A New York University professor, an intellectual property lawyer and a former Supreme Court clerk were hired during the summer by the University of Richmond T.C. Williams School of Law, filling one vacancy and creating two new positions.
Kevin Walsh, Meredith Harbach and John Carroll represent an expansion of the law school into their respective areas.
Walsh, a former clerk to Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, is a constitutional law expert and an expert on the federal court system.
Walsh said he had chosen to come to Richmond both because of its developing reputation for academic scholarship and its location.
"Richmond is a great place to be, from a law standpoint," Walsh said. "This is the capital, home of the Virginia Supreme Court and also the fourth circuit court of appeals, so for the students it's just a great place to learn."
Harbach is a family law expert. Family lawyers handle issues such as divorce and child custody cases.
Harbach said that the transition from New York to Richmond had been a significant but welcome change.
"We went from a tiny apartment in the city, to a house in the suburbs," she said. "What we have now is practically palatial."
Harbach was excited to meet her students and is looking to get involved with UR Downtown - the university's satellite campus in the city, which already has a family law clinic and a pro bono law service.
The school hired Carroll as a way to add a fourth faculty member to the law school's roster of intellectual property experts, an emerging legal field which has recently taken a large role in online legal matters.
Carroll, who has been a part-time faculty member at Richmond and an associate at the Richmond law firm Spotts Fain, was hired as part of the school's effort to reach out into the Richmond business community. He will open the Intellectual Property and Transactional Law clinic, which will give Richmond's law students on-the-job experience with practicing business law. The clinic is the first of its kind at Richmond, because other clinics serve more adversarial legal matters, such as family law.
The recession has hit students coming out of law school hard, Carroll said, and many young lawyers are having trouble finding jobs. Giving students real-world experience through serving businesses in the Richmond area provides them with an advantage as they head into the job market.
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"We are highly motivated to help students find jobs, and the way we are doing that is by forming connections in the community," he said. "Really the way you get hired is by knowing someone, and forming those connections is the best way to go about it."
Carroll's position is so new to the school that his office is a converted storage closet.
Law school Dean John Douglass was unavailable for comment but had said in a previous statement that he was pleased with the new hires and the expansion of the law school.
"Our law school continues to draw national scholars who are also great teachers," he said. "We are thrilled to welcome three new faculty members who bring scholarship, energy and new ideas to our law school."
Contact reporter David Larter at david.larter@richmond.edu
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