Three students in The University of Tulsa’s College of Law are taking part in the inaugural Tenth Circuit Year-in-Review fellowship program. This pilot initiative is giving Sarah Brubaker (2L), Stephanie Smith (3L), and Keaton Harlan (3L) first-hand opportunities to develop their practice-relevant skills, further their research interests, interact with high-level federal practitioners, and learn about emerging case law in the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
“I congratulate Sarah, Stephanie, and Keaton on having been selected for this unique externship program,” said Dean Oren R. Griffin. “The opportunity to learn from and interact with attorneys and judges who practice within the federal court system is a wonderful opportunity for enriching their legal education and expanding their professional horizons.”
Joined by a handful of exceptional students from the law colleges at the University of Oklahoma and Oklahoma City University, Brubaker, Smith, and Harlan participated in sessions that introduced fellows to aspects of federal law practice. In addition to the fellowship awards, the students will receive experiential learning course credit for participating in the fellowship.
In August and September, they attended virtual sessions on case summary, specific areas of law, and research. Currently, the fellows are generating written summaries of every published opinion by the 10th Circuit. These summaries will be distributed as part of the Tenth Circuit Year-in-Review program, an annual continuing legal education event sponsored by the Oklahoma City Chapter of the Federal Bar Association that attracts hundreds of federal practitioners from across the states comprising the 10th Circuit (Oklahoma, Kansas, Colorado, New Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming).
For more than 20 years, the Year-in-Review program has been overseen by Rob Ramana, a career law clerk on the 10th Circuit and one of the co-founders of the fellowship.
For Smith, summarizing the court’s decisions “has been a really useful academic and practical experience. Covering everything from insurance disputes to police brutality, they have allowed me to broaden my knowledge of the law and see how the court is interpreting and applying it.” Envisioning life after graduation, Smith remarked, “I am confident an ability to read and understand case law quickly, which is one of the main skills I’m developing through this program, will be crucial to my success as an attorney.”
Even before the fellowship began, Harlan had a deep interest in federal law. “The work I’ve been doing has already bolstered my legal writing and research skills,” he said, “and all the personal interactions with federal practitioners have been invaluable.” Among the highlights has been a virtual meeting with U.S. Circuit Judge Robert E. Bacharach and having a front-row seat at a 10th Circuit oral argument in Oklahoma City.
One of the many benefits for Brubaker is the chance to learn how the 10th Circuit operates. “I am discovering so much about how responsibilities are allocated, how decisions get made, the jobs within the system, the working relationships among the various parties, the career paths people followed to get where they are, and, most of all, the modes of legal reasoning and argumentation employed,” she said.
“Stephanie, Keaton, and Sarah have been vital participants to the Year-in-Review fellowship so far,” said TU Law Professor Stephen Galoob, who co-founded the program and helps supervise the students’ work. “As we expand the fellowship to additional law schools across the Tenth Circuit, we hope that other law students will contribute as much to and benefit as much from the fellowship as they have.”