Aaron Lewis, ’05, comes from a long line of Michigan Law graduates. Lewis, a partner at Covington & Burling LLP in Los Angeles, recently made a $100,000 gift to the Wade Hampton McCree Jr. Scholarship Fund. The fund was established in 2006 by a gift from a 1971 Michigan Law graduate who had clerked for Lewis’s grandfather.
News and updates from the Law Quad.
In September, alumni who graduated in class years ending in 0 and 5 and emeritus alumni who graduated more than 50 years ago returned to Ann Arbor to celebrate Reunion. It marked the first time in decades that the Law School hosted a single Reunion weekend, which offered an opportunity for attendees to build cross-generational connections.
When Sean Grimsley, ’00, and Eric Olson, ’00, started their impact litigation firm in September 2023, they had the loftiest of goals: to chart a path that would allow them to make a difference in the world. Two years after founding Denver-based Olson Grimsley, they are realizing that goal by taking on several cases that support the public interest through plaintiff-side litigation.
Alexis Cirel, ’03, a partner at Schwartz Sladkus Reich Greenberg Atlas LLP in New York City, spent years advocating for new surrogacy laws in New York and Michigan. Her dedication to the issue is rooted in her own experience with infertility in the early 2010s.
When he teaches about artificial intelligence and the legal profession, Professor Patrick Barry’s goal is for his students to become the go-to person in their office, their industry, or their network when someone needs help with an AI-related issue or wants to learn more about the latest AI innovation.
Most past empirical research has concluded that generative AI tools don’t offer much value in real-world lawyering. However, a new study by Professors J.J. Prescott, Patrick Barry, and their colleagues suggests that AI can help with particular legal tasks—in terms of speed, clarity, and, in some cases, accuracy and legal reasoning.
Assistant Professor Salomé Viljoen’s mini-seminar, Does AI Pose an Existential Threat to Humanity?, opened with discussion about what AI technologists and philosophers call the alignment problem: Will AI develop in a way that conflicts with the continued existence of humanity?
Christine Schauder, who joined Michigan Law in 2025 in the new role of head of emerging legal technologies in the Law Library, oversees the Law School’s Legal Tech Series, an ongoing program that offers training and resources for students to learn about new legal tools, including those powered by AI.
Professors Bridgette Carr, ’02, and Vivek Sankaran, ’01, have dedicated their careers to finding ways to make the justice system accessible to people who have been left behind. Now, they’re looking to artificial intelligence (AI) as an ally in the effort.
