“We were going to be partners in a law firm – Rudolph and Rudolph,” he said.

Fortunately for Brandon, as a teenager he had access to a program that helped put him on the path to fulfilling that dream of becoming a lawyer – Central High School’s Law and Government Magnet program and its partnership with the University of Louisville Brandeis School of Law. The focus of the program is to give more diverse and underrepresented students a view of the legal profession where diversity has historically been lacking.

“Lawyers are leaders, and diversity in leadership is critical to democracy,” said Laura Rothstein, a former Brandeis School of Law dean and now dean emerita. “In 2001, when Central High School Principal Harold Fenderson invited me to create a partnership between the Brandeis School of Law and the Law and Government Magnet program, I recalled the influences from my own high school days.

“The stories and statistics over the past 23 years make this partnership a win for Central High School, the law school, the university, and the city of Louisville as Central students become lawyers, professionals in other fields, and leaders in the community. Other communities can use our program as a model — a Kentucky to the World example.”

Rothstein has been the main driver for a new documentary film celebrating the success of the UofL – Central partnership. “A Pathway Forward” will premiere to an invitation-only crowd Oct. 9 at 6:30 p.m. at Bomhard Theatre in the Kentucky Center for the Arts. The film will then open to the public at , Oct. 10-12. A trailer for the film can be found on the .

Since it began in 2001, nearly 700 Central High School graduates have participated in the partnership, with many of them going on to attend law schools in 15 states. Since 2007, those Central magnet students were not only taking classes from Joe Gutmann, the long-time teacher at Central, but also from UofL law students who have taught Street Law and Marshall Brennan Constitutional Literacy classes to law and government magnet students. To Rudolph, a 2009 Central graduate who is Black, having law school students, some of whom looked like him, teaching classes enhanced his love for the law and gave him the confidence he needed to keep law school as a goal.

“Talking to UofL students who weren’t too much older than me was easier and more comfortable,” Rudolph said. “I could ask them ‘Is law school attainable? Can I do it?’ and they would assure me it was hard but attainable. The UofL students, Dean Rothstein and Mr. Gutmann inspired me.”

And Rudolph eventually became one of those UofL law students teaching the next generation of legal and civic leaders at Central High School. After getting an undergraduate degree from the University of Kentucky and taking a good paying job in manufacturing, Rudolph refocused on his goal and was accepted into Brandeis School of Law. In his second and third years at UofL’s law school, he taught Street Law to Central sophomores and constitutional law (Marshall Brennan class) to seniors. He calls it a rewarding learning experience for both him and the high school students.

“It was only right that I give back,” Rudolph said. “Students would say ‘he looks like me and dresses like me, it’s not so far-fetched that I could do that.’ Those are the same things I thought as a Central student.”

Rudolph is now a practicing attorney with  in Louisville.

As for his brother, he took a different path, graduating from Central High and Eastern Kentucky University and becoming a successful personal trainer. The dream of ‘Rudolph and Rudolph – Attorneys at Law’ is gone but Brandon’s lifelong goal of becoming a lawyer has been realized with a hand from the partnership between Central High School and the UofL Brandeis School of Law.

Story provided by Jefferson County Public Schools. 

Now in her final year of study at the she is one of three students taking their passion for advocacy to a new level at UofL’s newly launched immigration law clinic. Housed in the Legal Aid Society building downtown, the clinic will serve clients who are authorized to be in the United States and the commonwealth of Kentucky but do not have the requisite documentation to prove it.

UofL law students, working under the supervision of former U.S. immigration judge and clinic director , will represent clients and assist them in completing the required paperwork to attain legal status and a path to citizenship.

Immigrants represent the fastest growing population in Louisville. Louisville Metro Government estimates the immigrant share of Jefferson County residents could exceed 18% by 2040. While this clinic will help immigrants from all countries, the more than 30,000 Cubans who call Louisville home have the potential to benefit most, as U.S. immigration laws expedite the process for Cuban immigrants.

According to Kozoll, much of the foreign-born population who are eligible to apply for work permits or permanent status lack access to legal representation. He said this makes it difficult for them to join the workforce and hampers employers’ attempts to fulfill their workforce needs.

Supported , and UofL received $1.5 million in funding during the 2024 legislative session for the new clinic to help eligible immigrants move through the process and transition into the workforce.

“This is the type of collaboration and synergy that has a long-lasting impact for the commonwealth. This funding represents a win-win for University of Louisville law students who will gain valuable experience as they develop into the next generation of immigration law attorneys, and for immigrants in the community to legally enter the workforce and become significant contributors to the local economy,” said Sen. Stivers.

The new clinic is the sixth offered at Brandeis School of Law, joining others in domestic violence, mediation, eviction defense, elder law and entrepreneurship. The clinics provide critical legal services to the Louisville community, teach law students necessary skills to successfully practice law, and develop a pipeline to train successive generations of attorneys. 

“Our clinics provide experiential learning opportunities that extend students’ understanding of the legal profession beyond the classroom,” said Brandeis School of Law Dean Melanie B. Jacobs. “These hands-on upper-level educational experiences give students the ability to engage with the community, widen their professional networks and practice essential legal skills in a supportive and collaborative environment, preparing them to be effective and engaged members of the legal community after graduation.”

In addition, UofL law students will reap benefits from Kozoll’s 20-plus years of experience.

“As an immigration judge, I have been able to see the practice from many different perspectives and witness law trends,” he said. “I’m eager to pass along my knowledge to students and bring others into what has been an incredible practice for me.”

The annual fellowship awards stipends of $9,000 for up to three law school students with 60 or more credit hours who secure a legal volunteer position over the summer with a social justice nonprofit organization or agency.

The 2023 inaugural fellows, Margaret (Maggie) Fagala and Jasmyne Moore, graduated with their law degrees on May 12. UofL News followed up to learn more about their fellowship experiences and how it has inspired their future goals.

UofL News: What was your reaction when you learned you had been selected for the Breonna Taylor fellowship?

Fagala: I felt incredibly excited and very, very thankful. It’s hard to explain how grateful I was for the financial help. There is a lot of work in legal spaces that are entry level positions or internships and not with big law firms or personal injury work; if you want to do public service, they’re usually unpaid. The fellowship is designed for this, and it’s great there’s an opportunity for people who are accepting those jobs that don’t offer money or very little money to help offset the financial costs. This fellowship made it easier for me to take that unpaid job and still pay rent.

Moore:  I loved it. Often public service work, especially for minority communities, does go severely underpaid – if paid at all. I think this was the right step for UofL which is dealing with a lot of the DEI issues.

UofL News: Where did you complete your fellowship and what kind of legal work was involved? What was one of your biggest takeaways?

Fagala: I spent my summer with work focused mostly on capital cases in my home state of North Carolina. The biggest thing that I took away from my experience was just a better knowledge of the way that the death penalty is being used as a weapon across the country. There are multiple variances in how different states use the death penalty, but in any place where human beings are still capable of being sentenced to die, I can’t think of a more powerful weapon than the ability to leverage a person’s life. 

Moore: I worked at a local nonprofit called , which helps clothe, feed, and provide other services for the unhoused and some of the population with mental health challenges. I was able to help them prepare contracts and do house general counseling.

My biggest takeaway was seeing many similar Black women doing similar work as me –  women that could have been Breonna Taylor. Being in rooms with them helped to empower me. In Kentucky, there are fears with new initiatives surrounding diversity coming down the pipeline. There is a phenomenon of “brain drain” and it felt good being in a room of similar minded, similarly educated people all struggling to figure out how to keep us. There’s just not a lot of incentive for young people to stay in Kentucky. Just being able to help with my little bit of experience in property law – to help Hope Village secure a new building with no liens attached – that was a big victory and a milestone.

UofL News: What influence did your fellowship experience have on your future career plans?

Moore: I think it just solidified my intent. Even before law school, I was politically active. I believe that I have done everything I could with my bachelor’s degree in political science, law, and public policy. Now, my JD (juris doctorate) degree is going to give me and my community a chance to fight even bigger battles that we just don’t know are on the horizon.

UofL News: How does the legacy of Breonna Taylor continue to inspire you?

Fagala: It’s something that has really impacted my life in a unique way because I’m not from Louisville. I wasn’t here when it happened, but I was very aware of it and now, since coming to school here and being given this fellowship, her life and her legacy have affected me in a way that I never expected. I hope that I will be able to carry that opportunity the fellowship gave me into my career and give back, because that’s what the fellowship is designed for – people who are in any way doing the work that needs to be done.

Moore: When I am applying to more conservative fellowships or with conservative judges, I remove all my Kentucky Young Dems work, in fact I remove a lot of stuff. One thing I will never remove is being an inaugural Breonna Taylor Fellow, because a Black woman had to die for me to become that. I think this experience gave me hope that those with the means to do so will support people whose work they admire. Being on the list of Forty under 40, or 25 Attorneys to Watch in the Future; all those titles are beautiful, but they don’t pay my bills. I think people are realizing that if you want the work to continue, whether you are doing it or not, you do have to find a way to support those doing the work.

, assistant professor of law at UofL’s , has won a teaching grant from the  to develop a toolkit that law professors anywhere can use to incorporate generative artificial intelligence (genAI) into their legal writing curricula.

GenAI is technology that can create text, images, videos and other media in response to prompts inputted by a user – otherwise known as a human being. Of the various types of genAI software currently available, ChatGPT is probably the best known.

Over the next year, Tanner and her team will design, develop and test resources that will become open-source materials for use in teaching legal writing and other law subjects. As the word infers, “open-source” means the materials will be open to anyone, free of charge.

Tanner wants the legal community – particularly those, like her, who teach legal writing – to accept that genAI is becoming part of the teaching environment, and having resources that enable an instructor to use it is key to making it work effectively in the classroom.

“Generative AI will change the way we teach. Some professors worry that a sea change is on the horizon – that we will not be able to assess student learning the way we did pre-ChatGPT,” she said. “Undoubtedly, we will have to adapt. And though generative AI will challenge the way we teach, there is also significant potential for innovation.”

The toolkit will help curious teachers without much prior preparation in genAI to develop knowledge and skills that will help them to embrace it in a way that enhances rather than deteriorates their sense of competency. “A law professor who teaches legal writing will be able to use the toolkit to continue developing their teaching identity rather than be threatened by the increased tempo of technological change,” Tanner said.

“We intend to show instructors how to frame teaching objectives that either work around or embrace generative AI, giving them a framework that is adaptable to evolving technologies. We also will provide examples of how to align teaching objectives with student outcomes.”

The toolkit also will enable those who use it to customize their use of genAI. “We do not intend for this to be a prescriptive approach to legal writing instruction nor one-size-fits-all writing assignments. Instead, it will focus on principles that each professor could adapt for their own purposes.”

Working with Tanner on the project are Tracy Norton, professor of law, and William Monroe, assistant director for instructional technology, of the Paul M. Hebert Law Center at Louisiana State University.

The toolkit is expected to launch in fall 2024.

Lawrence keynoted the school’s commemoration of Constitution Day 2023, which kicked off a in celebration of as UofL’s 19^th president and was part of the yearlong series of events marking the university’s 225^th anniversary.

Lawrence today is the secretary of the Phi Beta Kappa Society and was previously president of Brandeis University and dean of George Washington University’s School of Law. His topic was the role of universities in a fully functioning democracy.

He opened with a quotation from Justice Louis D. Brandeis: “If we are to be led by the light of reason, let our minds be bold.” And he closed with a quote from Brandeis’ protégé, Justice Felix Frankfurter: “To regard teachers—in our entire educational system, from the primary grades to the university—as the priests of our democracy is … not to indulge in hyperbole.”

“It is the special task of teachers to foster those habits of open-mindedness and critical inquiry which alone make for responsible citizens who in turn make possible an enlightened and effective public opinion (needed to create a functioning democracy),” he said.

“A renewed and strengthened national commitment to accessible and inclusive education will not only permit members of our society to live more meaningful lives, and more productive lives, but it will allow our nation to resist authoritarian impulses and embrace the openness of mind and spirit that are as essential today for a self-governing people in a democratic society as they were … 236 years ago when the framers signed the Constitution. …

“Indeed, the ultimate authority of their signing and the ultimate authority to which we must continue to appeal and which our nation is duty bound to educate, is, ‘We the People.’”

Lawrence’s address was followed by a spirited panel discussion that included Brandeis Law professors Cedric Merlin Powell, Enid Trucios-Haynes and Joe Dunman and UofL General Counsel Angela Curry.

The presentation can be viewed in its entirety A photo gallery from the event is

The RJ Project will use the $75,000 award from the National Sea Grant Law Center through NOAA’s National Coastal Resilience Fund to examine coastal urban adaptation in the eight cities: Boston, Cleveland, Miami, New Orleans, San Diego, Savannah, Seattle and Tampa. Principal investigator Tony Arnold, the Herbert F. Boehl Chair in Property and Land Use at Brandeis Law, and his team will collaborate with researchers at Georgetown University and Georgia State University.

The project will examine how the cities are currently ensuring that their climate adaptation plans are equitable and fair.

“We will assess plans, policies and laws affecting climate adaptation in these eight coastal urban areas with an eye towards addressing the vulnerabilities of low-income neighborhoods of color,” Arnold said. “We’ll then use our assessments to produce a guidebook of best practices and a series of webinars so that any city can use the information to make their climate adaptation planning equitable for all neighborhoods.”

The project utilizes the Resilience Justice Assessment Framework, pioneered by Arnold and Resilience Justice Fellows at Brandeis Law. The Resilience Justice Project addresses the inequitable vulnerabilities of communities, such as neighborhoods, to many different shocks and changes.

“Systems of injustice, inequality, marginalization and oppression have undermined the capacities of low-income communities of color to resist and adapt to shocks and changes,” Arnold said. “These shocks and changes include climate change, economic shocks, political change, disasters, pollution, health crises and many other disruptions.

“Many low-income neighborhoods of color have both community-based resilience but also vulnerabilities that come from inequitable conditions and systems of inequitable policies. We aim to empower marginalized communities so that they can thrive, not just survive.”

Arnold and his team will build on work they began last year using the framework in a project funded by the EPA and Kentucky Division of Water to examine the 34-square-mile Mill Creek watershed in southwest Louisville. In this study, the research team gathered the views and needs of residents on environmental and community conditions and is providing the information to the Louisville/Jefferson County Metropolitan Sewer District.

“We’re taking what we’ve learned about how the framework worked with Mill Creek to the eight cities in the new project,” Arnold said. “We’ll continue to be engaged with the Mill Creek watershed community while we carry out the work under our new grant. In this way, all communities involved can learn from one another.”

Along with his law school appointment, Arnold holds an affiliated professorship in , part of the College of Arts and Sciences. The Resilience Justice Fellows working on the project are Brandeis Law students Ralph Banchstubbs, Carcyle Barrett, Irie Ewers, Jake Mace, Colin Sheehan and Laken Wadsworth and Ph.D. candidate in Urban and Public Affairs Rebecca Wells-Gonzalez.

The collaborating groups working with UofL on the project are the Georgetown Climate Center at Georgetown Law School and the Center for the Comparative Study of Metropolitan Growth at Georgia State. They also will work with local governments and community-based environmental justice groups in the eight coastal areas.

The research project is titled “Equitable Coastal Urban Adaptation to Climate Change: A Resilience Justice Assessment” and is supported by National Sea Grant Law Center grant PTE Federal Award Number NA22OAR4170089, Subaward Number 24-07-08.