Page 4 - University of Baltimore Law - Fall 2019

Politics these days can be exhausting, right? Sometimes it seems that everyone in America is on the red team or the blue team, shouting past each other, maneuvering for partisan advantage, tweeting up a storm and avoiding compromise like the
plague. In this toxic environment, why would anyone choose a career in public service?
Yet some UB Law graduates have chosen precisely that path, and have somehow managed to stay out of the mud.
In this issue of Baltimore Law, we highlight a number of UB alumni who practice the art of politics with grace, patience and good humor. They use the skills and professionalism they learned in our law school to serve the public effectively and honorably.
Take the UB grad who graces our magazine cover: Congressman Charles Albert Dutch Ruppersberger III. Ruppersberger, who proudly calls UB “the Harvard of the mid- Atlantic” every chance he gets, has represented Maryland's 2nd Congressional District since 2003. A one-time chair of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, Dutch
uses his lawyerly ability and innate charm to forge bipartisan consensus on a range of national security issues and other key challenges. He’s UB’s man in Congress, and we’re enormously proud of him.
Many other UB alumni have found electoral success at the state level. UB Law currently boasts nine alumni serving in the Maryland House of Delegates or the State Senate. They deploy their UB legal training to write laws designed to improve the lives of all Marylanders. We salute them for their service and take great satisfaction from their accomplishments.
welcome
FROM THE DEAN
Ronald Weich
Still other UB graduates work behind the scenes in Congress, in local government, or in the General Assembly. These public servants might not always be recognized on the streets of D.C. or Annapolis, but they play an indispensable role in keeping the machinery of government well-oiled.
Let me add a word here about one public servant who
is not a UB graduate: U.S. Rep. Elijah Cummings. The 7th congressional district represented by Congressman Cummings includes the UB campus. The congressman regularly visits
UB and he hires UB graduates. He has always been a great supporter of our law school. In my view, the attacks on Rep. Cummings and Baltimore this past summer were entirely unwarranted. Like Congressman Cummings, we are proud of Baltimore and proud to work with him to improve the quality of life in this great American city.
One challenge for today’s elected officials is to keep the statute books on pace with dramatic changes in technology. Elsewhere in this magazine you’ll enjoy a roundtable discussion on cybersecurity and data privacy, featuring three alumni working in that field. And you’ll hear about a new course and clinic being developed by UB Professor Colin Starger. In Colin’s Coding for Lawyers class, his students will learn to master legal technology.
This issue shows UB-trained lawyers who are adapting
to new technologies and using technology to succeed in
the courtroom, the boardroom and in the legislative arena. From the vantage point of my office in the technologically sophisticated John and Frances Angelos Law Center, I see a rapidly changing legal profession and UB Law graduates who are ready to meet that future: well-prepared to serve their clients, their constitutents and the wider community.
Ronald Weich
Dean
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