Valparaiso University School of Law

What do you think should be done about the lawyer shortage in Indiana? Is there any way that the state, whether it's the, um, state legislature or the governor or the AG, is there anything that you think they can do to make becoming an attorney a more attractive prospect?

Well, the main problem that we run into here in Northwest Indiana was the tragic loss of my law school, uh, Valparaiso University School of Law.

And I know I've been to seminars, federal and state both, where judges, especially the, the federal judges in Hammond, were lamenting on the dramatic decrease in law clerks and lawyers as a result of losing that resource, and no other school picking up the slack to maybe take it over and run it.

To our northwest Indiana, there is a true desert, as it were, for not only lawyers but law students that are willing to maybe in their summers or during the school year clerk for law firms or for judges, of which they relied upon great a- a great deal to get their work done, versus now you've got people in South Bend or you got people in Chicago that, unless they're from this area, don't necessarily want to come back here to clerk, let alone practice.

Also, she chairs the Criminal Case Flow Management Project, with exam, which examines and identifies strategies that can improve criminal case proceed- processing.

A native of Kalamazoo, Michigan, DeBeer graduated with honors from Western Michigan University and earned her JD degree from Valparaiso University School of Law in 1993.

Judge Paul Felix was appointed to the Court of Appeals by Holcomb in 2023.

Felix served as a deputy prosecuting attorney in the Johnson County Prosecutor's Office for more than a decade, where he created the county's first domestic violence unit and led the prosecution of domestic violence cases for three years.

Before joining the Wisconsin Department of Justice, Dan was an award-winning federal prosecutor in Oklahoma.

He's a graduate of Hillsdale College and Valparaiso University School of Law, and I welcome him back to the podcast.

Thank you, Dan, for being here today.

Hi, Linda.