MACON – Mercer Law School will host a Law Day Celebration on Friday, April 13. The event will begin at 2:30 p.m. in the first-floor courtroom with a keynote address from Judge Beverly Martin of the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit. The event will be followed by the final round of the Lawson competition, scheduled to begin around 3:30 p.m.
The Lawson Competition is a long-standing intraschool competition exclusively for first-year students. Judges for the competition include Dwight Davis (’82), Doc Schneider (’81), Ellison C. Palmer Sr. Professor of Law Linda Jellum, Mercer Moot Court Chair Sara Witherspoon and third-year student Jena Lombard, who won Lawson as a first-year student in 2016. The competition helps expose students to moot court practice and procedure before they are selected for Mercer’s nationally recognized moot court teams in the fall of their second year. The student who argues most effectively receives $500 and has his or her name engraved on the King and Spalding Cup.
About Judge Martin
Judge Beverly Martin was born in Macon, Georgia, and attended Mercer University for one year from 1972 to 1973. She received a Bachelor of Arts degree from Stetson University in 1976 and a Juris Doctor from University of Georgia School of Law in 1981. Martin was in private practice with Martin Snow, LLP from 1981 to 1984, and was also an assistant attorney general in the State Law Department of the Office of Attorney General of Georgia from 1984 to 1994. She was an Assistant United States Attorney for the Middle District of Georgia from 1994 to 1997, and United States Attorney for the Middle District of Georgia from 1997 to 2000.
In 2000, Martin was nominated to the United States District Court for the Northern District of Georgia by President Bill Clinton, to a seat vacated by Ernest Tidwell. Martin was then nominated to the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit by President Barack Obama on June 19, 2009, to a seat vacated by Robert Lanier Anderson.