Biographies of the 2012 awardees

Evan D. Flaschen ’82
Recipient of the Distinguished Graduate Award

Evan D. Flaschen ’82 is the chair of the Financial Restructuring Group at Bracewell & Giuliani LLP. His practice includes representation of many of the world's largest institutional investors, private investment funds, leveraged finance participants and financial services companies in out-of-court restructurings, in-court proceedings and distressed M&A transactions, both domestically and internationally. Evan has appeared in courts in four continents and, in his spare time, he serves as blogger-in-chief for Bracewell's restructuring blog, http://basis-points.com/. Evan has published over 95 articles and book chapters in several different countries on workout, restructuring and international insolvency topics. He also has been a lecturer or panelist at more than 150 restructuring, insolvency and distressed debt programs around the world and his legal writings have been cited by courts around the country and in more than 100 scholarly journals and treatises globally. Evan is admitted to the New York and Connecticut bars and is a registered foreign lawyer with The Law Society of England and Wales.  He is an adjunct professor at the Law School, teaching an annual seminar entitled "International and Comparative Corporate Insolvency Law," since 1994 (www.evanflaschen.net). Evan is a past president of The University of Connecticut Law School Foundation board of trustees and is a trustee of the Greater Hartford Legal Aid Foundation. He has received numerous awards and accolades from leading national and worldwide legal publications and has served as a delegate to the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law (UNCITRAL). Evan is an elected fellow of the American College of Bankruptcy, American College of Investment Counsel, American Law Institute, International Insolvency Institute (Founding Member) and James W. Cooper Fellowship.

Jeremy Paul
Recipient of the Distinguished Service Award

Before leaving the University of Connecticut in August 2012 to become Dean and Professor of Law at Northeastern University School of Law, Dean Paul served 23 years as a member of the University of Connecticut Law School faculty, the final five as Dean and Thomas F. Gallivan, Jr. Professor of Real Property Law.  He served as associate dean for academic affairs from 2000-2005 and as the School of Law’s first associate dean for research from 2005-07. His years as dean were marked by the recruitment of eight new members to the tenure track faculty, including four persons of color and one member of the GLBT community. During his tenure, the Law School inaugurated a D.C. semester program; a Center for Energy and Environmental Law; an S.J.D. program; a vibrant program of research support for junior faculty; an on-line community for graduates; and a pro bono pledge program for students. It also created the Anthony J. Smits Professor of Global Commerce and greatly expanded the Intellectual Property and Entrepreneurship Law Clinic. Dean Paul also spearheaded an admissions program with the undergraduate honors college at Storrs, and he conceived the Tapping Reeve Legal Educator award now presented annually by the Connecticut Bar Association. A 1978 graduate of Princeton University, Dean Paul received his law degree from Harvard in 1981. In addition to his long-term career in teaching, Dean Paul has served as a law clerk to Judge Irving R. Kaufman of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit; as Professor-in-Residence at the Appellate Staff of the Civil Division of the U.S. Department of Justice; and as Assistant to the President of Travelers Group. He has taught at the University of Miami (as both Assistant and Associate Professor) and at Boston College Law School (as a Visiting Professor). As a member of the faculty, his teachings focused primarily on constitutional law, property and jurisprudence, and he has lectured overseas in Paris, Haifa, Beijing and Shanghai. Dean Paul's writings have appeared in the Texas Law Review, the Michigan Law Review, the University of Southern California Law Review, and the Washington Monthly, and they include (with Michael Fischl) the book Getting to Maybe: How to Excel on Law School Exams published by Carolina Academic Press, and a widely used introduction to legal reasoning entitled "A Bedtime Story," 74 Virginia Law Review 915 (1988). Prior to becoming UCONN’s dean, Dean Paul served on the Board of Directors of Planned Parenthood of Connecticut and on the Board of Directors of the American Civil Liberties Union of Connecticut. As UCONN’s Dean he was a Director of the Connecticut Bar Foundation, a member of Connecticut’s Access to Justice Commission and the vice chair of the editorial board of the Connecticut Law Tribune. He also co-edits with Dean Hannah Arterian the SSRN electronic journal on legal education, and in 2012 he served as a member of the American Association of Law Schools’ nominating committee.

Chief Justice (ret.) Ellen Ash Peters
Recipient of the Medal of Excellence

Justice Peters is a Visiting Professor of Law. Professor Peters has taught a course in contracts and a seminar in federalism which has looked at federalism as a comparative law problem in which federal and state law interact and yet have independent spheres of influence and authority. A 1951 graduate of Swarthmore College, she received her law degree from Yale Law School in 1954. After a year of clerking for Chief Judge Charles E. Clark of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, and then another year as a Research Associate at the University of California Law School at Boalt Hall, she returned to Yale to begin her teaching career of 22 years at that school. Her primary scholarly interests at that time were the law of contracts and the Uniform Commercial Code. She was appointed an Associate Justice of the Connecticut Supreme Court in 1978, and named Chief Justice in 1984. For some years before her mandatory retirement from the Court this last spring, she served as Senior Justice. She is now a Judge Trial Referee and sits with the Appellate Court. She has published a casebook, a primer, and numerous articles, in such publications as the Yale Law Journal, the Connecticut Law Review, the Michigan Law Review and the New York University Law Review. She has numerous honorary degrees. She has been a member of the Board of Managers of Swarthmore College and an Alumni Fellow of the Yale Corporation. She currently is a member of the Council of the American Law Institute and is also a member of the American Philosophical Society.

The Honorable Pedro E. Segarra ’85
Recipient of the Public Service Award

Pedro E. Segarra ’85  was sworn in as Hartford's 66th mayor after he was overwhelmingly selected by Hartford voters in January 2012. Born the oldest of six children in Maricao, Puerto Rico, Mayor Segarra moved to Hartford from New York as a teenager. While his arrival in the City did not result in an immediate escape from the extreme poverty his family faced, it did fuel his determination to succeed and not be defined by his circumstances. After graduating from the former Hartford Community College, he attended the University of Hartford and earned a B.A. in political science. He went on to graduate from the University of Connecticut Schools of Social Work and Law. He currently is admitted to the Connecticut state and federal bars (1986) and the Bar of the State of Florida (2000). Mayor Segarra was the youngest person to serve as corporation counsel for the City of Hartford when he was appointed in 1991. His public service includes his appointment as a member of the Court of Common Council in 2006 and re-election in his own right to that seat the following year. He became Council president in January 2010 and was sworn in as Mayor in June of that year. Among his community involvement efforts are as a founding partner of Hogar Crea, The Hispanic Health Council and CLARO.

Registration form for 2012 Annual Meeting and Awards Dinner