Nils Olsen to Receive the 2007 Edwin F. Jaeckle Award on Nov. 13

BUFFALO, N.Y. -- Nils Olsen, professor and dean of the University at Buffalo Law School, will receive the 2007 Edwin F. Jaeckle Award, the highest honor the UB Law School and the UB Law Alumni Association can bestow, in recognition of his extraordinary service to the university and the Western New York community.

UB Provost Satish Tripathi will present the award preceding a dinner at 6 p.m. on Nov. 13 in the Twentieth Century Club in Buffalo. To make a reservation, call the Law Alumni Office at (716) 645-2107.

Previous recipients of the Jaeckle Award have included Hon. Charles S. Desmond, Hon. Matthew J. Jasen, Manly Fleischmann, Jacob D. Hyman, Hon. M. Dolores Denman and William R. Greiner.

Under Olsen's leadership, the Law School has become nationally recognized for the quality of its graduates and the legal scholarship of its faculty. He has made significant contributions not only to the development of the Law School, but to the entire university and the Western New York community. Whether as teacher, mentor, dean or university citizen, he exemplifies the highest values and finest traditions of the legal profession, including offering one's professional expertise for the betterment of our community.

Olsen has served since 1998 as the 18th dean of the UB Law School. He has overseen numerous innovations and successes at the school, including significantly improving the law school's classroom and student facilities and increasing student enrollment by 25 percent.

Olsen's tenure as dean has been characterized by a desire to reshape and advance the law school's curriculum and socially progressive clinical legal education, providing students with many real-life opportunities to practice law through work with community members and groups.

He also has held leadership positions for several key university initiatives, including serving as chair of UB's Intercollegiate Athletics Board and the Corrigan Committee, which is studying the future of UB's intercollegiate athletics programs. He has provided leadership to the UB 2020 strategic planning group charged with strengthening UB's focus on civic engagement and public policy. Among his many accomplishments, Olsen successfully lobbied New York State for professional-school tuition for the UB Law School, the only law school in SUNY, and reinvested tuition revenues into new services and facilities for students. He led a capital campaign for the law school that exceeded its $12 million goal.

Under his leadership, the UB Law School has become nationally recognized for its progressive curriculum and the quality of its graduates, and has become distinctly recognized as an intellectual bastion for legal scholarship.

Olsen said he plans to take a six-month leave from the UB Law School beginning in January and then will return to resume teaching a course in civil procedure, a subject he has taught for 26 years in the school. He will continue to pursue research in the areas of federal post-conviction remedies and environmental policy.

Olsen joined the UB law faculty in 1978 after serving as a law lecturer and clinical fellow at the University of Chicago School of Law. Prior to that, he was judicial law clerk to Chief Judge Thomas E. Fairchild of the Seventh Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals in Chicago.

In his clinical teaching at the UB Law School, Olsen represented the plaintiffs in Smith v. Coughlin, a federal habeas corpus class-action lawsuit filed in the Western District of New York that challenged the significant delays that were prevalent on direct appeals of state criminal convictions. The case led to substantial changes in the oversight of such appeals in the Appellate Division and increased county funding of indigent appeals.

He also has represented numerous community-based, citizen environmental groups and several local municipalities in on-going environmental disputes, ranging from the proposed siting of hazardous-waste incinerators in Niagara County to assisting in the drafting of local land-use planning legislation. He was instrumental in the negotiation and drafting of a comprehensive agreement between a national hazardous-waste disposal corporation and Niagara County municipalities that resulted in a 15-year ban on applications for approval of hazardous-waste incinerators.

Corporate sponsors for the event are Hurwitz & Fine P.C., The Bar Association of Erie County, United Graphics, Jim Charlier Communication Design, and Batavia Legal Printing, Inc. Media sponsors are The Buffalo Law Journal and The Daily Record.