Category: Alumni News

The University of Illinois College of Law recently published its 2025–2026 Employer Honor Roll, recognizing employers who have regularly hired recent College of Law graduates. This past year represents a significant milestone in the history of the Honor Roll, with a record-breaking number of employers—85 in total—being recognized.  This year’s Honor Roll features an impressive and diverse array of employers, including law firms of many sizes; a wide variety of federal, state, and local government agencies; public interest employers; and courts. Combined, Honor Roll employers have hired approximately 270 recent College of Law graduates in the Classes of 2023, ’24, and ’25. With the support of Honor Roll members and hundreds of additional employers, the College of Law has continued to deliver a strong array of opportunities for its graduates.

“The College of Law is humbled to have such a diverse and impressive group of employer partners,” Jamelle Sharpe, dean of the College of Law, said. “We are especially pleased to have so many employers included on the Honor Roll this year. It’s a testament to the quality of our graduates and their ability to add value on day one.”

First created in 2014, the Honor Roll has been updated annually since. This year’s group includes many long-time honorees, as well as a large number of new employers. 

“We appreciate the chance to be of service to so many great legal providers,” noted Greg Miarecki, the College’s executive assistant dean for Career Planning and Professional Development.  “We are excited to continue working with our Honor Roll employers and all of our employer partners in this dynamic and challenging recruiting environment.”

In 2025, the College of Law introduced the first annual Employer Honor Roll luncheon, which welcomed more than 100 attendees from over 50 different employers.  Employer Honor Roll members listed below will receive their awards at the next Honor Roll luncheon, currently slated for the fall of 2026.

DIAMOND

Katten Muchin Rosenman LLP
Kirkland & Ellis LLP
Sidley Austin LLP

PLATINUM

Benesch
Chapman and Cutler LLP
Circuit Court of Cook County
Del Galdo Law Group, LLC
Heyl Royster
Husch Blackwell LLP
Jenner & Block LLP
Jones Day
Law Office of the Cook County Public Defender
Litchfield Cavo LLP
McDermott Will & Schulte
McGuireWoods
Meyer Capel
Morgan, Lewis & Bockius LLP
Office of the Cook County Public Guardian
Office of the Illinois Attorney General
Reed Smith LLP
Sheppard, Mullin, Richter & Hampton LLP
University of Illinois – Office of University Counsel
Wilson Elser
Winston Taylor

GOLD

Champaign County State’s Attorney’s Office
Dickinson Wright PLLC
Donohue Brown Smyth LLC
Foley & Lardner LLP
Foran Glennon Palandech Ponzi & Rudloff PC
Greenberg Traurig, LLP
Ice Miller LLP
Internal Revenue Service
Jackson Lewis PC
Office of the State Appellate Defender
Polsinelli
Quarles & Brady LLP
U.S. Army JAG Corps
United States Bankruptcy Court for the Northern District of Illinois
United States District Court for the Central District of Illinois
Vedder
WilliamsMcCarthy LLP

SILVER

Akerman LLP
ArentFox Schiff LLP
Barnes & Thornburg LLP
Beermann LLP
Champaign County Public Defender’s Office
City of Chicago Department of Law
Crowell & Moring
DuPage County State’s Attorney’s Office
Dykema
Faegre Drinker Biddle & Reath LLP
Fish & Richardson P.C.
Fox Rothschild LLP
Grant Austin, LLC
Hall Prangle LLC
Illinois Appellate Court, First District
Illinois Appellate Court, Fourth District Research Department
Jackson LLP
Johnson & Bell, Ltd.
K&L Gates LLP
King & Spalding
Latham & Watkins LLP
Levenfeld Pearlstein, LLC
Lewis Brisbois Bisgaard & Smith LLP
Macon County Public Defender’s Office
Maron Marvel Bradley Anderson & Tardy LLC
Mayer Brown
McAndrews, Held & Malloy, Ltd.
McGuire Law, P.C.
Morgan & Morgan, P.A.
National Labor Relations Board
Neal, Gerber & Eisenberg LLP
Nyhan, Bambrick, Kinzie, & Lowry
Patzik, Frank & Samotny Ltd.
Peoria County State’s Attorney’s Office
Ropes & Gray LLP
Seyfarth Shaw LLP
Squire Patton Boggs
Swanson, Martin & Bell, LLP
Thomas Mamer, LLP
Thompson Coburn LLP
Troutman Pepper Locke
United States Bankruptcy Court for the Central District of Illinois
Venable LLP
Willkie Farr & Gallagher LLP

The complete list of Honor Roll employers, along with the methodology for selecting employers, can be found at www.law.illinois.edu/careers/employer-honor-roll.

The College of Law is honored to announce that Yan Liu ’94 will deliver the convocation address to the Class of 2026. The College of Law Convocation Ceremony will take place Saturday, May 16, at 1:00 p.m. in the Great Hall of Krannert Center for the Performing Arts. 

Liu is General Counsel and Director of the Legal Department of the International Monetary Fund. In her role, she serves as an advisor to the IMF’s Executive Board, management, staff, and country membership on all legal aspects of IMF operations and functions. Liu was promoted to General Counsel in October 2024, becoming only the second female to serve in that role in the 80-year history of IMF.

Since 1999 Liu has been with the IMF, in that time leading the Legal Department’s work on a range of issues, such as reforming IMF policies on lending; strengthening central banking and financial sector legal frameworks; leading work on corporate and household insolvency, and public debt management; and contributing to the development of international standards for financial regulation. She is an expert in sovereign debt, setting the Fund’s IMF policies in this field and supporting the Common Framework and the Global Sovereign Debt Roundtable. Liu has published extensively in areas such as private debt, sovereign debt restructuring, and good governance.

Liu received her Juris Doctor from Illinois in 1994, and a master’s degree from the University of Chicago. Prior to joining the IMF, she practiced corporate and securities law in the United States.

For more information about the convocation ceremony, please visit our website.

Lopez v. Apple Inc., brought about due to the intrusive recording of private conversations by Apple’s Siri voice assistant, concluded in late 2025 with a landmark $95 million settlement. The research of Christopher Muhawe JSD ’23 proved to be vital to the determination; his article with Masooda Bashir was a cornerstone of the legal strategy from the plaintiffs that swayed the court.

Read more about Muhawe’s work.

Very few individuals can claim honors like those Dave Downey earned: the basketball court at Canton High School was recently renamed in his honor; he still holds the single-game scoring record at the University of Illinois, and State Farm Center has a “Club 53” commemorating his 53-point performance; and in his professional career, he was named Mass Mutual Man of the Year twice before turning 40 years old. Downey passed away at age 84 on December 27, 2025, but his life and legacy live on.

Among the many outstanding facts about his life, Downey may be the only person who chose to attend law school rather than play in the NBA. He never played a game for the San Francisco Warriors, who drafted him in 1963, but he did graduate from the College of Law in 1966, and his law degree remained a point of pride throughout his life according to his wife, Jane Hays ’79. 

“Dave was truly one of a kind,” Hays said. “He was proud of his law degree from Illinois, and forever grateful for the education, friendship, patience, and forbearance of his professors and classmates.”

Coming from humble beginnings did not stop Downey from dreaming big. He made it to college on a basketball scholarship and worked part time to help make ends meet. He kept his job selling insurance as a law student, but despite employment was unable to pay for the needs of his growing family and buy all the books he needed. Though this frustrated some professors, his prodigious memory and the aid of study groups helped earn admittance to the Illinois bar.

Downey chose not to pursue a legal career, opting instead to continue with Mass Mutual and using his degree to advocate for the insurance industry in Washington, D.C., and helping organize the Advanced Association of Life Underwriters.

“He told people, self-effacingly, that he didn’t think of himself as a ‘real lawyer,’” Hays said. “Nevertheless, he knew his law degree and bar admission were vitally important to his successful career in advanced life insurance.”

Outside of professional life, Downey was committed to serving the community. He served on the University of Illinois Board of Trustees, the University of Illinois Foundation Board, the University of Illinois Athletic Board, and the Illinois Board of Higher Education, among other endeavors. He and Hays have also provided generous philanthropic support to almost every academic unit on campus, most recently endowing the Phyllis M. Wise Endowed Professor in Medicine and Innovation at the Carle Illinois College of Medicine.

For his professional and philanthropic efforts, Downey received the Distinguished Alumni Award from the College of Law in 1984. His blazer may not hang in the rafters of the Law Building the way his jersey hangs in State Farm Center, but he will not be forgotten. The College of Law sends its condolences to all of Downey’s family and friends.

Today, the University of Illinois College of Law published its 2024-2025 Employer Honor Roll, which contained a record-setting 72 employers.  The Honor Roll recognizes employers who have regularly hired recent College of Law graduates. The Honor Roll contains a wide variety of employers, including, for example, law firms of many sizes, accounting firms, a wide variety of government agencies, public interest employers, and courts. Combined, Honor Roll employers have hired nearly 250 recent College of Law graduates in the Classes of 2022, 2023, 2024. The Honor Roll was first created in 2014. With the support of Honor Roll members, and hundreds of additional employers, the College of Law continues to serve as a “go to” destination for top legal talent.

“We are excited to welcome a record-breaking number of employers to our Honor Roll this year,” noted Greg Miarecki, the College’s Executive Assistant Dean for Career Planning and Professional Development. “And we are especially gratified to have longtime Honor Roll members from across the profession enhancing their standings this year – this reflects strong and continuing demand for our outstanding graduates,” Miarecki added. 

Diamond
Heyl Royster
Jones Day
Kirkland & Ellis LLP

Platinum
Barnes & Thornburg LLP
Chapman and Cutler LLP
Circuit Court of Cook County
Husch Blackwell LLP
Jackson Lewis P.C.
Jenner & Block LLP
Katten Muchin Rosenman LLP
Land of Lincoln Legal Aid
McDermott Will & Emery
McGuireWoods LLP
Meyer Capel
Morgan Lewis & Bockius LLP
Office of Chief Counsel, Internal Revenue Service
Reed Smith LLP
Seyfarth Shaw LLP
The Law Office of the Cook County Public Defender
Thompson Coburn LLP
Troutman Pepper Locke LLP
United States Bankruptcy Court for the Northern District of Illinois
Wilson, Elser, Moskowitz, Edelman & Dicker LLP
Winston & Strawn LLP

Gold
Cook County Public Guardian
Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office
Deloitte Tax LLP
Donohue Brown Mathewson & Smyth LLC
Dykema
Greenberg Traurig
Illinois Office of the State’s Attorneys Appellate Prosecutor
Mayer Brown LLP
Neal, Gerber & Eisenberg LLP
Office of the State Appellate Defender
Polsinelli
Quarles & Brady LLP
Sheppard, Mullin, Richter & Hampton LLP
United States District Court for the Central District of Illinois
University of Illinois – Office of University Counsel
Vedder Price P.C.

Silver
Ancel Glink, P.C.
Beermann LLP  
Benesch
Brennan Burtker LLC
Burke, Warren, MacKay & Serritella, P.C.
Del Galdo Law Group, LLC
Dickinson Wright PLLC
DuPage County State’s Attorney’s Office
Faegre Drinker Biddle & Reath LLP
Fidelity National Financial, Inc.
Fish & Richardson P.C.
Fox Rothschild LLP
Hall Prangle & Schoonveld, LLC
Ice Miller LLP
Johnson & Bell, Ltd.
K&L Gates LLP
Latham & Watkins LLP
Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles
Lewis Brisbois Bisgaard & Smith LLP
LG Electronics
Littler Mendelson P.C.
Maron Marvel Bradley Anderson & Tardy LLC
National Labor Relations Board
Nyhan, Bambrick, Kinzie & Lowry
Office of the Illinois Attorney General
Peoria County State’s Attorney’s Office
Rakoczy Molino Mazzochi Siwik LLP
Swanson, Martin & Bell, LLP
U.S. Army JAG Corps
United States District Court for the Southern District of Indiana
Venable LLP

The complete list of Honor Roll employers, along with the methodology for selecting employers, can be found at www.law.illinois.edu/careers/employer-honor-roll.

The United States helped broker a ceasefire in the Black Sea between Ukraine and Russia, but Russia stalled implementing the deal in hopes of having sanctions lifted first. “This may be intended to drive a further wedge between the U.S. and Europe,” Professor Taisa Markus told the Kyiv Independent in their in-depth article on the ceasefire deal.

Read the full article online.