Inadmissible

On Oct. 3, the Senate confirmed Marina Garcia Marmolejo to become a U.S. district judge in Laredo. Marmolejo, a former federal prosecutor and partner in Austin’s Reid Collins Tsai , will become the second judge nominated by President Barack Obama who has been seated in Laredo — the site of one of the busiest courthouses in the Southern District of Texas when it comes to criminal cases. Obama nominee Diana Saldaña became a U.S. district judge in Laredo on Feb. 11. Marmolejo did not return a telephone call seeking comment. Marmolejo’s confirmation leaves six U.S. District Court benches to fill in Texas. And that can’t happen soon enough for a group of Texas lawyers who held an Oct. 4 press conference to call on Congress to fill those benches quickly. Richard Bonner , a partner in El Paso’s Kemp Smith who serves as president of the Texas Chapter of the American Board of Trial Advocates (ABOTA), notes that the vacancies in Texas seem to get longer with each presidential administration. Marmolejo’s nomination was pending for a year before she was seated. Bonner also notes that while ABOTA’s mission is to preserve the right to a trial by jury, that’s hard to do if there are no judges to hear cases. “I think what has happened is the situation has just snowballed and gotten worse,” he says of lag time in filling federal judgeships in Texas. “Existing judges are overworked as a result. We’re having to depend on senior judges, many of whom are in their 80s and 90s,” Bonner says. “They stay on because of the judicial vacancies.”

Come to Lubbock

Student diversity has reached a historic high at Texas Tech University School of Law , says Stephen M. Perez , assistant dean for admissions and recruitment at the Lubbock school. The fall entering class, which will graduate in 2014, has 236 students, 116 of whom are females (49.2 percent) and 77 of whom are minorities (32.6 percent), he says. Those are the highest percentages of female and minority students in an entering class in the school’s history. “Students want to go where they can get the best education,” Perez says. “If they see that a school is lacking in some areas, whether lacking in quality of students, in diversity or in programs, they’re not going to want to go.” Diversity is important when recruiting students, as is creating classroom experiences where people with different backgrounds express different points of view, he says. Perez adds that the law school’s paramount goal is to have the “most academically qualified class.” Perez says 47 students (20 percent) in this year’s entering class are the first in their families to graduate from college and only 15 percent or 35 of the students were Texas Tech undergraduates. Perez attributes the increased diversity to the school taking what he calls a “retail” approach to recruiting. Perez is crisscrossing the state, attending law school recruiting expos and fairs, to speak individually with potential applicants. He tries to address undergraduates’ specific interests, whether it is the availability of financial aid or the reputation of the Texas Tech Law Review. A member of Perez’s staff attends similar events out of state. He says he has had success recruiting students in South Texas by having a law school alum from the area talk with potential applicants. “He had credibility because he had been where they were. That’s huge,” Perez says of the alumnus. Perez notes that he also makes a point of describing the city of Lubbock because he wants people to know that if they go to law school in Lubbock, “it’s not the other side of the moon.”

Overtime Suit