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Bar News - May 6, 2005 President of Vermont Law School to Speak at Bar Foundation Dinner
Geoffrey B. Shields, President and Dean of Vermont Law School, will discuss the importance of law schools staying involved with the battle for legal aid funding, training our young attorneys to assist with pro bono work and creating new innovative programs. Dean Shields states, "Law schools can focus on ways to sensitize their students for service once they leave." One such example is the program, "Have Justice, Will Travel," created by a Vermont Law School alumni, an innovative, mobile, multi-service program that assists victims of domestic abuse through the legal process. Before his appointment at Vermont Law School, Dean Shields was a partner of the Chicago and Washington, DC, law firm of Gardner Carton & Douglas LLP. He joined the firm in 1976 and eventually served as chair of the firm's Management Committee. He handled financings, conversions, mergers, acquisitions, and corporate reorganizations for educational institutions and companies engaged in health care and elderly housing. Shields has edited four books and over 30 articles on foreign policy issues, health care financing, mergers and acquisitions, restructuring, and environmental issues. He serves as vice chair and treasurer of the Chicago Council on Foreign Relations and is an active member of the Council on Foreign Relations in New York. Shields is a trustee of Retreat Healthcare, a psychiatric hospital and addictions treatment center in Brattleboro, Vermont. He is past chair of the board of trustees of Lake Forest College in Illinois and a former trustee of Bennington College in Vermont. In a recent article in Vermont Law School's publication Loquitor, Shields is described as a man who believes in the concept of "lawyer as public citizen." He said that lawyers, whether they go into business or private practice or some other law-related work, have an obligation to the broader civil society "We must see VLS as nurturing the civil society with all of its graduates, whether they go into full-time public service, public interest law, or the private sector," he said. "Clearly I do want our students to understand that they can be good citizens. Yet there are myriad opportunities to use their legal training. It doesn't always have to be a full-time public interest job. The public citizen concept can be a unifying force, to remind people that they have an ethical responsibility to make a difference no matter what they do." |
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