Ohio Northern University’s Pettit College of Law will present the 2013 Kormendy Lecture in the Large Moot Court Room on Monday, April 8, at 4 p.m. The program will feature a presentation by Randall T. Shepard, retired chief justice of the Indiana Supreme Court, called “Brother, Can You Spare a Dime? The Crisis in American Legal Education.”
This event is open to the public.
Shepard was appointed to the Indiana Supreme Court by Governor Robert D. Orr in 1985. He became chief justice of Indiana in March 1987 and retired from the court in March 2012, at which point he was the longest-serving chief justice in Indiana history and the senior chief justice in the country’s state supreme courts.
Since leaving the court, Shepard has served as a senior judge in the Indiana Court of Appeals and as executive in residence at Indiana University’s Public Policy Institute. He now chairs the ABA Task Force on the Future of Legal Education and has become a director of Old National Bancorp.
A seventh generation Hoosier, Shepard graduated from Princeton University cum laude and from the Yale Law School. He earned a Master of Laws in the judicial process from the University of Virginia.
Shepard was judge of the Vanderburgh Superior Court from 1980 until his appointment. He earlier served as executive assistant to Mayor Russell Lloyd of Evansville and as special assistant to the under secretary of the U.S. Department of Transportation.
Shepard has served as chair of the ABA Appellate Judges Conference, chair of the Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar, and president of the National Conference of Chief Justices. Chief Justice John Roberts recently appointed Shepard to the U.S. Judicial Conference Advisory Committee on Civil Rules.
A trustee emeritus of the National Trust for Historic Preservation and a former chair of Indiana Landmarks Inc., Shepard also teaches periodically at the law schools of Indiana, New York University and Yale.
The Kormendy Lectureship was established in 1987 in Ohio Northern’s College of Law through an endowment from Helen E. Kormendy, widow of Dr. Steven W. Kormendy. The Dr. Steven W. Kormendy and Helen E. Kormendy Law Lecture Fund is used each year to bring prominent individuals to campus to address matters of law in a public forum in the College of Law. Dr. Kormendy, who died on Jan. 6, 1985, graduated from the ONU College of Law in 1928 and was posthumously awarded the honorary LL.D. degree in 1985. The Ohio State Bar Association honored him for 50 years of law practice, and he was active in events in the Hungarian community in Cleveland.
