{"id":2989,"date":"2026-03-16T10:12:41","date_gmt":"2026-03-16T14:12:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/magazine.law.unc.edu\/march-2026\/?p=2989"},"modified":"2026-04-08T11:34:04","modified_gmt":"2026-04-08T15:34:04","slug":"the-sold-out-festival","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/magazine.law.unc.edu\/spring-2026\/the-sold-out-festival\/","title":{"rendered":"The Sold-Out Festival\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"festival
Students and alumni mingle after the day’s programming<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Dean Emeritus Martin Brinkley \u201992<\/a> spent his lunch break plotting. He scanned the crowd at the Festival of Legal Learning, deciding who to cold-call during his afternoon session. “You should all consider yourselves on the alert for a question from me,” Brinkley warned when he began his session. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

He picked Interim Dean Andy Hessick<\/a> first. The assignment: Draft your own tombstone epitaph. It must say something beyond dates. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hessick proposed “He tried” as his epitaph. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Brinkley wasn’t satisfied. \u201cWhat were you trying to do with that?\u201d he asked. “I’m trying to capture the essence of me if I’m trying to distill myself down into something short,” said Hessick. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Precisely,” Brinkley replied. “That’s what Thomas Jefferson did when he confronted death in the early months of the year 1826.” <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is the kind of thing that happens when you show up to Festival. You get Dean Emeritus Brinkley putting you on the spot about your mortality. You get Supreme Court litigation strategy from alumni arguing actual cases. You get two mayors explaining exactly how federal bureaucracy fails disaster survivors. You get 140 lawyers from six decades of Carolina Law classes filling every seat at the School of Government on a Friday in February, because the programming is worth showing up for. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This year’s Festival\u00a0was sold\u00a0out. More than 140 alumni from the\u00a0class of 1965 to the\u00a0class of 2025 spent six hours on Feb.\u00a013 learning about Supreme Court strategy, hurricane recovery, predatory lending, Thomas Jefferson’s writing\u00a0habits,\u00a0and artificial intelligence. Brian Meacham\u00a0\u201903, Law Alumni Association<\/a> president, opened at 9 a.m.,\u00a0welcoming lawyers from solo practice and\u00a0Big\u00a0Law, in-house\u00a0counsel\u00a0and government agencies, from across North Carolina and beyond.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The energy started the night before at the Carolina Inn, where over 100 donors gathered for the inaugural “With Thanks” event. Instead of a traditional program, the\u00a0School\u00a0organized tables around banking and finance, military and\u00a0veterans\u00a0law, and sports and entertainment. Each\u00a0table\u00a0mixed faculty, current students,\u00a0and alumni whose\u00a0expertise\u00a0could push these areas forward. Should Carolina Law help college athletes navigate\u00a0name, image, and\u00a0likeness\u00a0contracts? Can the School\u00a0leverage\u00a0Charlotte as a banking capital while teaching financial literacy? “The conversations were excellent,” Associate Dean Rick Su<\/a> told the\u00a0Festival\u00a0crowd the next morning. “I think we had a lot of good ideas.”\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Elizabeth Fisher \u201919 and Rick Simpson \u201977 from Wiley Rein opened Friday’s sessions with Interim Dean Andy Hessick, walking through a Supreme Court Litigation Clinic case currently on its fourth relist. “Stakes are high,” said Fisher. “Three relists seems to be the sweet spot for a grant. When you get to four, maybe it’s more likely that there’s an opinion being prepared at the petition stage.” The case involves qualified immunity and First Amendment retaliation, with 15 amicus briefs supporting the petitioner. “This case is very, very hot,” said Fisher. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rebecca Badgett from the School of Government moderated a panel that brought the legal conversation home. Asheville Mayor Esther Manheimer \u201998 and Canton Mayor Zeb Smathers \u201908 walked through Hurricane Helene’s aftermath. Manheimer showed a photo of the “flush brigade,” volunteers organized to help homebound elderly residents with basic sanitation after the city’s water system failed. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Smathers made bureaucratic delays personal. An alderman lost his home in 2021, applied for a FEMA buyout and received the money four months ago. He spent years waiting, while paying a mortgage on a destroyed house. “There are people hanging onto promises that help is on its way, paying mortgages, wanting their kids to remain in schools, wanting to keep calling Western North Carolina home,” said Smathers. “People working on these projects in Washington, D.C. need a picture of someone who has lost everything. Before you clock out every day, take a look at that picture and ask yourself, did I do everything I could today to make their lives better?\u201d  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kara Bruce<\/a>, Graham Kenan Distinguished Professor of Law, explained merchant cash advances through a golden goose. Buy a goose, you take the risk it dies or lays golden eggs. Loan money secured by a goose; you get your fixed payment regardless. MCAs claim the first scenario but operate as the second. “Courts miss it all the time,” said Bruce. \u201cThe case law has shifted dramatically since 2022. It’s a great story of law development in action.” <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then came Brinkley\u2019s cold-calling assignment. Jefferson’s epitaph listed three accomplishments: author of the Declaration of Independence, author of the Statute of Virginia for Religious Freedom, father of the University of Virginia. Not president, not Secretary of State, not governor. “He focused on authorship,” Brinkley said. He traced how Jefferson became that writer through studying Tacitus, whose work Jefferson called “all pith.” He claimed it was energy, cogency, fullness of sentiment, closeness and vigor of thought and style. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mark Storslee<\/a>, associate professor and C. Boyden Gray Distinguished Scholar, examined how the Supreme Court has grappled with social media regulation and Establishment Clause doctrine. The day closed with Patricia Brown \u201986, Wab Kadaba \u201997, and John Sieman \u201907 discussing artificial intelligence. Brown asked the room about ChatGPT usage. Most had tried it, fewer use it daily and one person can’t live without it. Kadaba described using it to draft letters and contracts and said, “I’ve found it to be a very substantial time-saving device.” <\/p>\n\n\n\n

While alumni filled the School of Government, the class of 2028 had their own programming. Every first-year student participated in Carolina Law’s mandatory AI literacy program during the Student Festival for Legal Learning. Clinical professors Nicole Downing<\/a> and Michelle Rodenburg<\/a> designed sessions covering what these tools are, their limitations and how to use them ethically. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

At 5 p.m., those first-year students joined alumni in the atrium. A lawyer who graduated in 1965 talked with someone from the class of 2025. Big Law partners compared notes with solo practitioners. The AI panel speakers met students who just spent the afternoon learning the tools they’ll use throughout their careers. This is what happens when 140 people decide a Friday in February is worth showing up for. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you missed this year’s sold-out Festival, join us next year. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This year’s Festival of Legal Learning sold out. More than 140 alumni spent a Friday in February learning Supreme Court litigation strategy on a live case, hearing from two mayors about what federal bureaucracy looks like when disaster survivors are waiting, and getting put on notice by Dean Emeritus Martin Brinkley that no one in the room was safe from a cold call.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":3264,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[8],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/magazine.law.unc.edu\/spring-2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2989"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/magazine.law.unc.edu\/spring-2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/magazine.law.unc.edu\/spring-2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/magazine.law.unc.edu\/spring-2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/magazine.law.unc.edu\/spring-2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2989"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/magazine.law.unc.edu\/spring-2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2989\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3428,"href":"https:\/\/magazine.law.unc.edu\/spring-2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2989\/revisions\/3428"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/magazine.law.unc.edu\/spring-2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3264"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/magazine.law.unc.edu\/spring-2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2989"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/magazine.law.unc.edu\/spring-2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2989"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/magazine.law.unc.edu\/spring-2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2989"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}