Paying It Forward

Sometimes the most incidental circumstances can change your life. Daniel A. Kittle’s fortune turned when he became a resident assistant (RA) at Michigan State University. At the time, he never would have imagined that taking the job would lead him to law school.

“The practice of law is a way for me to give back to the world all that I've been given.”

A sports enthusiast, Kittle longed for a career in sports news. He studied journalism at Michigan State University, wrote for a variety of sports Web sites and worked as a sports writer for the local newspaper. To help cover expenses, he became an RA — and found himself assigned to work in the same dorm as Rachel Wixson. The two RAs dated throughout their junior and senior years. Following graduation, Wixson (JD’08) enrolled in law school at Willamette University, and Kittle headed off for a two-year stint in the Peace Corps.

Kittle traveled to Shagym, a small village of 1,000 people in the Kyrgyz Republic, where he taught English and coached basketball in a local school. “There was no running water in the village, so we hauled water to the homes on donkeys and took baths out of buckets,” he explained. “Everywhere you went was cold and drafty. I wore long underwear and a heavy coat even while teaching.”

While in Shagym, Kittle received a small projects assistance grant to repair several classrooms and create new learning spaces at the school. Renovating the lunchroom proved to be the most daunting project. “The kids ate in a room with dirt floors, crumbling walls and haphazard tables,” he said. “We put in a floor and windows and fixed up a kitchen area so the cooks actually had a working
stove for preparing warm food.”

Kittle and Wixson stayed in touch throughout his time in Kyrgyzstan. “She told me all about Willamette and said I’d like law school since it involves so much analytical thinking,” he said. “I knew I wanted to make a broader impact on people’s lives, so I applied to several schools. I chose Willamette after attending a student-sponsored event with Rachel. I really liked the professors and the close-knit feel of the school.”

Kittle, who served as 1L class president last year, said his classmates are all highly supportive of one another. “Even when we competed in the first-year appellate competition, we all swapped briefs when we switched sides,” said Kittle, who won the competition. “There’s really a good dynamic among the people in my class.”

Since coming to Willamette, Kittle has immersed himself in the law. In addition to serving as a research assistant to Professor Jeffrey C. Dobbins and Dean Symeon C. Symeonides, he has started working in the Special Litigation Unit of the Oregon Department of Justice. “At the DOJ, I research complex legal topics for cases where there’s not much legal precedent,” he said. “I’ve gotten a lot of experience working on really interesting cases.”

Heading into his second year of school, Kittle remains focused on strengthening his courtroom skills. “I’m really interested in civil litigation,” he said. “I like the interaction and the competitive nature of the courtroom. It’s exhilarating to study case law and find the best support for your argument.”

Regardless of what the immediate future holds, he knows going to law school was the right career move. “I believe everyone has some special purpose in this world,” he said. “For as long as I can remember, I’ve believed mine is to make a difference in other people’s lives.

“I like the idea of paying it forward,” he added. “The practice of law is a way for me to give back to the world all that I’ve been given. In the end, you never know how much of a difference one person can really make, but I need to try to find out.”

So how did he repay Wixson, who convinced him to give up sports journalism and become a lawyer? He proposed — and the two were married in May 2007.

Bringing Business Sense to the Law

During high school, David A. Friedman dreamed of becoming a radio disc jockey. He hung around the local radio station in Bridgeport, Conn., hoping to learn the business by watching the older men who ran the station. He liked the way radio worked and the glamour of the job. The old guys at the station, however, warned him against a career in radio by citing stories of graveyard shifts and financially unstable stations. “I put thoughts of working in radio aside when I went to college,” he said. “But during law school, I got the bug again.”

“I hope to set students on the right course — so they realize that honesty and integrity are important traits to have if you want to pursue a career that promotes justice.”

Years after giving up hopes of becoming a famous DJ, Friedman approached the manager of the campus radio station about starting a community talk show focused on legal issues — and was given a weekly time slot. “We couldn’t give out legal advice over the radio, so we brought in local attorneys and state and local officials to provide advice to callers,” he said. “Our most popular show featured a traffic attorney. Man, the board just lit up that night.”

Surprisingly, Friedman’s second choice of careers was not law, but economics. “In college, I initially thought I wanted to become an economics professor, an academic,” explained Friedman, who earned his undergraduate degree at Yale College. “I fell in love with economics my first week. I really appreciated the analytical puzzle work of microeconomics. The puzzle pieces all fit together and explain the way the world works.”

Following graduation, Friedman went to work for Monitor Group, a consulting company based in Cambridge, Mass.

He spent the next two years working as a corporate strategy consultant for Fortune 1000 clients. “I taught business executives how to market their businesses and become more profitable,” he said.

Friedman enjoyed the demands of consulting, but he longed for greater responsibilities within the company. Seeking an “educational turbo boost” for his career, he took a leave of absence from Monitor to attend Yale Law School. “I knew I would be closer to the action a lot faster if I went to law school,” he explained.

“I wanted a new lens to view the world through,” he said of his decision to study law. “Law would enable me to examine the same set of problems I’d studied in economics, but in a different way. Economics examines how we make decisions about transactions; the law designates the rules governing those transactions.”

While in law school, Friedman did not stray far from his academic roots. In addition to serving as a teaching assistant to Professor James Tobin, who won the 1981 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics, Friedman was named a John M. Olin Fellow in Law and Economics. He also worked in a number of legal clinics, including landlord-tenant and environmental protection clinics.

Following graduation, he returned to Monitor Group as a senior corporate strategy consultant, managing cases in highly regulated industries, including telecommunications, transportation and financial services. “My law degree enabled me to work closely with various companies’ general counsels on business strategy,” he said.

After six additional years with Monitor, Friedman reached a crossroads in his career. “In order to move up, I’d have to start selling professional services,” he said. “I didn’t like the idea of competing in corporate beauty contests to win business. I preferred the more intellectually challenging side of the business — helping to make companies more profitable.”

In 2005, Friedman left Monitor to start his own consulting firm, Sutton Place Insights in New York City, where he could work at this own pace and focus on business analysis. His work primarily focused on market analysis and strategic due diligence for private equity firms and commercial banks. The following year, however, he again yielded to the siren call of academia.

In 2006, Friedman became a visiting assistant professor of clinical legal studies in Willamette University’s Clinical Law Program, where he taught the business law clinic. Not long after joining the clinic, he was deputized a special assistant attorney general in the Financial Fraud/Consumer Protection Division of the Oregon Department of Justice. Under his supervision, students enrolled in the law school’s Clinical Law Program helped the DOJ investigate and prosecute numerous high-profile civil cases involving financial fraud and consumer protection issues.

“The best part of teaching in the clinic was seeing students realize how much they were already capable of doing — when they see that link between what they’ve learned in the classroom and what they’re doing in real practice,” Friedman said. “There’s nothing better than seeing students develop and find their professional footing.”

Friedman became a full-time member of the Willamette law faculty in August 2008. An assistant professor specializing in business law, he will teach Contracts I and II and Business Organizations. “Business law can be quite exciting,” he said. “It’s all about greed, deceit, family feuds, the drama of life and our attempt to impose a set of rules to create order. If you make the right rules, then the wheels of commerce grind smoothly.

“Truly substantive problems can be messy,” he added. “You have to struggle to find the best solution
and be able to persuade people with facts and arguments that your answer really is the best. That’s true whether you’re appearing in court, overseeing a transaction or arguing across the kitchen table.”

Friedman appreciates the challenges young lawyers face trying to learn the law and develop skill in the field. And he looks forward to helping them maneuver through the demands of being legal professionals. “I’m looking forward to having that first crack at exposing first-year students to the law,” he said. “I hope to set students on the right course — so they realize that honesty and integrity are important traits to have if you want to pursue a career that promotes justice.”

For Friedman, civility and professionalism are not just theories of behavior but the foundation of good practice. “There’s this notion in law school that who ever speaks loudest wins,” he said. “But it is honesty and desire to problem solve that will ultimately carry the day.”

Empowering Others Through the International Human Rights Clinic

“I love the idea of building something new,” said Gwynne L. Skinner, who joined Willamette University College of Law in August to help launch the school’s first law clinic focused on international human rights. “I loved the idea of coming to Willamette and starting a clinic focused on international human rights. Students are hungry for it; they want this type of practice.

“I’m a fierce litigator, but there’s more to dealing with human rights cases than solving legal issues. As a lawyer, I serve people who suffer human rights abuses. As someone who serves them, I also need to empower them.”

“International human rights clinics should be available to students all across the country,” she added. “It should be available to all law students, not just those in New York or Washington, D.C.”

An assistant professor of clinical law, Skinner brings considerable experience in the areas of international human rights, refugee law, civil rights and clinical practice to the school’s new clinic, one of six advanced legal education offerings available through Willamette’s Clinical Law Program. The new international human rights clinic complements the college’s specialized Certificate Program in International and Comparative Law, which was designed to prepare students to meet the challenges of legal careers in an increasingly global profession.

Skinners’ own interest in human rights developed at an early age in rural Iowa. “Even at a young age, I had a keen awareness of global poverty and hunger,” she said. “By the time I went to college, I was already interested in foreign policy and human rights issues. Political science was a natural choice for a major.”

Skinner earned a B.A. in political science at the University of Northern Iowa and graduated with highest honors. She then enrolled in a joint degree program in law and American studies at the University of Iowa. Skinner, who sold her only possession of value — a camera — to pay for the LSAT, paid her own way through school. The sacrifice paid off, and she earned a M.A. and J.D. with high distinction.

Following graduation, she accepted a position with the U.S. Department of Justice Honors Program. The highly competitive program enables gifted young lawyers to begin their careers in the Justice Department, despite having limited experience. After gaining critical courtroom practice in Washington, D.C., Skinner was hired as a criminal prosecutor in the King County Prosecutor’s Office in Washington state.

She then entered private practice as an attorney with the law firm of Frank & Rosen LLP, where she represented individuals and employees in the areas of employment law and civil rights. She went on to practice with Dorsey & Whitney LLP, focusing primarily on employment law, ERISA fiduciary law and complex commercial litigation.

“Civil litigation was intellectually stimulating, but the substance of it never enthralled me; it didn’t feed my soul the way human rights work does,” said Skinner, who developed an active pro bono and public interest litigation practice while working at Dorsey. “I always tell students to follow their dreams and their heart, but that they need to be practical. I knew I needed experience in a big firm to get where I wanted in the future.”

Skinner’s commitment to “paying her dues” in private practice paid off when she connected with the Center for Justice & Accountability, a San Francisco-based international human rights organization dedicated to ending torture and human rights abuses around the world and advancing the rights of survivors to seek truth, justice and redress. “I contacted them about doing pro bono work,” she said. “Once I had civil litigation experience and had something to offer, I began working with them on human rights cases.”

In early 2003, Skinner left private practice to establish the Public Interest Law Group PLLC, a firm dedicated to providing quality legal services to individuals and groups of varying financial means. The firm’s key practice areas include employment discrimination, wage claims, and human and civil rights issues. Skinner’s practice focused primarily on international human rights.

Her work did not go unnoticed. In 2005, she was named one of Seattle’s Top Lawyers in the area of civil rights by Seattle Magazine. That same year, she received the Law and Justice Award from Hate Free Zone for her representation of Somali workers who successfully challenged religious discrimination at a large sausage manufacturing company. She earned the title Super Lawyer from Washington Law & Politics in 2006 and 2007.

Before long, Seattle University School of Law came calling. “Seattle University had just started its human rights clinic,” she explained. “The law school hired me to serve as practitioner-in-residence at the clinic and asked me to bring my international human rights practice with me.” During this time, Skinner also attended Oxford University in England and earned an M.St. (LL.M. equivalent) in International Human Rights Law.

While working at the law clinic, Skinner took on a pro bono case that received international attention. In March 2005, she filed a case with the Center for Constitutional Rights in New York against Caterpillar Inc. Corrie v. Caterpillar charged Caterpillar with aiding and abetting war crimes and other serious human rights violations on the grounds that the company provided bulldozers to the Israeli Defense Forces, knowing they would be used unlawfully to demolish homes and endanger civilians in the Occupied Palestinian Territory. Numerous international human rights organizations and the United Nations have condemned the demolitions as a violation of international humanitarian law.

Working on human rights issues with students in the clinic helped Skinner discover an innate love of teaching. “The transition from practitioner to teacher felt very natural to me,” she said. “I get a great deal of happiness from being able to make a difference in students’ lives. I want to make their legal education experience as full as possible. I want to help them do good work.

“As a clinical law professor, my job is not to be in charge of the case, but to guide — to teach students to think about the decisions they’re making,” she explained. “When you’re a practitioner working with young lawyers, you’re in charge of the case and others assist you. That model doesn’t work in a clinic setting, which requires a more reflective practice.

“Students need to take the time to reflect on the work they’re doing so that they become better lawyers in the future,” she added. “That’s so important; we need more capable lawyers, particularly good human rights lawyers.”

Skinner’s enthusiasm for teaching was clearly evident to W. Warren H. Binford, who helped bring Skinner to Willamette. “I am extremely pleased that Professor Skinner has joined our Clinical Law Program,” said Binford, director of the Clinical Law Program. “Professor Skinner has made a significant impact everywhere she has practiced law. We feel extremely fortunate to have her join our program and are looking forward to working with her as she continues to contribute to the advancement of human rights and clinical legal education for years to come.”

Skinner sees her role in Willamette’s new international human rights law clinic as two-fold. “I want to teach the substance of international human rights law, as well as to help students understand strategy and improve their legal analysis and fact-finding skills,” she said. “But I also want to teach students to listen. Lawyers are trained to push their emotions aside and to fix problems, but listening is a big part of human rights practice.

“I’m a fierce litigator, but there’s more to dealing with human rights cases than solving legal issues,” she added. “As a lawyer, I serve people who suffer human rights abuses. As someone who serves them, I also need to empower them. One way to do that is to sit and actively listen to them tell their story and describe their pain. To do so helps free their spirit and empowers them.

“The old way of thinking is, ‘I don’t want to hear your pain.’ But law has to become more holistic. I want to help students understand this is another way to help people. That just by listening, they can make a difference to the client, the person, they serve.”

An International Perspective on Criminal Law

From 2003–04, when few members of the international community thought about the three-year Bosnian War that ended almost a decade earlier, Caroline Davidson spent her days building a case against officers of the Bosnian-Serb army for crimes against humanity, war crimes and complicity in genocide.

“You don’t always get satisfaction for the victims or their families. When you’re dealing with war crimes and genocide, the end result never matches the crime.”

As a lawyer working for the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in The Hague, Netherlands, Davidson teamed up with international human rights and criminal lawyers to help bring justice to victims of the 1995 Srebrenica massacre, the largest mass murder in Europe since
World War II.

“Vidoje Blagojević and Dragan Jokić, two former officers in the Republika Srpska Army, were prosecuted for their involvement in the killing of more than 8,000 Bosnian Muslims over the course of just a few days,” she explained. “The facts of the case were shocking.”

Davidson believes prosecuting criminals for international human rights violations is important to survivors and their family members. “We cannot allow such crimes to occur with impunity,” she said. “We tried to bring some measure of justice for the victims and their families so they would know what they went through will not be forgotten.”

In addition to seeking justice for the victims, Davidson believes such cases create invaluable historical records of events. “Until very recently, many people in the former Federal Republic of Yugoslavia denied the Srebrenica massacre ever took place,” she explained. “When the co-defendants of Blagojević and Jokić pleaded guilty, there was open admission of the slaughter and the role of Bosnian-Serb forces in it. That’s significant because it becomes a historical record of the truth — an acknowledgement that the crimes actually occurred.”

The pursuit of historical fact has been of interest to Davidson throughout much of her life. A native of Toronto, Davidson studied history at Princeton University. “The excellent teaching of several history professors really got me interested in the subject,” she explained.

While at Princeton, Davidson participated in summer study abroad programs that enabled her to travel to both France and Germany. She also studied in Spain for a semester. “I always had a knack for languages; that fed my interest in travel,” said Davidson, who is fluent in Spanish and French; proficient in Portuguese, Italian and German; and has a working knowledge of Bosnian.

After college, Davidson’s proficiency in Spanish helped her land a job as a business analyst with McKinsey & Co. in Buenos Aires, Argentina. She spent a year working for the firm before deciding to apply to law school.

“Maybe I watched too much TV as a kid, but the law seemed appealing to me,” Davidson said of her decision to enroll in Harvard Law School. “It seemed a way to combine my interest in history, research and international topics. I was pretty open-minded about what law school could offer me, which gave me a chance to consider different legal topics. I took an asylum and refugee class my first year that really sparked my interest in human rights law.”

During her first and second years of law school, Davidson worked on the Harvard Human Rights Journal, an annual publication of international human rights scholarship. She served as executive editor in her final year. “Working on the journal gave me the opportunity to work alongside others and get acquainted with different topics within human rights law,” she said.

Following graduation in 2000, Davidson served as a judicial clerk to Judge Alfred T. Goodwin of the Ninth Circuit Federal Court of Appeals. She drafted bench memoranda and opinions on a wide variety of federal appeals cases, including criminal, human rights and immigration cases. “The clerkship gave me the ability to understand litigation from the perspective of the courts,” she said. “It was a good introduction to how the court system works from within. As a litigator, it is useful to understand how the courts are looking at specific issues.”

When her clerkship ended, Davidson became a litigation associate in the San Francisco office of Howard, Rice, Nemerovski, Canady, Falk & Rabkin. “It was a good introduction to litigation,” Davidson said of her two years with the firm.

In 2003, Davidson served as a human rights fellow at the ICTY in The Hague. It was the first of three positions she would hold with the ICTY. She returned the following year as a lawyer/consultant to help prosecute Blagojević and Jokić. In January 2005, she moved to Sarajevo to work in the prosecutor’s office of the Special Department for War Crimes for the State Court of Bosnia-Herzegovina, where she reviewed and analyzed cases for prosecution and coordinated investigation activities with the
ICTY. At the end of the year, she accepted a position as assistant federal public defender in Portland, Ore.

“I thought it was a good idea to learn about domestic criminal prosecution, as well as international,” she said of the move to Portland. Davidson represented people charged with federal crimes and violations of supervised release conditions and in habeas corpus proceedings in federal court, including appeals to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.

Philosophically, the transition from prosecution to public defense was an easy one for Davidson. Whether as a prosecutor or a defense attorney, I’ve always believed that a person’s right to a fair trial must be protected,” she noted. “In the domestic arena, criminal defense was a good fit for me. I believe that, in the United States, minorities and the poor are systematically disadvantaged in the criminal justice system. Recognizing that most criminal defendants have not had the opportunities I’ve had in life, I’ve felt more comfortable in the defense role.”

In 2007, with some defense work under her belt, Davidson returned to the ICTY to work as a legal officer in the prosecutor’s office. “TheInternational Criminal Tribunal will be winding down in the next few years, so I thought this might be my last opportunity to work on a case there,” she said of the decision to move back to the Netherlands. During her last stint, she prosecuted members of the Bosnian-Croat military and political figures allegedly responsible for the 1992–94 ethnic cleansing and persecution of Bosnian Muslims.

Davidson believes a drawback to working in international criminal law is that you never know if you’ve “done right” by the victims’ families. “You don’t always get satisfaction for the victims or their families,” she said. “When you’re dealing with war crimes and genocide, the end result never matches the crime.”

Davidson, who joined the Willamette law faculty in August, looks forward to addressing these issues with the students enrolled in her criminal law courses. “I want students to understand the realities of the criminal system and to get a look at the bigger picture, at the larger issues,” she said. “I also want to help students understand why the law is the way it is and think about how to change it.”

One key lesson she hopes her students will learn is the importance empathy plays in legal practice. “It is important, in both prosecution and defense, to try to understand the challenges people face and how they got where they are,” she said. “It’s important to think objectively as a lawyer, but also to remember that a little empathy goes a long way.”

No doubt, her students will receive excellent instruction in this lesson as well.

Reaching Back to Help Others

“I arrived at law school with an extremely ‘black and white’ mindset,” said A. Richard Vial JD’81, a partner
in Vial Fotheringham LLP in Portland. “I was a cocky Mormon boy who thought he knew everything.”

“In law school, I experienced diversity in thought and learned a great deal from others with different experiences than myself.”

After a few months, however, Vial began to see how narrow his perspective on the world had been. He met law professor and divinity school graduate Carlton Snow, who taught Contracts at Willamette, and the two became fast friends. “He helped me manage the ambivalence that comes as a law student when you realize you don’t know everything, when you realize there are a lot of gray areas in life,” Vial said of his mentor.

A California native, Vial grew up in a small town in southern Oregon and was the first in his family to attend college. Vial initially majored in music at Brigham Young University, but he switched to accounting after a two-year religious mission to Japan. “I studied accounting as a pre-law major,” he said. “My goal all along was to go to law school.”

Vial enrolled in law school at Willamette in 1978. “I knew I wanted to practice real estate law in Oregon, so it made sense that I would attend law school here,” said Vial, who had worked as a real estate agent in college to support his wife, Paula, and their growing family. During law school, Vial had the opportunity to clerk in the condominium section of the Oregon Department of Real Estate. The clerkship introduced him to the concept of homeowner associations, which is now his specialty.

Following law school, Vial worked for the public accounting firm of Touche Ross in Salem. He then joined the firm of McLaughlin, Gunnar, Woods & Wilcox, where he specialized in real estate law. After five years with the firm, Vial established Meyer, O’Malley and Vial with two partners. In 1991, he started a solo practice, Vial and Assoc. PC. Now Vial Fotheringham LLP, the firm employs 15 lawyers and has offices in Portland and Salt Lake City. Approximately 90 percent of his practice is in condos and planned developments. Most of his cases are construction related.

“Every day I get to contemplate the issues of community in these varied mini-municipalities,” he said. “Whether it is assisting with a difficult meeting or pursuing claims related to defective construction, balancing the common good with the rights of the individual is fascinating.”

Despite his many professional accomplishments, Vial considers his greatest success seeing his grandchildren, laughing and happy. The Vials have six birth children, seven adopted Vietnamese children and 22 grandchildren. “I’ve been blessed beyond any dreams I had,” Vial said. “And I feel a responsibility to use that wisely for our family, our neighbors and the world.”

Vial and his wife solidified that connection last year when they created The Vial Family Scholarship Fund for law students, preferably those from their alma mater, Brigham Young University. “I had a sheltered Mormon upbringing that was helped tremendously by my coming to Willamette,” said Vial, a former bishop of his local ward who remains active in and deeply committed to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. “In law school, I experienced diversity in thought and learned a great deal from others with different experiences than myself.

“An education from BYU, combined with one from Willamette, will allow students to gain new perspectives in a way that is truly powerful,” he said. “BYU was a great place to get grounded, and Willamette was a great place to find wings.”