Carrico Center Volunteers Receive Recognition

For the past three years, the University of Richmond School of Law's Harry L. Carrico Center for Pro Bono Service has recruited student volunteers to prepare a Veterans Law Update for the Federal Circuit Bar Association's (FCBA) Veteran Appeals Pro Bono Program. This update includes a compendium of changes in regulations, statutes, and Federal Circuit law affecting veterans.

This year, the work of four Carrico Center student volunteers will be recognized in print. The FCBA has decided to publish the Veteran's Law Update in the December issue of the Federal Circuit Bar Journal. Kathleen Dwyer, Alec Kast, Scott Sigmon, and Andrew Tarne made up the team of four UR law students who worked on the project this past summer.

Established in 2007, the Veterans Pro Bono Program's Veterans Appeals Committee reviews appeals from veterans that are filed with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit and coordinates pro bono counsel from attorneys in the FCBA. The committee also develops legal education programs on Veterans Law topics for attorneys who volunteer to represent veterans. Since many of the Veterans Pro Bono Program volunteers are not full-time veterans law attorneys, this annual update is particularly useful to its volunteers.

Kathleen Dwyer, L'14, said that when she first learned about the Veterans Law Update, she felt compelled to contribute. She recognized how helpful the program is to the Federal Circuit Bar Association and that the program provides students with valuable work experience. Dwyer explained, "During one of our first meetings, I volunteered to update the Federal Register sections. I had some experience with the Federal Register through Legal Research and Legislation and Regulation, but digging into the massive body of proposed information collections, notices, interim final rules, and proposed rules gave me a better understanding of the legislative process and its intersection with legal proceedings."

Dwyer said she was also able to learn how important legal research skills are for gathering pertinent information efficiently and quickly. "This program required the team to work together in synthesizing our efforts, as we had divided the update into individual research assignments. In the end, we produced a document that helps our nation's veterans, and we bonded with fellow students we may not have otherwise met."

Scott Sigmon, L'14, said he approached the update from the point of view of creating a document that would be useful for the practitioner. He explained, "My role was to set and keep our internal deadlines and organize what everyone wrote into a coherent document." Sigmon also contributed to writing parts of the update and conducted research on case law. He added, "Andrew Tarne then edited that document and added a good deal of polish in the process."

This summer, Sigmon was also an intern focusing on immigration law at the Carrico Center. He said the combination of the internship and the Veterans Update project gave him perspective on how to approach the guide. Sigmon explained, "At my internship, I was using a practitioner's guide all day to address issues that I had no experience with and have yet to take any classes on. That experience was my model for what practitioners would want out of our update and led to the update's final structure and organization." 

"The thing I got out of project that was most interesting was being able to work on both sides of a legal resource simultaneously," added Sigmon. He said he was glad to have contributed to the project to "produce something that is actually useful to practitioners."

Andrew Tarne, L'13, said he was interested in getting involved with the Veterans Law Update project because of family history. Both of his grandfathers are veterans who served in World War II, Korea, and Vietnam, between the two of them. Tarne explained, "I believe that it is important that America continues to both facilitate and provide quality care and support for her heroes. It was my hope, by working on this pro bono program, that I could provide some measure of assistance to those attorneys who make sure that veterans receive the care they deserve."

The December issue of the Federal Circuit Bar Journal will be available online.