News - College of Law

Illinois Chief Justice announces Housing Clinic at Illinois Law

Illinois Supreme Court Chief Justice P. Scott Neville, Jr. with the deans of law schools at Northern Illinois, Southern Illinois, and University of Illinois

The College of Law was fortunate to host Illinois Supreme Court Chief Justice P. Scott Neville, Jr. on October 8 for a wide-ranging discussion about access to justice, pro bono representation, and the rule of law in Illinois. Our mission to advance justice and the public good is of paramount importance, which made his announcement of a new Housing Justice Clinic initiative all the more meaningful.

Joined by Illinois Law Dean Jamelle Sharpe as well as Dean Cassandra Hill of Northern Illinois University College of Law, and Dean Hannah Johnson of Southern Illinois University Simmons Law School, Chief Justice Neville shared his plan for the Illinois Supreme Court to partner with the three law schools to help people facing housing problems.

“Today, throughout Illinois, people enter our courthouses with serious problems. They may be about to lose their home. Families may be in trouble. Livelihoods may be at stake. Despite having a valid claim or defense, they may have no idea how to assert it,” he said. “We sometimes talk about access to justice as though opening the courthouse doors solves the problem. It doesn’t. A person can walk through those doors and still have no idea what to do next. That is where lawyers come in.”

This unprecedented collaboration between the highest court and the state’s centers for legal education is a tremendous undertaking, one that Illinois Law is excited to see come to fruition. Providing help to those in need and shaping the minds of future lawyers will make the clinics life-changing for many individuals.

“By providing free legal representation to those suffering from housing instability, the initiative will augment our ability to provide transformative educational opportunities for our students, expand legal services to those in our part of the state who desperately need it, and increase awareness of pro bono opportunities for members of the bar. This is an exciting development,” Sharpe said in an email to the Illinois Law community.

The College of Law hopes to begin enrolling students in the clinic by the fall of 2027.

MSL student Zehr Gantz honored with Athena Award

In her day job, Sarah Zehr Gantz works with policies and programs across all three University of Illinois campuses as associate vice president for academic affairs for the UI System. When that work isn’t demanding of her, she is among the student body in the Law Building, working hard and studying to earn her Master of Studies in Law degree, which will be her fourth degree, to enrich her personal skill set and be a better servant of the university. That dedication and hard-working spirit are part of what led the Executive Club of Champaign County to name her a recipient of the Athena Leadership Award.

Illinois LawCast: Ensuring First-Generation Student Success

This episode of Illinois LawCast examines the experiences of three first-generation college students enrolled in the JD program at Illinois Law. We pride ourselves on offering the services and support that help all of our students, and with 85% of our newest JD students being first-generation law students, it is important to provide support for the unique challenges of law school. Our robust student support, career counseling, and sense of community have helped make Illinois one of the top destinations among Big Ten schools for first-generation college students: those who are the first in their family to receive any degree. In 2025, our 1L class included 21% first-generation college students; that number in 2026 is 19%. In this episode, I am joined by three first-generation college students in their second year of law school, Brian Rodriguez, Alex Nevarez, and Zaccheus Ng-Posey. Each of them share about their backgrounds and what made them want to continue their journey in higher education by pursuing a law degree from Illinois.

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If you have comments or suggestions for the podcast, please contact podcast@law.illinois.edu.

Kar publishes article on living contracts

College of Law letters on brick building, with blue, orange, and white flowers in foreground

Professor Robin Kar recently published a co-authored article in CHI, the #1 journal for Human-Computer Interaction. The article, “Living Contracts: Beyond Document-Centric Interaction with Legal Agreements,” explores a future where contracts educate users on legal rights not in the contract, transform legal language to help understanding, and proactively supply contractual information as needed; the authors refer to these interfaces as living contracts.

Read the full article online.

Mazzone talks about election monitors with ABC 7

Professor Jason Mazzone speaks during a panel

“You can imagine some really drastic scenarios in which, for example, federal officers think that there’s some funny business going on, and they decide to seize ballots or make arrests. That would be tremendously disruptive of the midterm elections,” Professor Jason Mazzone told ABC 7 while discussing a hypothetical future in which Department of Justice election monitors cause more trouble than they prevent. His remarks came as part of a segment on the Trump administration’s plans to deploy monitors during the midterm election.

Watch the full segment online.

“No Kings” law one step forward and two steps back, Mazzone writes

Recently, several states have enacted laws to provide redress in state courts for persons who have suffered violations of federal constitutional rights at the hands of federal officials. A new version of this law, from California, avoids some of the mistakes of previous efforts in states like Illinois, as Professors Jason Mazzone and Vikram Amar write in an article on Justia Verdict. However, the law includes an “unhelpful blend of the serious and the theatrical, in which the latter often obscures the former and thus distracts from what should be a careful and civil conversation about helpful legal innovations that actually might matter.”

Read their full analysis on Justia Verdict.

Illinois LawCast: Helping students get the career they want

Our first episode of season three focuses on the College of Law’s Office of Career Planning and Professional Development. Led by Executive Assistant Dean Greg Miarecki, the office offers students a strategic approach to finding the jobs they desire through changing employment climates via counseling, networking, marketing, and a variety of formal programs. Miarecki joins the podcast for the first half to provide an overview of the office and the work they do; in the second half, Director of Career Planning Matthew Clegg shares some specifics of the work he does as a career counselor as well as how he focuses on public interest and helping students who want to work for the public good find their place.

About the guests

Greg Miarecki leads the College’s Office of Career Planning and Professional Development, including employer outreach, strategic planning, and program design and implementation. A partner at Winston & Strawn LLP focusing on complex civil litigation and white-collar criminal matters, Greg received his BA in public policy cum laude from the University of Chicago and his JD from the University of Chicago Law School.

Matthew Clegg counsels students and alumni and specializes in counseling those interested in a public interest or government career. Matthew earned his BA from the University of Illinois, a Master of Arts in Teaching from Marian University, and his JD from the College of Law magna cum laude, where he served as the book review editor for the Law Review. Before joining the College of Law in 2015, Matthew worked as an associate in Chicago with Winston & Strawn LLP where he focused on financial services litigation. He has also worked as a social worker and as a teaching fellow in Gary, Indiana through the New Teacher Project.

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If you have comments or suggestions for the podcast, please contact podcast@law.illinois.edu.

Illinois LawCast: I Am Ready preps pre-law students for success

As a land-grant institution, the University of Illinois was founded on the idea it should provide education to the people of the state of Illinois, no matter their background or socioeconomic level. In addition, the College of Law’s mission includes advancing justice and the public good. To marry these goals, the College of Law and Pre-Law Advising Services created the I Am Ready program, which supports students from any institution in central Illinois to enhance participant success in the law admissions process and the first year of law school.

In this episode, Megan Pickens, director of pre-law advising services, and Rebecca Ray, assistant dean of admissions and financial aid, join the podcast to discuss the I Am Ready program. They shared their motivation, details about the program, and information about how students and alumni can be part of I Am Ready.

Andrew Johnson, a member of the first I Am Ready cohort and a rising 3L at Illinois Law, also joined the podcast. He shared some of his experience and how I Am Ready has helped set him on a path to a successful law school career.

For more information about I Am Ready, including how to apply, visit their website: https://prelaw.illinois.edu/events/annual-programs/i-am-ready/

You can contact Pre-Law Advising at prelaw@illinois.edu or Law Admissions at law-admissions@illinois.edu.

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If you have comments or suggestions for the podcast, please contact podcast@law.illinois.edu.

The College of Law congratulates Gavin Sepanik for The American Bankruptcy Law Journal Prize

The University of Illinois College of Law is proud to share that third-year student Gavin Sepanik has been named a 2026 recipient of The American Bankruptcy Law Journal Prize. The award recognizes students who have earned the highest grade in a bankruptcy class at any ABA accredited United States law school. Sepanik was nominated for the award by Professor Robert Lawless, making him the second recipient from the College of Law in the last two years, following Mary Hudson, who was nominated by Professor Ralph Brubaker in 2025.

Loch shares tips for overcoming the forgetting curve

In the Summer/Fall 2026 issue of “The Learning Curve,” published by AALS, Professor Michael Loch shared an article on how to increase focus on how students learn. Centered around Hermann Ebbinghaus’s forgetting curve, the article details why individuals forget things and how law schools can help their students overcome the nature of forgetting to maximize success.

Read the article in “The Learning Curve.”