Law School Briefs is Indiana Lawyer’s new section that will highlight news from law schools in Indiana. While we
have always covered law school news and will continue to keep up with law school websites and press releases for updates,
we’ll gladly accept submissions for this section from law students, professors, alums, and others who want to share
law school-related news. If you’d like to submit news or a photo from an event, please send it to Rebecca Berfanger,
rberfanger@ibj.com, along with contact information for any follow up questions at least two weeks in advance of the issue
date.
This year’s Program on Law and State Government at Indiana University School of Law – Indianapolis Oct. 1 will
focus on three main topics for lawyers, businesses, legislators, government employees, and academics: education about entrepreneurship
at the undergrad, graduate school, and law school levels; the idea of “social businesses,” also known as L3Cs
or low profit limited liability companies; and how government entities use data to improve services to citizens.
Each year, the program is designed by two law school students and professor Cynthia A. Baker. This year, students Erin Albert
and Melissa Stuart chose the speakers and topics.
It’s important to have a discussion about L3Cs in Indiana, Albert said, because there is already legislation or legislation
in process to recognize the distinction in Illinois, Ohio, and Michigan.
The concept isn’t brand new that a company would exist to fulfill a mission that wasn’t focused on making a profit,
but she said a specific distinction in the laws that do exist help define tax issues and how much profit is too much profit
to fit into the classification of a “low profit” company. She added there has been research about L3Cs that focus
on the triple bottom line, or what is known as the three Ps. In addition to profit, companies also focus on place, including
the environment and sustainability; and people, including employees, customers, and shareholders. These companies tend to
not only thrive but are also more profitable than companies that only focus on profit, she sad.
An example of someone who has been successful focusing on people and not on profit has been Muhammad Yunus, a 2006 Nobel
Prize winner, who started Grameen Bank in Bangladesh, Albert said. The point of the bank was to give microloans mostly to
women in India who didn’t have any monetary capital but wanted to start small businesses and had enough social capital
to get their businesses off the ground.
The bank has had a payback rate of more than 98 percent, Albert said.
Speakers for this section of the event include Antony Page, a professor at the Indianapolis law school; Robert Lang, CEO
of Mary Elizabeth & Gordon B. Mannweiler Foundation, and CEO, L3C Advisors L3C; John Tyler, vice president and corporate
secretary of Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation; and Elizabeth Carrott Minnigh, an attorney at Buchanan Ingersoll & Rooney
who represents L3Cs.
The speakers are national experts on the topic, Albert said, and will likely spark some controversy among the lawyers, legislators,
and entrepreneurs in the room.
She said it was also important to include education for entrepreneurs as a topic in the conference because it’s something
more people are doing, either as someone who has always wanted to start her own business, as someone who is unexpectedly unemployed
due to the economy, or as a way to have a side business to keep one’s options open.
Albert, herself an entrepreneur, will moderate that discussion between Mark Need, a professor and director of the Elmore
Entrepreneurship Law Clinic at Indiana University Maurer School of Law – Bloomington; and Mark Stewart Long, instructor
of entrepreneurship and management at the Kelley School of Business at Indiana University in Bloomington.
The third major topic, obtaining and effectively using data to improve systems, will be particularly relevant to program
participants who work in government, she said.
For the luncheon and keynote address, Doug Chapin, director of Election Initiatives for the Pew Center on the States will
discuss the role of election data. Stuart will present “Legal Frameworks for Performance-Driven Government.”
Stuart will also moderate the afternoon panel discussion that will address if law is an obstacle to data-based governing
in Indiana. The panel will feature David Griffith, staff attorney for the Indiana Supreme Court, Division of State Court Administration,
who will discuss Judicial Technology and Automation Committee; Becky Selig, director of the Bureau of Quality Improvement
Services for the Division on Disability, Aging, and Rehabilitative Services of the Family and Social Services Administration;
Molly Chamberlin, director of data collection, analysis and reporting for the Office of Learning Choices in the Department
of Education; and Gary Huff, town manager for Fishers.
More information about the conference, which includes 5.5 hours of CLE, is available at http://indylaw.indiana.edu/ under Events. Registration is $100, or $55 for state government attorneys,
judges, legislators, and non-attorneys.•
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G. Michael Witte letter states he's suspended for three years. The case that got him suspended is identical to my estate case, including havin the Late Judge Deiter recuse himself because Newman had a conflict of interest with the judge. His Modus Operandi is nearly identical.
SIGNED BY G. MICHAEL WITTE EXECUTIVE SECRETARY INDIANA SUPREME COURT DISCIPLINARY COMMISSION DATED MAY 17, 2012.
Your 6th complaint against Lawrence T. Newman filed on 4/12/2012. On 1/31/12, the Indiana Supreme Court entered an order suspending Lawrence T. Newman’s law license for a period of three years. More important, even after three years, Lawrence Todd Newman will not get his license back unless and until he goes through a separate proceeding to prove that he is fit to practice law. This is not an easy process, and the burden is upon Lawrence T. Newman to prove by clear and convincing evidence that he is fit to return to practice.
Because of the length of Lawrence T. Newman’s license suspension and the fact he may never succeed in getting his law license reinstated, we are not opening an investigation file at this time.
Should Lawrence T. Newman seek reinstatement in the future, we will open your file and ask Lawrence T. Newman to address your grievance as part of his burden of proving fitness. We have attempted to notify Lawrence T. Newman that this will be required of him.
It may disappoint you to hear that we will be doing nothing on your grievance at this time. However, the most our office can ever accomplish is to take away a lawyer’s license to practice law. We have already done that, albeit as a result of misconduct in cases other than your own. It makes better sense for our office to focus its limited resources on cases where the lawyers are still actively practicing law.
Is there any justice in the Marion County Superior Court Civil Division? I am the unfortunate victim of a retaliatory lawsuit brought by Lawrence Todd Newman, the attorney from an estate case on which I worked as a unsupervised personal representative in 2006. The contract agreement for that case stated that the estate would be responsible for all attorney fees, but Newman refused to close the nearly insolvent estate when my duties were complete and his fees were paid. Instead, he tried to extort additional attorney fees from me by keeping the case open to address a wrongful death claim, despite the estate’s heir’s lack of interest in pursuing it and an expert doctor’s opinion that it would not be worth doing so. He also knowingly deceived me into believing that a “closing statement” was needed to close the estate, even though this requirement had actually been waived by the estate’s heir. The heir’s attorney filed a motion to have Newman removed from the case. After the court closed the probate case with prejudice (barred from further litigation) Newman illegally re-opened the case in another courtroom.
As a result of complaints filed against him for these and similar actions, Newman has been suspended from practicing law for 18 months by the Indiana Disciplinary Commission. In retaliation, he has filed suit against me demanding additional attorney fees for the 2006 estate case, despite the fact that I made no agreement stating that I would pay any fees from my own assets on behalf of the estate. This lawsuit violates the rules of ethics, due process of law, and equal protection of law. Newman has been allowed to file ridiculous pleadings at an alarming rate and has been supported by a biased court system. Judge Carroll refuses to recuse himself from the case despite the fact that, by his own admission, he intends to grant Newman sanctions regardless of the evidence. When my former counsel discovered that the previous judge on the case, Judge Sosin, was a long-time close friend of Newman’s family, Judge Carroll commented for the record during a hearing that Judge Sosin in so many words “he finds the door “was weak for recusing himself from the case as a result of this obvious conflict of interest.
This case is a public policy issue. Statutes put in place to protect unsupervised personal representatives in probate matters are being ignored. This case will affect thousands of individuals involved in probating and the personal representation of estates. Justice cannot possibly be served as long as a biased judge is allowed to defend a “vexatious litigant,” as Newman has been described by Judge Logan in Bradenton, Florida court. If there is any justice in the Marion County Superior Court Civil Division, this case against me will be dismissed with prejudice.
Every affront to decency and every style adopted by criminals is not per se a constituttional violation. Only fools believe or espouse that.
This was an unnecessary change in law, a needless fiddling with a tax that impacted very very few hoosiers, but one that erodes a tax base benefitting very many hoosiers. Just because some people wanted to chalk up a "tax cut" on their legislative brag-list, and didnt give a fig about replacing the revenue any other way. Really stupid. I am a republican my whole life and this just shames me like hell. I have to use a fake name over this because I know my fellow republicans are all brain washed over tax cutting too.