Accolades: Dean Tapped for AALS Executive Committee, Guggenheim Board

Dean Risa Goluboff of the University of Virginia School of Law has been elected to the Association of American Law Schools Executive Committee and named a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation trustee. The news is among other achievements and recognition for members of the Law School community.

The executive committee appoints the AALS executive director and the members serve staggered, three-year terms. Goluboff’s nomination was announced in advance of the AALS Annual Meeting on Jan. 6.

“AALS plays a critical role in advocating for law schools, faculty members, students, and the legal profession as a whole,” she said in a statement. “I’m honored and excited to join the Executive Committee and help pursue this important mission.”

Goluboff was named a Guggenheim trustee in November. In 2009, she was named a Guggenheim Fellow in the field of constitutional studies. Comprised of fellows and supporters, the board of trustees is the steward of the foundation’s endowment and the final arbiter in fellowship selection, according to the foundation.

Goluboff is the author of “Vagrant Nation: Police Power, Constitutional Change, and the Making of the 1960s” and “The Lost Promise of Civil Rights.” She is the Arnold H. Leon Professor of Law and a professor of history at UVA. She has served as dean since 2016.

Shalf To Co-Chair AALS Section

Professor Sarah Shalf ’01 was elected co-chair of the AALS Section on Clinical Legal Education at the AALS Annual Meeting. She was elected a member of the Section’s Executive Committee in 2022 and formerly served as section secretary. The Section on Clinical Legal Education is the largest section of the AALS. It supports clinic and externship teachers, including by hosting an annual national clinical conference and assisting with multiple regional clinical conferences, as well as providing programming at the AALS Annual Meeting. The section also sponsors three annual awards recognizing clinical teachers; promotes clinical scholarship through support of the publication of the Clinical Law Review, workshops and works-in-progress sessions throughout the year; and provides other mentoring, training and help for clinical teachers.

Shalf directs the Community Solutions Clinic and serves as the school’s director of clinical programs.

Robinson Appointed to NAS Committee

Professor Gerard Robinson was appointed to a new ad hoc committee of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine to improve learning for low-income students. The Committee on Promoting Learning and Development In K-12 Out of School Time Settings For Low Income and Marginalized Children and Youth study will focus on students from low-income households, across urban, suburban and rural settings. NAS will publish a national report in 2025.

Robinson is a Professor of Practice in Public Policy and Law at UVA’s Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy, and has a joint appointment at UVA Law.

Grads Earn Perfect Bar Exam Rate in Virginia

UVA Law graduates, including first-time takers, notched a perfect overall pass rate for the Virginia Bar Exam in July for the second year in a row — the highest pass rate in the state, according to data from the Virginia Board of Bar Examiners. UVA Law graduates also scored a perfect pass rate for the February 2023 exam and tied for highest pass rate in the state for that cycle. This year’s overall pass rate for all Virginia bar candidates was 74.91.

Grad Places for Tax Paper

Neil Kelliher ’23 won third place in the 2023 Tannenwald Writing Competition for his paper “Clearly Erroneous: Countering Federal Circuit Courts’ Unjustified and Unnecessary Trend Toward De Novo Review of the Economic Substance Doctrine.” Kelliher previously won first place in an international tax student writing competition in 2022. He also received the Law School’s Edwin S. Cohen Tax Prize, awarded to a graduate who has demonstrated superior scholarship in the tax area.