DePaul Law News

Health Law Fellows Compete in National Health Law Transactional Competition

On Friday, March, 23, 2012, three students from the DePaul Law Health Law Institute competed in the National Health law Transactional Competition hosted by Loyola University Chicago School of Law. The annual competition tests students on their ability to sort through a corporate and regulatory dilemma faced by a hypothetical institution. The students then submit a written brief and present their analyses and proposals before a panel of judges.

Azeema Akram ('13), Nikki Ulrich ('13), and Michelle Villanueva ('14) represented DePaul at the competition; this was the first year DePaul sent a team to compete.

While the DePaul team did not win the competition, the team received high praise from the judges for its thoughtful analysis and practical approach to the prompt. Importantly, the students learned a tremendous amount about the nature of corporate and regulatory health law practice and plans to take that experience with them into other extracurricular and professional opportunities.

Legal, health experts examine social media

DePaul’s Health Law Institute and the ABA Special Committee on Bioethics & the Law convened a panel of academic, health and legal experts to address the use of social media by health care providers, patients and health care delivery systems. The program, “Social Media & Healthcare: The Good, the Bad & the Ugly,” held on April 6 at the College of Law, offered attorneys a chance to explore topics including privacy rights and legal issues related to the changing media environment, while earning continuing legal education (CLE) credits. 

Speakers included Ronald Petrovich, manager, Mayo Clinic Center for Social Media; Barbara Dunlap, senior attorney, Walgreens, Employee Relations; Kayhan Parsi, associate professor of bioethics and health policy, Neiswanger Institute for Bioethics and Health Policy, Loyola University Chicago Stritch School of Medicine; and Eric Swirsky, clinical assistant professor, Department of Biomedical and Health Information Sciences, University of Illinois at Chicago.

Forming a partnership earlier this year, the Health Law Institute and ABA Special Committee on Bioethics & the Law aim to present timely, topical CLE programming and publications to educate and inform about the intersection of bioethics and law. 

 

DePaul College of Law climbs 14 spots in U.S. News rankings

DePaul University College of Law placed 84th, up 14 places from last year, in the latest U.S. News & World Report “Best Law Schools” rankings. This is the sixth consecutive year that DePaul has been ranked among the nation’s top law schools by U.S. News. 

Two of DePaul’s specialty programs—health law and intellectual property—consistently rank among the best in the country. In this year’s specialty rankings, the health law program placed 15th and the intellectual property program placed 17th in their respective categories.

In the area of diversity, DePaul again was identified among those law schools that offered a racially and/or ethnically mixed student body. U.S. News cited diverse schools based on the total proportion of minority students, not including international students, and the mix of racial and ethnic groups on campus. 

DePaul also placed 28th among the 80 accredited law schools surveyed that offer a part-time option.

New to the survey this year is a category in which lawyers ranked nearly 100 law schools. DePaul placed 67th among the schools on this list.

Selected rankings will appear in the April edition of U.S. News & World Report magazine and in the 2012 edition of the guidebook, America’s Best Graduate Schools. More information, including law school rankings methodology, is available on the U.S. News website.