENNETH A. SHERMAN joined
Robinson+Cole (R+C) in Boston. He
is an experienced construction attorney
with significant construction litigation and
transactional experience.

ANGEL KOZELI MOZINA has written a
chapter, “Legal Aspects of Commercial
Condominiums,” for the 2019 supplement
to the Massachusetts Continuing Legal
Education’s (MCLE) Massachusetts
Condominium Law practice manual. She is a
director in the real estate practice of Boston
firm Rackemann, Sawyer & Brewster.

2009
MARK HEINZELMAN has joined Rubin and
Rudman LLP as a partner in the litigation
group.

LORI K. VAULDING BS’06 has been named
a partner at Morrison Mahoney LLP.

2010
MARGARET HAGEN published How Can
So Many Be Wrong?: Making the Due Process
Case for an Eyewitness Expert. The book,
written with Sou Hee Yang, discusses the
importance of the defense having access to
expert testimony on eyewitness reliability in
cases where that testimony is critical.

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HEIDI A. SEELY, attorney at Rackemann,
Sawyer & Brewster, served as moderator
at the Boston Bar Association’s program
“Advising Trustees and Serving as a Trustee
in Massachusetts” on April 26, 2019. She
has been appointed cochair of the Public
Policy Committee of the Boston Bar
Association’s trusts and estates section.

2011
KATHLEEN A. FEDERICO was elected
partner at Morrison Mahoney in Boston.
She is a graduate of the MBA 2018-2019
Leadership Academy and received the
2019 Massachusetts Defense Lawyers
Association’s Rising Star Award.

CLASS

NOTES

JENNIFER GARNER joined Chamberlain Hrdlicka as a real estate
associate based in Atlanta.
KIMBERLY MASON has joined Pastori | Krans PLLC, a Concord, NHbased litigation firm, as an associate.

2014
RAY GRANT and MEGAN WEBER JD’15 were married in Bristol, RI, on
June 8, 2019.
CHRISTOPHER C. STORM was elected
partner at Morrison Mahoney in Boston.
He represents insurance companies,
national retailers, attorneys, and real estate
and design professionals in the areas of
professional liability, insurance coverage,
tort and liability defense, and commercial
and business litigation. He is also a
Proctor of Admiralty with experience in
maritime liens, Jones Act, and Longshore
and Harbor Workers’ Compensation Act
(LHWCA) cases.

2012
BRIDGET R. LOPEZ was elected partner
at Morrison Mahoney in Boston.
ERIC LOSEY was promoted to member
(partner) at Eckert Seamans. Losey
concentrates his practice on the defense
of personal injury, property damages, and
environmental cases, including the defense
of asbestos, mass tort, and product liability
litigation matters in Massachusetts and
Rhode Island.

MATTHEW R. O’CONNOR has
joined Pierce Atwood LLP as an
associate in the firm’s litigation
and business practice groups.

JACLYN MCNEELY, associate at Sherin
and Lodgen LLP in the Employment Law
Department, has been chosen as cochair
of the Women’s Bar Association of
Massachusetts’ New Lawyers Committee.
MICHAEL TRIPICCO and wife Jessica
welcomed daughter Miriam Patricia on
July 11, 2019.

2013
DILER ERDENGIZ is serving with the
United Nations Mission in Kosovo as a
political affairs officer.

2016
KIMBERLY SMITH has joined the
Connecticut law firm of Brody
Wilkinson PC as an associate.

2018
CLINTON OAS has joined Williams Mullen as an associate in the firm’s
litigation and tax sections.
AMANDA C. SCAFIDI BS’10 has joined Eckert Seamans as an associate
in the firm’s Boston office and Litigation division.

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DEAN’S

CABINET
COMMITTED ALUMNI
INVEST IN THE FUTURE
OF SUFFOLK LAW

DEAN’S CABINET
NOW HAS 40
MEMBERS
DEMONSTRATING
COMMITMENT,
OFFERING A
VOICE

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SUFFOLK LAW
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Winter 2020

The Dean’s Cabinet now has 40 members, each
of whom has committed at least $50,000 to support
initiatives of the Law School. Since this magazine
featured the Dean’s Cabinet last spring, 10 new
members have joined the team of generous benefactors
dedicated to advancing the Law School’s mission—
through both philanthropy and strategic consultation.
Two recent members share what inspired them to join.

JEFFREY R.
DRAGO JD’04
“Under Dean Perlman’s leadership, Suffolk University Law
School has remained true to its founding mission of providing a
first-class legal education to striving students from the inner city
looking for an opportunity in the law. I know the benefits of this
access firsthand, which is why I’m proud to support Suffolk Law as
a member of the Dean’s Cabinet today.”

LINDA J.
WONDRACK
JD’95
“I am very motivated by
how Dean Perlman is leading
the Law School, specifically
his focus on enabling and
arming students with the skills
necessary to succeed in the
future.”

DEAN’S

CABINET

SUFFOLK UNIVERSITY LAW SCHOOL

DEAN’S CABINET MEMBERS
Patricia M. Annino JD’81
Partner
Rimon Law, PC
Boston, MA
Joy L. Backer JD’15
Associate
WilmerHale, LLP
Boston, MA
Alexander A. Bove, Jr.
JD’67
Partner
Bove & Langa, PC
Boston, MA
Brian T. Brandt JD’96
Managing Director
SCS Financial, LLC
Boston, MA
Claudine A. Cloutier JD’95
Partner
Keches Law Group, PC
Taunton, MA
Barry C. Cosgrove JD’85
Chairman & CEO
Blackmore Partners, LLC
Laguna Beach, CA
Gerry D’Ambrosio JD’93
Partner
D’Ambrosio Brown, LLP
Boston, MA
Gerard S. DiFiore JD’84
Partner
Reed Smith, LLP
New York, NY
Jeffrey R. Drago JD’04
Partner
Drago + Toscano, LLP
Boston, MA
Kevin M. Fitzgerald JD’82
Partner
Nixon Peabody, LLP
Manchester, NH
Christine Newman Garvey
JD’72, Trustee
Global Head of Corporate Real
Estate and Services (ret.)
Deutsche Bank AG
Santa Barbara, CA

Kenneth T. Gear BSBA’89,
JD’95
Chief Executive Officer
Leading Builders of America,
Inc.
Washington, DC

Deborah Marson JD’78
Executive Vice President,
General Counsel, and
Secretary
Iron Mountain, Inc.
Boston, MA

Marc S. Geller JD’71
Vice President
Cedar Crossing
Management, LLC
Houston, TX

Michael J. McCormack
JD’72
Partner
McCormack Suny, LLC
Boston, MA

Joseph W. Glannon
Professor of Law
Suffolk University Law School
Boston, MA

Timothy M. McCrystal
JD’89
Partner
Ropes & Gray, LLP
Boston, MA

Ernst Guerrier BS’91,
JD’94, Trustee
Principal
Guerrier & Associates, PC
Boston, MA
James F. Haley, Jr. JD’75
Partner
Haley Guiliano, LLP
New York, NY
Henry G. Kara BSBA’66,
JD’69
President
Kara Law Offices
Boston, MA

Brian E. McManus JD’71
President
McManus Capital Management
Fort Worth, TX
Robert T. Noonan JD’85
Regional Managing Partner
– Tax
KPMG, LLP

Boston, MA
Eric J. Parker JD’86
Partner
Parker Scheer, LLP
Boston, MA

George N. Keches JD’75
Senior Partner
Keches Law Group, LLC
Taunton, MA

Jamie A. Sasson JD’04
Managing Partner
The Ticktin Law Group, PA
Deerfield Beach, FL

James A. Lack JD’96
Attorney
Law Office of James A. Lack
Boston, MA

Lewis A. Sassoon JD’69
Partner
Sassoon & Cymrot LLP
Boston, MA

Warren G. Levenbaum
JD’72
Managing Partner
Levenbaum Trachtenberg, PLC
Phoenix, AZ

Janis B. Schiff JD’83
Partner
Holland & Knight, LLP
Washington, DC

Konstantinos Ligris JD’01,
Trustee
Founder & Board Member
Ligris + Associates, PC
Co-Founder
Stavvy & Escrow Mint, LLC
Newton, MA

Alan B. Sharaf JD’87
Partner
Sharaf & Maloney, PC
Brookline, MA

Marie-Louise Skafte JD’96
Principal
Skafte Global Law, PA
Fort Lauderdale, FL
Wayne E. Smith BSBA’77,
JD’82
Adjunct Professor
Suffolk University Law School
Firm Director (ret.)
Deloitte Tax, LLP
Boston, MA
Regina C. Sullivan JD’88
Managing Partner
Gaman Real Estate Group, LLC
Wellesley, MA
Thomas M. Sullivan JD’94,
Trustee
Founding Partner
Lando & Anastasi, LLP
Cambridge, MA
Instructor
Suffolk University
Sawyer Business School
Boston, MA
James S. Trainor, Jr. JD’00
Partner
Fenwick & West LLP
New York, NY
Kenneth J. Vacovec JD’75
Senior Partner
Vacovec, Mayotte & Singer, LLP
Newton, MA
Richard J. Walsh BA’58,
JD’60
Attorney (ret.)
Federal Trade Commission
Naples, FL
Stephen N. Wilchins JD’82
Founding Partner
Wilchins, Cosentino, Friend, LLP
Wellesley, MA
Linda J. Wondrack JD’95
EVP, Head of Compliance
Fidelity Investments
Boston, MA

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ALUMNI

EVENTS
CAPTURING
MEMORABLE MOMENTS
FROM SCHOOL
GATHERINGS

1
2

CLINICAL AND EXPERIENTIAL
PROGRAMS 5TH ANNUAL
ALUMNI RECEPTION AND
AWARD PRESENTATION
THURSDAY, MARCH 21, 2019
Sargent Hall, Boston
This year’s celebration of our nationally ranked
Clinical & Experiential Programs honored Trustee
Ernst Guerrier BS’91, JD’94 with the Outstanding
Clinical Alumni Award. Photographs by John Gillooly

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Winter 2020

1.

2.

Melissa Marquez BA’14, JD’17; Rose
Kiggundu JD’18; Najma Hussain BA’15,
JD’18; and Amanda Scafidi BS’10, JD’18

Sarah Boonin, Director, Clinical Programs and Director, Health Law Clinic; Dean
Andrew Perlman; Ernst Guerrier BS’91, JD’94, Trustee and Dean’s Cabinet; and
Kim McLaurin, Associate Dean and Clinical Professor of Law

ALUMNI

EVENTS

LAW SCHOOL
CLASS OF 1969 50TH
REUNION DINNER
FRIDAY, MAY 31, 2019

1

2

Omni Parker House, Boston
On Friday, May 31, the Suffolk University
Law School Class of 1969 celebrated its
50th reunion with a special dinner at the
Omni Parker House Hotel in Boston. See
story on page 28. Photographs by John
Gillooly

1.
Dean Andrew Perlman; Richard Krezel
JD’69; and Cindy Krezel

2.
Bonnie Damico; J. David Damico JD’69;
Jennifer Scarano; Hon. Carmine M. Bravo
JD’69 (ret.); Jerry Scarano, Jr. JD’69;
Winnie Rubino; and Richard Rubino JD’69

3

4

3.
James Sokolove JD’69, Paul Kaufman
JD’69; Betty Rappaport; and Hon.
Carmine M. Bravo JD’69 (ret.)

4.
Joan Farcus JD’69 and David Gianetti

5.
Richard Rubino JD’69; Ted Schwartz
JD’69; and James Sokolove JD’69

6.

5

6
7.
Anthony DeLuca JD’69; Alan Kraut JD’69; J.
David Damico JD’69; Jerry Scarano, Jr. JD’69;
Dean Andrew Perlman; Theodore Schwartz
JD’69; Paul Kaufman JD’69; and Hon. Carmine
M. Bravo JD’69 (ret.)

7

Henry Kara BSBA’66, JD’69, Dean’s
Cabinet; Lew Sassoon JD’69, Dean’s
Cabinet; and Amy Sassoon

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ALUMNI

EVENTS

HALF-CENTURY
CLUB LUNCHEON
FRIDAY, MAY 31, 2019
Marriott Long Wharf Hotel

On May 31, alumni from the class of 1969 returned to
Suffolk to celebrate their 50th reunion.

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At this annual luncheon, Suffolk inducts the 50th
reunion class into the Half-Century Club and invites
alumni from past 50th reunion classes to attend.
Save the date for the 2020 Half-Century Club
Luncheon on Friday, May 29, 2020, when we will
celebrate the Class of 1970. For more information,
contact Corian Branyan in the Office of Advancement
at 617-573-8456. Photographs by John Gillooly

Top row, left to right: Robert Billage MA’69; James O’Donnell
BA’66, JD’69; Teresa Gillis BA’69; Bob Rook JD’69; John Webster
JD’69; Jeffrey Mark Pearlman BA’69; Richard Duchesneau
BSBA’69; Jerry Scarano, Jr. JD’69; Richard Krezel JD’69; Andrew
Bram JD’69; and Henry Kara BSBA’66, JD’69, Dean’s Cabinet
Middle row, left to right: Lew Sassoon JD’69, Dean’s Cabinet;
Anthony DeLuca JD’69; Hon. Carmine M. Bravo JD’69 (ret.);
Robert Nocera JD’69; J. David Damico JD’69; Roger Phillips
JD’69; Gregory Britz JD’69; Edward McTighe JD’69; John
Bourgeois, Sr. JD’69; Mario Zangari JD’69; Theodore Schwartz
JD’69; and Paul Kaufman JD’69
Bottom row, left to right: Thomas Woodbury BA’69, MAE’72; John
Wansea BSJ’69; Michael Houghton BSJ’69; Ruth Monahan BA’69;
Marsha Feffer BA’68; Jack Dennis BSBA’69; David Flynn BSBA’69;
Thomas Miley BSBA’69, MAE’71; Linwood Nelson BSBA’69; Mary
Cahalane BS’69, MED’74; and Joseph Ruggio MBA’69

ALUMNI

EVENTS

COMMENCEMENT
EVE DINNER
SATURDAY, MAY 18, 2019

1

The Seaport Hotel, Boston
Alumni and guests gathered on May 18, 2019, at the Seaport
Hotel on the evening before commencement to celebrate
the accomplishments of our 2019 graduates, our esteemed
honorary degree recipients, and the generosity of our alumni
and friends in the Summa Society. Photographs by John Gillooly

2

1.
Alexander Bove, Jr. JD’67, Dean’s Cabinet and Catherine Bove

2.
Eddie Jenkins, Jr. JD’78 and Tamela Bailey JD’04, Alumni
Association Board Member

3.

3

4
SUFFOLK CONNECT
ALUMNI-STUDENT
NETWORKING RECEPTION

Konstantinos (Kosta) Ligris JD’01, Trustee and Dean’s Cabinet;
Robert Lamb, Jr., Chair, Board of Trustees; and Nik Ligris JD’11

5

6

4.

6.
Gary Prado JD’16; Shelby
Devanney; and Sarah Marshall

TUESDAY, APRIL 2, 2019

James McKenzie JD’75;
Cade Nauman; Erica Mattison
MPA’08, JD’13; and Desi Powell

Ropes & Gray LLP Boston
,

5.

Over 270 alumni and students attended the
annual alumni and student networking reception
held at Ropes & Gray LLP. A special thank you
to alumnus Timothy McCrystal JD’89, Dean’s
Cabinet, for hosting the reception.
Photographs by Michael J. Clarke

Paige Stopperich; Jessen Foster;
Sammy Nabulsi JD’14, Alumni
Association Board Member; and
Brianna Whitney JD’13

Timothy McCrystal JD’89,
Dean’s Cabinet; Dean Andrew
Perlman; Gunjan Sali; and
Hillary Peterson JD’09, Assistant
Director of Professional and
Career Development

7

7.

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ALUMNI MAGAZINE
Winter 2020

ALUMNI

EVENTS

1

4

5

2

6

SUFFOLK LAW REUNION
DINNER AND ALUMNI
AWARDS CEREMONY
SATURDAY, JUNE 1, 2019
Sargent Hall

48

SUFFOLK LAW
ALUMNI MAGAZINE
Winter 2020

The annual Suffolk Law Reunion Dinner and
Alumni Awards Ceremony was held in Sargent
Hall on Saturday, June 1, 2019. This special
dinner honored alumni celebrating a reunion year
and also recognized four alumni for outstanding
achievements, service, and philanthropy:
Massachusetts House Speaker Robert A.
DeLeo JD’76, HLLD’09, Outstanding Alumni
Achievement Award; Jennifer L. Parent JD’95,
Outstanding Alumni Service Award; Kwabena
Kyei-Aboagye, Jr. JD’09, Outstanding Graduate
of the Last Decade; and Gerard F. Doherty JD’60,
Edward Bray JD’58 Legacy Award. Photographs
by John Gillooly

7

3

1.

4.

Rep. Josh Cutler JD’00;
Lynn Sullivan; Hon. Amy
Nechtem JD’85, Trustee;
Thomas Sullivan JD’94,
Dean’s Cabinet and Alumni
Association Board Member;
and Robert Rio JD’94

Carla Perugini-Erickson
JD’94 and Teri Scibelli JD’94

2.

6.

Patricia Tarabelsi JD’08;
Victoria Burdman JD’06;
Tamela Bailey JD’04, Alumni
Association Board Member;
and Tiziana Polizio JD’97

Johanna Homan; Jonathan
Schwartz JD’11, Alumni
Association Board Member;
Brian Neely; and Anna
Lucey JD’06

3.

7.

President Marisa J. Kelly;
Gerard Doherty JD’60;
Massachusetts House
Speaker Robert A. DeLeo
JD’76, HLLD’09; Jennifer
L. Parent JD’95; Kwabena
Kyei-Aboagye, Jr. JD’09;
and Dean Andrew Perlman

Massachusetts House
Speaker Robert A. DeLeo
JD’76, HLLD’09; Mary
Doherty; and Tim Wilkerson
JD’03, Alumni Association
Board Member

5.
Hon. Regina Quinlan
Doherty JD’73, HLLD’05 and
Gerard Doherty JD’60

ALUMNI

EVENTS

1
U.S. SUPREME COURT BAR
ADMISSION PROGRAM
MARCH 3-4, 2019

2

Welcome Reception, Washington, DC

Forty Suffolk University Law School alumni
traveled to Washington, D.C. to be sworn in to
the Bar of the United States Supreme Court. 
The two-day program began on March 3 with
a welcome reception at the Hyatt Regency
Washington. On Monday, March 4, the alumni,
along with Dean Perlman, appeared before the
justices of the U.S. Supreme Court during the
court’s Monday morning session. Professor
Emerita Karen Blum JD’74 presented the
motion to admit the Suffolk Law alumni to
the Supreme Court Bar. The group received
a surprise visit from both Chief Justice John
Roberts and Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg
during the reception. Photographs by Michael
Carpenter

1.
Suffolk University Law School’s newly admitted
members of the U.S. Supreme Court Bar and
D.C. area alumni.

SUFFOLK LAW
SCHOOL
NEW
HAMPSHIRE
NETWORK
DINNER
WEDNESDAY, MARCH 20, 2019
Bedford Village Inn, Bedford, NH

The Suffolk Law New Hampshire Alumni
Chapter gathered at the Bedford Village
Inn for its annual meeting and dinner.
Photographs by Annamarie M. Mueller

3
2.
Suffolk University
Law School
New Hampshire
Alumni Network

3.
Jennifer Parent
JD’95, president
of the NH Alumni
Network

49

SUFFOLK LAW
ALUMNI MAGAZINE
Winter 2020

NON-PROFIT
US POSTAGE
PAID
SUFFOLK
UNIVERSITY
120 TREMONT STREET
BOSTON, MA 02108–4977

GIVE TO SUFFOLK LAW ONLINE
tinyurl.com/SuffolkLawDonation

JOIN
THE
FROST
SOCIETY
Consider a bequest—a gift through your will or
trust. You can direct your gift to meet Suffolk’s
greatest needs or to support a specific
program that is meaningful to you.

Establishing a bequest enrolls you in Suffolk’s Frost Society.
Please contact Randy F. Stabile, Esq., Office of Advancement,
617-573-8029, rstabile@suffolk.edu.

SAVE T HE

DATE!
SUFFOLK UNIVERSITY LAW SCHOOL

REUNION DINNER
AND AWARDS CEREMONY

APRIL

04
5:30 P.M.

If your degree year ends
in a “0” or “5” and you are
interested in becoming
a class representative,
contact Alison E. McManus
at amcmanus@suffolk.edu