Lincoln (Neb.) - Nov. 2, 2000 - A $500,000 gift from the family of the late Harold W. Kauffman to the University of Nebraska Foundation creates the Harold W. Kauffman Legal Writing Fellows Fund to benefit the University of Nebraska College of Law.
The gift honors the 1934 College of Law graduate and long-time Nebraska lawyer by funding the addition of a legal writing suite and fellowships for adjunct professors. His family, including his widow, Esther Kauffman, and their children, Carole McVaney, Thomas, Martin, Gary and Fredric - all University of Nebraska graduates - provided the gift.
"Throughout his lifetime, our father continually expressed his warm feelings for the university and his high regard for the College of Law," said Fred Kauffman, Harold Kauffman's oldest son and NU College of Law graduate. "Our family's Nebraska background, coupled with the loyalty and pride we have for the university and our confidence in the College of Law, made this an ideal opportunity to recognize him."
Harvey Perlman, UNL interim chancellor and former dean of the College of Law, expressed appreciation for the gift.
"The university is honored that a significant part of the college's legal writing program will bear the name of Harold W. Kauffman, who was known throughout the state as a skilled craftsman of the written word," Perlman said. "Once again the Kauffman family's generosity has enhanced an important program at the university."
Judge D. Nick Caporale and lawyer Gary Young, both of Lincoln, are the first legal writing adjunct professors to be named Kauffman Legal Writing Fellows. They will be invested at a private ceremony on Nov. 6.
Caporale is a retired judge who has taught one year at the college. In 1979, he was appointed Douglas County District Court judge and then to the Nebraska Supreme Court in 1998. He is currently of counsel to the Baird Holm law firm in Omaha.
Young has taught five years at the college and is a litigation lawyer at Keating, O'Gara, Davis and Nedved after previously clerking for the Nebraska Supreme Court. Last year he was awarded a grant from the Nebraska Legislature to study the death penalty.
According to Dean Steve Willborn, interim dean of the Law College, the college is already known for placing emphasis on legal writing skills.
"This gift greatly enhances our ability to provide this crucial training," Willborn said. "Legal writing requires dedicated teachers and a great deal of one-on-one feedback and student guidance. The Kauffman Fellows program will enable the college to attract and retain highly skilled teachers and gives us the opportunity to provide students and teachers with modern facilities designed specifically to enhance legal writing instruction."
Harold Kauffman was born in North Platte in 1909 and in the 1920s moved with his family to Columbus, where he graduated from Columbus High School. He attended Nebraska Wesleyan University and later completed law training at the University of Nebraska in 1934.
He returned to Columbus to practice law before taking a position with West Publishing Co. in St. Paul, Minn., in 1936, where he became senior editor. Harold Kauffman married Columbus native Esther Smith in 1938, and they lived in St. Paul, Minn., before moving in 1943 to Muskogee, Okla., where he clerked for a U.S. district judge. In 1944, he was drafted by the U.S. Army for civilian service at a munition plant in Pryor, Okla.
Kauffman and his family returned to Nebraska in 1945 when he began clerking for Judge Joseph Woodrough of the U.S. Court of Appeals in Omaha. He went to the law firm of Dan Gross and Harry Welch in 1947 and became a partner in 1950. He practiced law with Gross and Welch until his death in 1982.
Kauffman argued two civil cases before the U.S. Supreme Court, seen as
valuable and rare experience for a Nebraska lawyer.
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