The Indiana University Maurer School of Law celebrated its 2025 Pro Bono Award winners this week, honoring students, faculty, and community members who have demonstrated exceptional dedication to serving others through legal advocacy and volunteer work.

The student awards recognized the individuals in each class who logged the highest number of pro bono hours during the past academic year. This year’s honorees were:

• Laura Stancato ’26, of Fishers, Indiana, who was honored for her leadership with the Protective Order Project and the Civil Protective Order Clinic. “This work uncovered a passion for helping others, particularly survivors of sexual and domestic violence,” Stancato said.
• Anekah Fish ’27, of Valparaiso, Indiana, who volunteered with POP, the Incarcerated Individuals Legal Assistance Project, and the LGBTQ+ Project. “Pro bono work is both a refreshing break from the demands of law school and a reminder of the tangible benefits of legal work,” she said.
• Alina Isaeva ’26, an advanced standing JD student originally from Russia, who was recognized for her dedication to humanitarian immigration law. “The law is most meaningful when it protects the vulnerable and gives voice to those who have been silenced,” she shared.

Access to Justice Fellow Grace Alvarez Rosario emphasized the importance of giving back to the Bloomington community. “For most of us, Bloomington will make up just three short years of our story,” she said.

“But for many others, this is home. Our responsibility goes beyond simply leaving things as we found them—we should strive to leave this place even better than it was when we arrived.”

The Access to Justice Program connects students with opportunities across multiple organizations, including the Protective Order Project, Incarcerated Individuals Legal Assistance Project, LGBTQ+ Project, Outreach for Legal Literacy, Public Interest Law Foundation, Lawyers Without Borders, and Volunteer Income Tax Assistance.

Randi Edmonds, director of the Access to Justice program, highlighted the Law School’s ongoing commitment to public service, noting that the school has an ambitious goal of every student performing at least 60 hours of pro bono work during their time in school.

The Class of 2025, she noted, which graduated in May, performed a combined total of nearly 10,000 hours of pro bono work during their collective tenure at the school.

In addition to student recognition, the Association of American Law Schools Pro Bono Honor Roll recognized two members of the Maurer community: Professor Valena Beety and student Audra Keresztesy ’26.

Beety, the Robert McKinney Professor of Law, is a nationally recognized innocence litigator and the founding director of the West Virginia Innocence Project. Keresztesy was honored for her leadership in the Protective Order Project and her service as a Certified Legal Intern in the Civil Protective Order Clinic. “Serving as a CLI, though challenging at times, has been immensely rewarding and the highlight of my law school career,” Keresztesy said.

The Outstanding Pro Bono Community Member Award was presented to

, executive director of Pro Bono Indiana, for his statewide leadership in expanding access to legal aid.

Ashley Ahlbrand, Associate Director for Public Services and Adjunct Lecturer in Law at the Jerome Hall Law Library, has been elected Secretary of the American Association of Law Libraries (AALL), the organization announced this week.

Her three-year term will run from July 2026 through July 2029.

Ahlbrand’s election by AALL’s more than 3000 members follows a highly competitive national selection and voting process. As Secretary, she will play a key leadership role in advancing AALL’s mission to support and advocate for legal information professionals across academic, firm, court, and government libraries.

“This is honor is a testament to Ashley’s leadership, scholarship, and dedication to the profession,” said Susan deMaine, director of the Jerome Hall Law Library. “Her service in this national role will further strengthen Indiana University’s longstanding reputation for excellence in law librarianship.”

Ahlbrand has been with the Maurer School of Law since 2012, focusing on legal research instruction, online course design, and the evolving role of technology in legal education.

Her election underscores both her professional accomplishments and her colleagues’ recognition of her impact on the field, deMaine said.

Indiana University Maurer School of Law Professor Cindy Williams is representing the school this week at the World Economic Forum’s Global Future Councils (GFC) Annual Meeting in Dubai.

As a member of the GFC on Climate Change and Nature Loss, Professor Williams is contributing to discussions that frame environmental challenges as key financial risks and opportunities for companies. Her work focuses on how innovative finance can be harnessed to restore nature and build economic resilience worldwide.

The two-day gathering brings together nearly 3,000 participants from across 37 future councils, spanning topics from computing and space technologies to global health and sustainability.

In addition to her role on the Climate Change and Nature Loss Council, Professor Williams has been invited to moderate a session on “Building Smarter Rules for Innovation”—part of WEF’s broader initiative on Global Regulatory Innovation. The discussion aims to develop principles for regulating emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence and digital currencies in ways that foster inclusive global growth.

“I’m excited to be part of a dialogue that bridges innovation, regulation, and sustainability,” Williams said, noting that her past research on regulatory theory and the ‘new governance’ frameworks continues to inform her perspective. She also credited her colleague Professor Asaf Lubin for helping her prepare materials on “regulatory sandboxes” and the challenges surrounding data collection and use and global justice.

America’s safety net is failing to protect its most vulnerable citizens from the growing pressures of climate change, according to new research from an Indiana University Maurer School of Law Professor Andrew Hammond.

In a new article forthcoming in the Iowa Law Review, Hammond argues that while policymakers, the press, and the public tend to focus on climate “shocks” like hurricanes and wildfires, millions of Americans face overlooked climate “strains”—the everyday stresses of extreme heat, deteriorating air quality, and failing infrastructure that disproportionately affect low-income Americans.

Hammond’s paper, “Climate Strains and the Safety Net,” found that poor Americans are facing heightened exposure to these gradual, ongoing environmental events and changes due in large part to substandard housing, limited access to cooling technology at home, at work, or at school, and greater challenges to accessing quality health care.

“The aftereffects of climate shocks compound the challenges poor people face in dealing with climate strains,” Hammond said. “Climate-fueled disasters like hurricanes and wildfires have and will continue to affect millions of Americans, but the climate crisis will put daily pressure on millions more.”

Compounding the problem are a system of safety net programs ill-equipped to make a difference in the lives of the people they are supposed to protect.

Hammond notes the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, for example, is still mostly oriented toward cold weather help, and often excludes cooling needs during hot summer months.

Tax credits, like those included in the largely repealed Inflation Reduction Act, “sidestep poor Americans by making green investments inaccessible to those who need them most,” while regulatory efforts—like protecting households and workers from utilize disconnections and workplace hazards—have stalled at both federal and state levels.

Hammond offers suggested reforms, proposing a blueprint for reforming welfare programs, tax credits, and regulations to better address climate strains. Some of those proposals include:

• Fully funding and restructuring LIHEAP to prioritize cooling and equitable access;
• Creating refundable tax credits or targeted rebates for low-income households, including renters;
• Enacting stronger federal and state protections against utility disconnections and unsafe working conditions;
• Creating and enforcing a federal heat workplace standard; and
• Improve federal data collection on these issues and make information publicly available.

“Americans will increasingly experience the climate crisis not simply as a series of catastrophic storms and fires, but as a gradual degradation of daily life,” Hammond said. “Americans will need to spend more and more of their time and money to adapt to the realities of these climate strains, but government can help alleviate some of those issues while using fewer resources.”

Hammond is a Professor of Law and Harry T. Ice Faculty Fellow at Indiana University Maurer School of Law. His research focuses on administrative law, civil procedure, and poverty law and how legal institutions respond to poor people’s claims.

Three alumni of the Indiana University Maurer School of Law will be honored with Distinguished Service Awards later this month, in concert with the Law School’s fall Alumni Board meeting.

Matthew Metz ’19, Delanie Pope ’93, and Hannah E. Wilson ’22 will each receive the award, which was established in 1997 to recognize graduates of Law School who have distinguished themselves in service to their communities and the school in ways far exceeding traditional business, professional, and civic duties.

“The Law School is proud to present Distinguished Service Awards to three of our outstanding alumni this September,” said Indiana Law Dean Christiana Ochoa. “Matt, Delanie, and Hannah have each represented our school and the legal profession with skill and integrity and a consistent ethos of service. I’m particularly proud to see two of our more recent alumni receive this award, a testament to how quickly our graduates are making a difference in their respective communities.”

Metz has built a career in public service and leadership in law, government, and community engagement. After earning his law degree and Master of Public Affairs from IU’s O’Neill School of Public and Environmental Affairs, Metz joined the U.S. Department of Justice Executive Office, where he’s since risen through the ranks to become acting Deputy Assistant Director of the office.

Pope is a Bloomington native but has spent the past 22 years of her professional career improving access to justice for Michigan’s children and families. She has been a key member of Michigan State University’s Chance at Childhood Law and Social Work Clinic for two decades. Pope has helped develop and grow the clinic, which is an innovative interdisciplinary model with a mission to “promote and protect the well-being of children and families through integrated social work and law education and advocacy.”

Wilson is an attorney at Adams Landenwich Lay PLLC in Louisville, where she practices general civil litigation with a focus in the areas of employment, business, property, civil rights, and personal injury law. Before law school, she was actively involved in grassroots politics for 12 years, building a reputation as a tenacious advocate for the underserved and disadvantaged populations. In the three short years she’s been practicing, Wilson has already been recognized by Best Lawyers in America and Super Lawyers as a rising star in the Kentucky legal community. Wilson also maintains strong ties to the Law School, where she serves as president of the school’s Young Alumni Steering Committee.

The awards will be presented as part of the Law School’s Alumni Weekend on Sept. 25-26 in Bloomington.

It was a banner year for the Law School’s moot court competitors, as one team brought home a championship trophy, multiple teams made deep runs in national tournaments, and several students earned impressive individual honors.

“For our external competitions against other schools, we had to have tryouts this year because we had a record number of applicants,” said Professor Lane McFadden, who teaches Legal Writing and Research and Appellate Advocacy and supervises the Law School’s appellate moot court programs. “The rising 2Ls are now excited because the students who are only a year or two ahead of them have done it and have enjoyed remarkable success, elevating the visibility of our program.”

Maurer students saw great success at oral argument competitions this year. The team honors were led by 2025 graduates Annie Hoodecheck and Emma Leonard, who brought home the title in the Anderson Center Seventh Circuit Moot Court Competition, held at the Dirksen Federal Courthouse in Chicago in March.

“That was exciting to win,” McFadden said. “To see Anne and Emma do so well was remarkable, but additionally, after the competition I started getting emails from the school that administers the competition and attorneys who judged it praising our students not just for their ability, but for how personable and great they were to be around. That makes us even more proud.”

In Oklahoma City, fellow Class of 2025 grads Allyson McBride and Adam Rosenthall made it to the final rounds of regionals at the ABA National Appellate Advocacy Competition. The duo lost a close 2-1 decision that would’ve made them the first Maurer team in many years to make it to the National Championship. A second team at the competition, comprised of Allison McDevitt and Alivia Benedict, advanced to the semifinal rounds.

And Joy Atadoga, competing in the ABA’s First Amendment and Media Law competition with an assigned partner from the University of Mississippi, argued in the final round before a panel of federal and state judges at the ABA’s annual Media Law chapter conference.

Other Maurer students received individual recognition in competition this year. Justice Jama was the top oralist at Elon Law School’s Billings Exum Frye Moot Court Competition, and Allyson McBride was a top oralist at the ABA’s National Appellate Advocacy Competition. Aaron Hendryx and Emma Massa were both recognized as top oralists at the National Health Law Moot Competition last October.

But while oral argument is the visible part of a moot court competition, writing is also a significant component. Most competitions disallow any faculty involvement during the writing process to ensure the work is entirely that of the students.

And our students excelled, winning brief-writing recognition at five different competitions in the 2024-25 academic year. Atadoga’s team won the honors at the First Amendment and Media Law Diversity competition, while Hoodecheck and Leonard earned Best Appellee Brief honors at the Seventh Circuit Moot Court Competition. It was the second year in a row a Maurer team took home best briefing honors at that event.

“For me personally, Annie and Emma were both in my LRW class when they were 1Ls, so to see them win a writing award was a major highlight,” McFadden said.

The Class of 2025 wasn’t the only one earning accolades.

Rising 3Ls Rishav Aikat, Carissa Margraf, and Noor Qureshi were recognized with Memorial-Writing Honors at the Jessup International Law Moot Court U.S. Regional Competition in Portland.

“The Jessup team’s writing award is particularly impressive, because not only is this a difficult international law problem, but this is the only competition where students write both briefs instead of a brief for just one side,” McFadden said. Maurer teams have been recognized for their writing in three consecutive Jessup competitions.

Aaron Hendryx and Emma Massa won brief-writing honors at the National Health Law Moot Court Competition, and Victoria Bichutskaya and Maggie McComas earned brief writing honors at the Tulane Mardi Gras Invitational Sports Law Moot Court Competition in February.

For McFadden, the students’ successes are a clear sign that Maurer is a top producer of competitors and future advocates.

“These kinds of competitions really do cater to a very specific presentation style that not everyone has,” he said, “so it takes a real confidence, a real assured public speaker to do this well. Part of the trick of finding great advocacy competitors is that the most confident public speakers aren’t always the strongest writers, and vice versa. The best competitors are good at both. And these students are good at both.”

The full list of 2024-25 advocacy accolades:

Billings Exum Frye Moot Court Competition (Elon Law School, October 2024)

Justice Jama (’25) and Nathan Blair (’25)

Oralist Honors – Justice Jama (#5)

National Health Law Moot Court Competition (Southern Illinois University Law School, October 2024)

Semifinalist Team – Aaron Hendryx (‘25) and Emma Massa (‘25)

Oralist Honors – Aaron Hendryx (#5), Emma Massa (#7)

Brief-Writing Honors (#3)

National Moot Court Competition – Chicago Regionals (Loyola Chicago Law School, November 2024)

Quarterfinalist Team – Ryan Day (’25) and Kyle Pobanz (’25)

Quarterfinalist Team – Claudia Eder (’25) and LuLu Faulk (’25)

Chicago Bar Association Moot Court Competition (Dirksen Federal Courthouse, Chicago, November 2024)

Octofinalist (Sweet Sixteen) team – Elvis Riveras Salinas (’25) and Tiffany Lee (’25)

ABA First Amendment and Diversity in Media Law Competition (Austin, TX, February 2025)

Member of Finalist Team and Best Brief – Joy Atadoga (’26)

Jessup International Law Moot Court US Regional Competition (Portland, OR, February 2025)

Memorial-Writing Honors (#10) – Noor Qureshi (’26), Rishav Aikat (’26), and Carissa Margraf (’26)

ABA National Appellate Advocacy Competition (Oklahoma City Regionals, February 2025)

Finalist Team – Allyson McBride (’25) and Adam Rosenthall (’25)

Semifinalist Team – Alivia Benedict (’25) and Allison McDevitt (’25)

Oralist Honors (#5) – Allyson McBride (’25)

Tulane Mardi Gras Invitational Sports Law Moot Court Competition (Tulane Law School, February 2025)

Brief-writing honors — Victoria Bichutskaya (’25) and Maggie McComas (’25)

Anderson Center Seventh Circuit Moot Court Competition (Dirksen Federal Courthouse, Chicago, March 2025)

Best Appellee Brief and Champion Team – Emma Leonard (’25) and Annie Hoodecheck (’25)

Global Antitrust Institute Invitational Moot Court Competition (E. Barrett Prettyman Courthouse, Washington, DC, March 2025)

Connor Meyer (’26), Jonathan Hall (’26) and Bre Castenada (’26)

Kaufman Securities Law Moot Court Competition (Fordham Law School, March 2025)

Parker McGuffey (’25) and Jacob Orban (’25)

Vis International Business Law Arbitration Moot (Vienna, Austria, March 2025)

Jack Quinn (’25), Alexia Hervet (LLM ’25), and Ludovica Davoli (LLM ’25)

Vis International Business Law Arbitration Moot (Hong Kong, March 2025)

Shuwei Li (’25), Yuan Ge (’25), Philippe Lin (’26), Max Fang (’25), and Alaya Mathur (LLM ’25)

Nicholle Vandy, a rising 3L from Knox, Ind., has become the first Indiana University Maurer School of Law student to earn top honors at the American University Washington College of Law National Health Writing Competition.

Vandy’s paper, “True Man, Captive Mother: Abortion as a Fundamental Self-Defense Right,” was named the winning entry of the 10^th annual competition, which encourages law students from across the country to write scholarly papers on current topics of interest relevant to health, food, and/or drug law.

For the Law School, Vandy’s award is the latest evidence the school is emerging as a health law leader. Professor Jennifer D. Oliva was elected to the American Law Institute last fall and served as the 2023 Chair of the American Association of Law School’s Section on Law, Medicine, and Health Care. She currently serves as the 2025 Chair of the AALS Section on Biolaw.

“We are so proud of Nicholle,” said Oliva, one of Vandy’s instructors. “She worked diligently throughout the entire 2024-25 academic year to submit an outstanding paper to this competition. The AUWCL National Health Writing Competition is one of the most competitive in the country, with entries every year from 2L, 3L, part-time, and LLM students from around the U.S. It is a tremendous source of pride for the Law School to claim this year’s winner.”

Vandy developed the paper as part of Professor Luis Fuentes-Rohwer’s seminar on the Fourteenth Amendment, with Oliva encouraging her to enter it into the competition.

The honor comes with a $1,500 cash prize, sponsored by AUWCL alumni.

“Congratulations on this outstanding achievement,” members of the AUWCL Health Law and Policy Program wrote. “We’re thrilled to recognize your work.”

It is the second national honor for Vandy this spring. In April she was named an American Constitution Society Next Generation Fellow. She is interested in pursuing a career in public interest law after law school and is working as an intern this summer with the Capital Habeas Unit for the Western District of Missouri’s Federal Defender Office.

Vandy also serves as executive articles editor for the Indiana Journal of Law and Social Equality and is involved in the Law School’s Protective Order Project and First Generation Law Association. She was a quarterfinalist in this year’s Sherman Minton Moot Court Competition, where she also earned oral advocacy honors.

A new Indiana law that expands the state’s prescribed burning capacity was signed by Indiana Governor Mike Braun on April 30, in part due to efforts by Indiana University Maurer School of Law students through the school’s Conservation Law Clinic.

The law expands a prescribed fire training program administered through the Indiana Department of Natural Resources and defines the standard of liability for those certified through the training program. Before the bill was signed, Indiana was one of only a few states nationwide without a certification program or standard of liability clearly defined through legislation. This new law will allow interested members of the public to now take advantage of the training program offered by Indiana Department of Natural Resources. The law is designed to increase the frequency and efficacy of prescribed fire as a land management tool in the state.

“This bill marks an important step forward for conservation and private land stewardship in Indiana,” said Jarred Brooke, chair of the Indiana Prescribed Fire Council. “With clearer training standards and liability protections, prescribed fire can continue to be applied safely, effectively, and more widely across the landscape.”

Indiana Law students played a major role drafting the initial version of the bill and advising Indiana Prescribed Fire Council throughout the legislative process.

“Our law students worked extensively on the background research and drafting for this legislation over the past year,” said Christian Freitag, executive director of the Conservation Law Center. “This is a particularly important tool to maintain oak-hickory, forests, woodlands, and savannas, which are critical for many species. Cerulean warblers, for example, will go extinct if we don’t figure out how to save oak-hickory climax forest and woodlands.”

Though the CLC is an independent public interest law firm, it partners with the Law School to offer the Conservation Law Clinic, giving second- and third-year law students the opportunity to work on real issues for clients who need assistance with natural resource conservation.

Freitag estimates Indiana Law students spent upward of 700 hours of time on the project, which is now state law.

One of those students is rising 3L Erin Shea.

“The fact that we could do something that will affect landowners’ rights for years to come has been an incredible experience,” Shea said. “I definitely did not think I’d have this kind of experience in law school, and, as someone who is interested in environmental law, the fact that what we did have such a big impact is really rewarding.”

“Other states have prescribed fire statutes that lay out standards to ensure private landowners can do it safely,” Shea said. “If a landowner knew about prescribed burning and wanted to do it, they’d have to go outside of Indiana to be properly trained. That’s more expensive and discourages landowners from doing it. We really wanted to find a way to encourage landowners to conduct prescribed burns in safe conditions and with local training and certification. Prescribed burning is a really good tool that’s been used for ages to help clear dead foliage and allow new life to grow.”

Shea and two of her colleagues—Joy Atadoga and Nathan Evers—researched and drafted the legislation, but first they had to gain a better sense of the problem and how best to solve it.

“Jarred Brooke meet with us and gave us some of the history and science behind prescribed burns,” Shea said. “Jarred described how fire is an important ecological process necessary for the health of fire adapted ecosystems including the oak-hickory forest ecosystem in southern Indiana. He further described the training and planning required for safely and effectively completing prescribed burns,”

Indiana State Rep. Beau Baird introduced the draft legislation, which then went through the traditional legislative process of receiving public and lawmaker input. The students then did the research to determine how proposed amendments to the bill might affect the original legislation.

“It was interesting to hear when the Indiana Senate Natural Resources Committee and the House committee held hearings where several landowners came to talk about how they’ve been doing prescribed burns and how it has made such a difference on their land,” Shea said. “They were really passionate about it and it was rewarding to see how excited they were about something we were doing and how it will impact their lives.”

Shea intends to pursue a career in real estate or environmental law after she graduates in 2026. She will serve in the Conservation Law Clinic again starting this fall.

One of the world’s most influential leaders in the health ecosystem never thought he’d make it to college, let alone to the C-Suite of a major corporation helping diversify the American health care workforce. But Steve Beard isn’t your average CEO.

Raised on the south side of Chicago, Beard just assumed he was destined for a blue collar career after high school. But a guidance counselor, seeing something in Beard that he didn’t see in himself, urged him to apply to college. Four years later Beard was a graduate of the University of Illinois. A brief stint in banking led to a desire to go even further with his own education. Three years later—Steve Beard, JD.

And now the Indiana University Maurer School of Law alumnus is a member of the TIME100 Health class of 2025, alongside a number of other prestigious leaders including Melinda French Gates, Bill Nye, and Kate Middleton.

Beard, the Chairman and CEO of Adtalem Global Education, oversees a number of higher education institutions that have more than 90,000 students currently enrolled. Over the past few years Adtalem has become one of the country’s leading educators of doctors, nurses, and veterinarians. And many are from traditionally underrepresented backgrounds.

“At Adtalem, we believe that expanding access to quality education is one of the most powerful ways to advance health equity,” Beard said. “Across our institutions, we are building a healthcare workforce that not only addresses critical shortages, but also reflects the diversity of the patients they serve. This mission is urgent and it is personal.”

Adtalem’s schools include the American University of the Caribbean School of Medicine, Ross University School of Medicine, Chamberlain University, Walden University, and Ross University School of Veterinary Medicine. Its medical schools educate more Black doctors than any other American medical school, and five times the number of women physicians than the national average.

“Our medical students achieve a 95 percent-plus first-time residency attainment rate—many in primary care and underserved communities,” Beard said. “And our nursing programs lead the nation in degrees earned by students from culturally and socioeconomically diverse backgrounds.”

It comes as little surprise, then, to learn TIME honored Beard as one of 18 “Titans” on the TIME100 Health list. He is alongside Alice Walton, the wealthiest woman in the world who is launching her own school of medicine in her native Arkansas; Dr. Sumbul Desai, Apple’s vice president of health; and head of the National Institutes of Health Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, and other major players advancing health care across the globe.

“Steve Beard has established himself as one of America’s leading champions of health care diversity,” said Indiana Law Dean Christiana Ochoa. “Not only is that evident by his TIME100 recognition, but also by the nearly 90,000 future physicians, nurses, vets, and social workers enrolled in Adtalem’s schools. Steve is an invaluable member of the Indiana Law community, and we’re so proud to see him recognized on the global stage.”

Beard is a member of the Law School’s Board of Visitors, supporting the school’s mission and enhancing its programs and reputation. After graduating from Indiana Law, Beard served as a clerk to the Hon. Frank Sullivan on the Indiana Supreme Court. He served as an associate with Schiff Hardin, LLP for four years in Chicago before joining Heidrick & Struggles, where he rose from assistant general counsel to executive vice president and chief administrative officer before joining Adtalem as its COO in 2018.

In addition to his degrees from the University of Illinois and the Maurer School of Law, Beard is a graduate of Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business.

Indiana University Maurer School of Law Professor Hannah L. Buxbaum has been elected to the American Journal of International Law’s Board of Editors.

She will serve a four-year term running through April 2029.

The AJIL is a leading peer-reviewed journal, published quarterly since 1907, that serves as the flagship publication of the American Society of International Law. The journal features articles, essays, editorial comments, current developments, and book reviews by preeminent scholars and practitioners from around the world addressing developments in public and private international law and foreign relations law.

Buxbaum has previously served in a number of leadership roles in the American Society of International Law, including as Vice President.  She is a leading scholar of private international law, international jurisdiction, and transnational litigation. She also currently serves as President of the American Society of Comparative Law.