2014 Shaffer Fellows Announced
The NDLS faculty’s Shaffer Fellows Committee has concluded its deliberations and selected three 2014 Shaffer Fellows, Dean Nell Jessup Newton announced March 19.
The new Fellows, third-year law students Leigh Loman, Sarah Reimers, and Enrique Romero, each developed winning proposals for a public interest program that will be implemented by a host agency and supervising attorney following the students’ graduation from Notre Dame. Funded entirely by the law school’s benefactors, the Shaffer Fellowship pays the Fellows’ salaries and employer-provided health and other benefits for two years.
Following graduation, Leigh Loman will return to her home town of Pittsburgh to work for the Education Law Center, defending youths who are suspended or expelled from public schools and working on related public policy advocacy.
Sarah Reimers will work with Colorado Legal Services in Denver to combat human trafficking and secure visas for immigrants who assist law enforcement.
The Shaffer Fellowship is normally a two-year fellowship, but because additional funding was available this year the Dean was also able to award an additional one-year Fellowship to Enrique Romero, who will work with the New Mexico Legal Aid Land and Water Project to help citizens in New Mexico’s rural counties defend their water rights.
The Thomas L. Shaffer Public Interest Fellowship is named after Professor Shaffer, the Robert and Marion Short Professor Emeritus of Law at NDLS. One of the nation’s most prolific legal authors, Professor Shaffer has written nearly 300 scholarly works in his varied areas of expertise including estate planning, law and religion, legal ethics, and most recently, clinical teaching and legal counseling. Professor Shaffer joined the NDLS faculty in 1963 and in his tenure was the supervising attorney in the Notre Dame Legal Aid Clinic (now called the Notre Dame Clinical Law Center), teaching clinical ethics and guiding the legal practice of the law students who serve the under-privileged of greater South Bend, Indiana.
(Photo left to right: Sarah Reimers, Leigh Loman, Enrique Romero, and Professor Doug Cassel)