A KU Law graduate who has built a successful career in the international energy sector is supporting the school where he got his start.
John P. Bowman, L’80, a partner at King & Spalding LLP in Houston, recently established the John P. Bowman Law Fund with a $125,000 gift to KU Law. The fund will provide unrestricted support to the law school.
“For many years, I have wanted to thank KU Law for teaching, training, and enabling me to pursue a truly enjoyable, always challenging career as an advocate representing international oil companies in international oil and gas disputes,” Bowman said. “I hope this gift will help KU students and faculty pursue careers in the law that they find equally rewarding.”
For 36 years, Bowman has represented international energy companies in a wide range of commercial and investment disputes. He leads King & Spalding’s upstream oil and gas practice segment and frequently writes and speaks on international arbitration and international oil and gas topics. During law school, he was editor-in-chief of the Kansas Law Review.
Bowman, who earned a bachelor’s in economics and humanities from KU in 1974, also made a $125,000 gift to the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences in support of the humanities.
The Hon. Janice Miller Karlin of the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the District of Kansas has been appointed chief judge of the court, becoming the first woman to serve in the role.
“I am delighted to serve as chief judge of our court,” said Karlin, L’80. “I follow my colleague and law school classmate Bob Nugent as chief judge, and as a result of his long and efficient service in that position, I inherit a court that provides the kind of service the parties and the lawyers deserve. My hope is to continue to lead our court to achieve the just and speedy disposition of all matters.”
Karlin joined the court in 2002 and was reappointed this month to another 14-year term by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit. She also serves as chief judge of the Bankruptcy Appellate Panel for the 10th Circuit; she is the first woman and the first Kansan to hold that position.
During law school, Karlin served as note and comment editor of the Kansas Law Review, then worked as an assistant U.S. attorney until she was appointed to the bankruptcy court in 2002. She becomes the fifth chief judge to lead the court since its existing structure came into existence in 1978.
A 2016 KU Law graduate has earned a scholarship awarded to only a select few students in New York University’s No. 1-ranked graduate tax program.
Matthew Schippers, L’16, has been chosen as a recipient of a Tax Law Review Scholarship at NYU School of Law for 2016-2017. The merit scholarship, which covers half of tuition, is awarded to eight outstanding entering LL.M. and joint-degree students. As a scholarship recipient, Schippers will be a graduate editor of the Tax Law Review and work closely with the publication’s faculty editors.
“Receiving a scholarship to attend NYU’s tax LL.M. program is an incredible honor,” Schippers said. “This extra year of school will deepen my knowledge as I prepare to practice law.”
Schippers has accepted post-graduate employment with Triplett, Woolf & Garretson LLC in Wichita. He is studying for the Kansas bar this summer and will move to New York at the end of August to begin the LL.M. program.
KU Law Dean Stephen Mazza received the same scholarship and served as an editor of the NYU Tax Law Review in 1992-1993. Recent KU Law students to complete NYU’s highly regarded tax LL.M. program include 2015 graduates Paul Budd and Mark Wilkins and 2012 graduate Joel Griffiths.
A native of Wichita, Kansas, Schippers earned a bachelor’s in business administration and accounting from KU in 2008. He worked for five years as a corporate accountant for Koch Industries in Wichita. He holds an active CPA license and has written two Tax Court case briefs for the Journal of Accountancy.
At KU Law, Schippers graduated in the top 10 percent of the 2016 class, completing the Tax Law Certificate and the Business and Commercial Law Certificate. He received both the UMB Bank Excellence in Estate Planning Award and the Robert E. Edmunds Prize in Corporation and Securities Law. He was also a recipient of the J.L. Weigand Scholarship. Schippers served as an articles editor on the Kansas Law Review, where his comment was published in December 2015.
Outside the classroom, Schippers led KU’s Volunteer Income Tax Assistance (VITA) program, which prepared nearly 250 federal and state returns for low-income taxpayers in the Lawrence area during the 2016 tax season. He was Phi Alpha Delta treasurer for two years. He also serves as a Shook, Hardy & Bacon Scholar, leading a 1L study group for Contracts and Constitutional Law.
Tom Meier took more than a few twists and turns on his path to graduation, but today he will earn his law degree after a 16-year journey.
Tom Meier, L’16
Originally from Indiana, Lt. Col. Meier, who retired from the U.S. Army in 2009, completed his undergraduate degree as an ROTC member at Ball State, then launched his 21-year military career. He began his legal education in 2000 at George Washington University School of Law in Washington, D.C. At the time he was on active duty, pursuing law school at night.
“Literally every evening we had class, and then weekends were for studying, so pretty much all other activities came to a halt,” Meier said. Life was consumed by military duties, family commitments and coursework.
And then, during his second year of law school, the Sept. 11 attacks changed everything. The Army assigned Meier additional duties and transferred him to Fort Riley.
“I was fortunate that GW Law gave me an exception to continue my studies wherever I might be — with the understanding that I still needed to come back on campus to finish some of the credits,” Meier said. In the following years, Meier split his time between Kansas, South Carolina and Georgia, training National Guard brigades mobilized to go to Iraq. Throughout it all he never gave up his dream of finishing law school, completing military duties during the day and taking courses as a visiting law student at Washburn at night.
Meier next spent a year on deployment in Iraq, where he worked to find and bring to trial former members of the Hussein regime. The firsthand exposure to international law strengthened his determination to complete his legal degree. “It led to me thinking I wanted to do international law work,” Meier said. “Trying to help a host country implement the rule of law within their culture – that’s what I want to do after I graduate.” After he returned from Iraq, Meier was transferred to Fort Leavenworth, where he completed his military career and continued his studies as a visiting law student at KU.
When Meier retired from active duty, the prospect of returning to D.C. to finish law school seemed out of reach. But KU Law Dean Stephen Mazza had a solution: Meier could transfer to KU and take advantage of American Bar Association exceptions for various requirements in recognition of students who have served in the military. “As it worked out, not only was I accepted into KU Law,” Meier said, “but I was able to enroll in enough courses this semester to graduate and get my GI Bill to pay for the tuition.”
When Meier arrived in Green Hall as a full-time student in January 2016, he faced another transition: adjusting to life without the full-time paycheck he had been earning as a civilian military analyst. He continued working part-time, his schedule once again packed with family, career and school responsibilities. Today, he’ll gather with family and friends to celebrate the degree he began earning 16 years ago.
“The main reason for my success was the support of friends and the faculty and staff at KU Law,” Meier said. “There were so many things going on at the same time that an extra hand from time to time was really helpful. More so than I think many of them know.”
Bradley Thomas brings a scientist’s reason and an artist’s creativity to the study of law.
The former research scientist holds an undergraduate degree in molecular biology, but he’s as comfortable behind a camera lens as he is behind a microscope.
“In law school, it’s an analytical creativity,” said Thomas, L’16. “The outcome I desire is x. Here are the rules. How do I get there? It’s a problem-solving logic exercise. The scientific part of me just loves that.
“But art is free-form expression that I don’t get from law school or from law. That’s not a problem. I just need something else in my life that allows that.”
Scroll down to browse photos by Thomas
Photography has fulfilled that need for Thomas since he was a child. At the age of 6, he blew through several rolls of film on a drive to Colorado for a family ski trip, and then continued taking pictures with no film. “It was just kind of fun to look through and see what I could spot through the viewfinder,” the Mission Hills native said. “A lot of times it’s much less interesting than you think it’s going to be, or the things you don’t instantly find interesting turn out to be fascinating from the right angle.”
Thomas began approaching photography more seriously at Shawnee Mission East High School, where he took classes and learned his way around the darkroom. He mastered the manual settings on his Nikon FM2 and even built a darkroom in his mom’s basement.
But shooting photos took a backseat to studying when Thomas enrolled at the University of Colorado Boulder in 2002. Jobs at AG Bayer Crop Science Research and Children’s Mercy Hospital followed. Although Thomas had dabbled with his dad’s digital cameras on holiday breaks during college, it wasn’t until his scientific work led him to Romania for a medical mission trip in 2007 that he really gained confidence in his images.
“Afterward, I had about 1,000 pictures,” he said. “As I looked through them, I thought some were pretty good.” He assembled a slideshow of his photos that the trip’s organizer showed at a gathering. “They asked me back the following year as the official photographer.”
A third trip – this time to Mali – followed in 2010. Thomas served as the acting pharmacist on that mission, but he took a camera, too.
“It really put things into perspective to be in one of the poorest countries in the world,” he said. “There were kids living on piles of trash. Open cesspools were their homes. It was a life-changing, emotional experience.”
Back stateside and looking for a new direction, Thomas earned his MBA at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, where he took a business law course that piqued his interest. Next stop? Green Hall. In his three years at KU Law, Thomas took every class the school offered related to intellectual property.
He passed the Patent Bar the summer after his 1L year, will sit for the Missouri bar exam in July and then join the patent practice at Shook, Hardy & Bacon in Kansas City, Missouri – helping inventors license their best ideas. And hopefully getting back to some creative work of his own.
“Law school has limited the amount of time I can dedicate to photography,” Thomas said. “But hopefully this education will afford me a lifestyle that will allow me to go on trips and see the world and take photos.”
Wyoming native Ashley Akers knew she had found her home away from home the first time she visited Green Hall.
“The town was great, the school was welcoming, and the price was right,” Akers said. “From the first time I stepped foot in the law school, it was supportive and challenging. It’s everything I was looking for.”
A former student athlete, Akers played soccer and tennis in college, which she says helped prepare her for the competitive and rigorous nature of law school. “I’ve always been an overly competitive person,” Akers said. “Luckily the same lessons I’ve learned playing sports — working extremely hard and over preparing — will also be helpful when I’m practicing law.”
That competitive nature served Akers well throughout her legal education. She was president of KU Law’s student chapter of the Federal Bar Association and the 3-to-1 mentor program, won the school’s in-house moot court competition, and brought home a national championship from the National Native American Law Students Association Moot Court Competition, all while graduating among the top 10 in her class.
“My experience in the NNALSA Moot Court Competition was indescribable,” Akers said. “Winning the competition was the result of months of hard work from our entire team with the help of professors in the law school. It was a great way to end my law school career.”
Classmate Robin Randolph served as vice president of the FBA, a new student organization that Akers helped elevate rapidly.
“She is a one-woman machine when it comes to creating new ideas, organizing events with federal judges, and raising funds to support those events,” Randolph said. “She shows a lot of enthusiasm in whatever she does and works well with others.”
Despite a full schedule of courses, extracurricular activities, and her work as a teaching and research assistant, Akers also found time to volunteer with Big Brothers & Big Sisters. “I enjoy giving back to my community, especially to help children,” Akers said. “I’ve been extremely fortunate to have this experience.”
After graduation, Akers will work as a law clerk on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit. “I’m so thankful that I attended KU Law because I could not have had a better experience anywhere else,” Akers said. “I’m looking forward to putting my education into practice and figuring out what being a lawyer is all about.”
— This post is the third in a series profiling a select few among the many outstanding members of the KU Law Class of 2016. Read our profiles of Bryce Langford and Grecia Perez and Jacque Patton.
A KU Law graduate who has built a successful career in the international energy sector is supporting the school where he got his start.
The Hon. Janice Miller Karlin of the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the District of Kansas has been appointed chief judge of the court, becoming the first woman to serve in the role.
A 2016 KU Law graduate has earned a scholarship awarded to only a select few students in New York University’s No. 1-ranked graduate tax program.
