Section: Features
62 results
Features Fall 2014
Good Fortune: An Angel Investor Helps Entrepreneurs Soar
“An entrepreneur can’t do everything themselves, so they need a team around them,” says Geoff Entress, ’98, a Seattle-based investor who has backed more than 125 companies in the last 15 years. Today, the Pittsburgh native is a venture partner with Voyager Capital, sits on the boards of 11 companies, and is what’s called an angel investor—that is, someone who provides personal capital to businesses trying to get off the ground.
Features Fall 2014
Lawyer-turned-entrepreneur Starts Luxe Loungewear Line
Jamie Loeks Duffield, ’12, wanted to be “on the other side of the table.” So she left her associate position at the Miami law firm Shutts and Bowen in July 2013 and returned to Michigan to start Duffield Lane, a loungewear/resort wear line that can be worn at home, out to dinner, or at the beach.
Features Fall 2014
Civil Rights, Women’s Rights
The original Civil Rights Act language did not include orotections based on sex. Martha Griffiths, ’40, had something to say about that.
Features Fall 2014
A Page in Michigan Law History: Printing Course Packs, One Mimeograph at a Time
While the Computer Age has produced countless companies whose origins can be traced to their founders’ dorm rooms, college-age ingenuity didn’t begin with Facebook, Google, or Microsoft. For Ann Arbor-based book printer and manufacturer Edwards Brothers Malloy, it started with the mimeograph.
Features Fall 2014
Startup Central
If you want to be an entrepreneur, understand that you’ll have to be part of a team if you’re going to be successful. This, according to Geoff Entress, ’98, a Seattle-based investor who has backed more than
125 companies in the past 15 years.
More advice from Entress: Be comfortable with risk. Be visionary. Don’t be a jerk. And go to law school.
Features Fall 2014
Mary Frances Berry, ’70: A Trailblazer in the Fight to End Discrimination
Mary Frances Berry, ’70, served from 1980 until 2004 on the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, including as chair. Later, she stood with Nelson Mandela to end apartheid in South Africa and was imprisoned for it. At the 50th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act, she looks back on her career, her accomplishments, and the long list of items still outstanding in the fight to end discrimination.
Features Fall 2014
Tales from the Clinic: Putting the Contract Before the Horse
Typically, clients approach the Law School’s General Clinic for assistance—but every so often, a case comes from within, spurred by an issue close to the heart of a student attorney. One crisp January day, Mary Watkins, ’14, went to see a man about a horse.
Features Fall 2014
Roger Wilkins, ’56, Honored as Distinguished Alumnus
Roger Wilkins exposed injustice and fought for equality—through the complex lens of being a black man in America—throughout his career as a public servant, educator, and Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist. In honor of Wilkins’s vast and varied accomplishments, the Law School is honoring him as its 2014 Distinguished Alumni Award recipient.
Features Spring 2014
Imprisoned, Exonerated — and Now an “Unsecured Creditor”
Dwayne Provience spent almost a decade in prison before the Michigan Innocence Clinic at the U-M Law School won his exoneration in 2010. He filed a civil lawsuit against the city, and a settlement panel proposed a payment of $5 million. Now he's on a list of Detroit’s unsecured creditors.
Features Fall 2014
Bagenstos on Class-Not-Race
Throughout the civil rights era, strong voices have argued that policy interventions should focus on class or socioeconomic status, not race. At times, this position-taking has seemed merely tactical, opportunistic, or in bad faith. I am more interested in the people who clearly mean it.