Approximately 20 students and faculty members attended the swearing-in ceremony of Sturm College of Law Professor Lucy Marsh as a member of the Utah bar earlier this month. The Utah swearing-in will expand the reach of the Tribal Wills Project, in which law students draft and write wills for tribal members in Colorado and beyond.
“There are lots of tribal members, so it’s tribal members all over the country that need the skills that these students are learning,” said Marsh.
The swearing-in took place on Nov. 6. The plan is to take the project through Colorado and Utah over spring break 2014.
The Tribal Wills Project began in fall 2012 when John Roach, fiduciary trust officer for the Southwest Region of the Department of the Interior, contacted the Student Law Office to find out if any students wanted to participate. During spring break earlier this year, 11 students wrote and executed 70 wills for the Ute Mountain and Southern Ute tribes in Durango.
Now that Marsh has been sworn in as a member of the bar in Utah, she can supervise the drafting of wills in that state as well, whereas previously she was only licensed in Colorado.
“The reason I’ve gone through a great deal of effort to be admitted in Utah is so that I can supervise students next spring doing wills for tribal members who live in Utah, and have asked for our help,” said Marsh.
“We’ll start in Colorado—we’ll go back to [the Ute Mountain and Southern Ute] tribes just because we have such good friends there and we want to see them again and hopefully they want to see us again,” said Marsh. “But this year we’ll be able to go over to Utah to the White Mesa tribe, and then two other tribes have asked us to come there in Utah, the Uintah and the Ouray.”
Last year, the law school provided $5000 for the project; Marsh says she has asked the law school for additional funds this year.
This year, Marsh was considering going to New Mexico but eventually selected Utah after searching for attorneys that provide a similar service to tribal members there.
“I just got admitted in Utah because we know we have clients there and we simply could not find another attorney to do it,” said Marsh.
Third year law student Kate Puckett, who participated in the project last year and will participate again this year, said the fact that many Colorado tribe members have family across the state border was something that influenced the decision.
“I think we were looking more towards Utah because of White Mesa, and we had great relationships with the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe and the Southern Ute tribe,” said Puckett. “When they had members of a branch of their tribe wanting us to go into Utah, that kind of steered us, I think, more towards that area than to New Mexico as well.”
According to Puckett, there are about five or six students from last year who are returning. Puckett said the project wants to double the amount of students that participated last year to around 15 or 20.
This year’s project is in its initial planning stages; there was an informational meeting held on Nov. 7 for any interested law students. Fletcher said there will be another meeting in January to determine which days they will be going in the spring and what kind of training is necessary. An application process will follow in late January.
Puckett highlighted the benefits of getting outside of the classroom and doing hands-on work.
“This kind of experience is just so vastly different than reading a textbook; it’s about building life skills and skills that you need to have as an attorney that sometimes are not emphasized in the academic setting,” said Puckett.
Third year law student Colin Fletcher, who also participated in the project last year, agreed.
“You get great practical experience,” said Fletcher. “I think will-writing is just kind of one of those tools that every lawyer should have in his tool bag; you just kind of have to know how to do it.”
Looking forward, Marsh said she would like to see the project continue to expand and find someone who specializes in this area of law. She also pointed out that DU is one of the first schools to be carrying out a project like this.
“I think it would be fun if DU were kind of the leader on that, because we have a head start, because nobody else is doing it,” said Marsh. “My dream is that we could also have students come out here in the summer from other law schools and participate in a program like this. There are very, very few schools where a student would have this opportunity.”
