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I attended Admiralty Law Institute for the first day of the three-day conference yesterday.  This year's topic, "Maritime Catastrophes: Marine Investigation & Mass Claims Practice" features a host of wonderful programs and continues through this Friday.  I was able to be there for the welcoming remarks by Dean Meyer and Bob Acomb, one of our wonderful maritime adjunct professors, the address by Patrick Bonner, current President of the Maritime Law Association, and the first panel on Developments in Cargo Law.  I was very interested to see one speaker in particular during the Cargo Law panel, Ms. Denise Krepp, Chief Counsel at the US Department of Transportation, Maritime Administration (MARAD).  Ms. Krepp came to Tulane Law last semester to speak to the Maritime Law Society, and during her visit she met with Dean Meyer as well as Amanda Moeller, the government counselor at the CDO. From those meetings, Ms. Krepp graciously offered to accept resumes from Tulane students for summer internships with MARAD, and along with Michaela Noble (a staff attorney at MARAD and a Tulane Law alumna), hired two of our Tulane first-year students for this summer.  I was looking forward to simply saying hello to Denise and Michaela and welcoming them to Tulane, but to my surprise, Denise took the opportunity during her speech to mention the interns and express her excitement about her incoming Tulane law clerks.  She also invited other students attending the conference to speak to her about careers at MARAD.  What a great opportunity to promote Tulane students to the other practitioners at the conference!

I was also pleased to see so many of the practitioners flipping through the resume books that I made featuring resumes from Tulane maritime students. A book went in the conference bag of every attendee at ALI, and I saw many of the bright blue resume books floating around the conference yesterday.  I was also happy to see student representatives of both the Tulane Law Review and Maritime Law Journal handing out the latest journal volumes at ALI.  There was also a wonderful networking reception at the New Orleans Board of Trade last night, and many students took my advice to attend the event (free of charge for students) and meet some of the most well-known maritime practitioners in the world. 

So far, the Admiralty Law Institute is going very well. I'm sure our maritime professors, Martin Davies and Bob Force, must be very pleased.  I'm excited to see what today brings at ALI.

If it's March in an odd-numbered year, it means that one can hardly walk 10 feet on this campus without bumping into a maritime lawyer.  Every other March, the Admiralty Law Institute holds its bi-annual mega-meeting, this being the 23rd Admiralty Law Institute. The (quite timely) topic this year is Maritime Catastrophes and Reponses.  A unique aspect of this professional meeting is that it's not held downtown in a series of hotel ballrooms--by design, it is held on the Tulane campus, which means that students can easily attend the sessions and talk with some of the most prominent maritime lawyers on the planet.  Naturally, our Career Development Office uses this opportunity to set up interviews for our students, and the Maritime Law Center makes sure that a number of the attendees set aside time to meet with interested students in the Maritime Law Society.

Next week, theTulane Corporate Law Institute meets in New Orleans.  Through a strange arithmetic coincidence, this is also the 23rd event--although the Corporate Law Institute has taken place for only half as long as the Admiralty Law Institute, it meets in New Orleans every year. While this Tulane Law School-sponsored conference will be taking place downtown, it is also open to students.  Again, our Career Development Office will set up a number of opportunities for students to meet with some of the most brilliant minds in corporate and securities law.  This conference has been touted by the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and other corporate law journals and bulletins as THE conference for M&A attorneys. 

Also convening late next week is the 16th Annual Environmental Law Summit.  This is a student-run conference taking place in Weinmann Hall, and the topic this year is Energy.  There will be two full days of presentations and panel discussions, two keynote addresses, and the conference concludes with a private tour of Manchac wetlands, led by environmental scientists.