About Maura Keller
Articles written by Maura Keller
From Posner to Scalia
Aaron Van Oort on the jurists who shaped his careerIt’s rare for a young law school graduate to have the opportunity to clerk for an esteemed jurist on the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals or the U.S. Supreme Court. To do both? That’s almost unheard of—as long as you haven’t heard of Aaron Van Oort. In July 1999, shortly after graduating from law school, Van Oort began a clerkship under Chief Judge Richard Posner. “[It was] the most purely legal job I’ve ever had and expect I ever will have,” says Van Oort, now a partner at Faegre …
Lady Justice Holds a Paintbrush
Mary Ellis Lagarde’s secret weaponMary Ellis Lagarde, a partner with the Lagarde Law Firm in Houston, says her No. 1 job is seeking justice. And she does that in several different ways. In addition to being a nationally acclaimed trial attorney, Lagarde has a secret weapon — she wields a paintbrush in the cause of justice. An artist, she recently painted a lady justice for her law firm’s reception area. “Lady Justice is literally battling the blazes of injustice as she stands ready to defend,” Lagarde says of her work. …
The Art of Law
Petrie’s vision of the Lytle Park LincolnBruce Petrie approaches the law as if it were an art, which, not surprisingly, is exactly the way he approaches his drawing and painting. He’s one lawyer who is used to wearing two hats — or a hat and a beret, to be more precise. Petrie, a partner at Graydon Head & Ritchey, was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1954. He first dabbled in freelance illustrations and editorial cartooning and then turned to oil painting. He studied with painter Thomas Buechner, in Corning, N.Y., and …
Play That Funky Music, Lawyer Boy
Mark Avsec has soulAll you need is one great rock song and you’re apt to be remembered for the rest of your life. Just ask Mark Avsec, a musician from Cleveland,Ohio, who tasted Top 40 chart success with his band Wild Cherry, thanks to the song “Play That Funky Music.”Avsec performed, but did not write, the song. In the early ’70s, when disco music was starting to become popular,Avsec and his fellow band friends began playing funky music.“Wild Cherry” was their debut. “Play That Funky …
Hoop Dreams
Chris Russell knows his way around courts of all kinds“Nomatter where you go in our country, there is always one constant: basketball hoops. They are found on garage doors in middle America, on silos in the country, on telephone poles in the city, in churches, in prisons, in big schools and small schools, in black schools and white schools, in playgrounds and in mansions, and in virtually every other location that you can imagine. The meaning of this can only be one thing: the game is something special and it can bring people …
Lock ‘Um Up, Lock ‘Um Up, Throw Away the Key
The men of Death by Injection can argue your case during the day, and rock your socks off at night.As lawyers, they listen to their clients, and as musicians, they listen to their fans. It was one of those fans, or rather a member of an audience, who gave this Houston-based band its name: “Death by injection,” he said, was exactly the punishment the band deserved for playing its music in public. Fortunately, over the last two decades, the musical talent of Death by Injection has improved dramatically, and this year the self-dubbed “Texas Crime Music” band is celebrating its …
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