Drake Law School Agricultural Law Center: Everything You Need to Know

Summary

The Drake Law School in Des Moines, Iowa, has established the Agricultural Law Center, a hub for research and education in the legal aspects of agriculture. The Center serves as a resource for legal professionals and academics, as well as for agricultural industry stakeholders, including farmers, landowners, policy makers, and other agricultural professionals.


The Center's mission includes advancing the study and understanding of the legal issues surrounding agriculture and agricultural policy, providing education to future agricultural lawyers, and advocating for legal reform in favor of the agricultural community.

The Agricultural Law Center is a multidisciplinary organization, drawing on the expertise of individuals from a variety of agricultural and legal fields. It serves as a forum for dialogue between students, faculty, and stakeholders in the agricultural industry, providing resources and promoting collaboration between experts in the fields of law and agriculture.

The Center conducts independent research into agricultural and legal issues, surveying the current legal landscape and advocating for change. It provides resources and education to law students and agricultural professionals, such as access to legal journals and events, and hosts guest speakers and conferences.

The Center also provides legal services to the agricultural community, such as providing legal advice and assistance, dispute resolution services, and pro bono legal services. Its services are open to both the legal and agricultural communities, providing the resources necessary for a successful agricultural legal system.

The Agricultural Law Center is a unique and valuable resource for both the legal and agricultural communities, providing research, education, and services to both sectors. It is an important hub for advancing the understandings of agricultural and legal issues, and for fostering collaboration between stakeholders. The Center is helping to shape the legal landscape of the agricultural industry, and is a key resource in helping to ensure the success of the agricultural community.
 

Agricultural Law Center at Drake Law School

Founded in 1993, the Agricultural Law Center (ALC) at Drake Law School is an innovative research and education hub for those interested in legal studies related to the world of agriculture. Established to help ensure the success of the agricultural industry, the ALC offers numerous practical and academic activities to help past and present students receive the highest quality experience related to agricultural law.

At the ALC, students are able to learn a wide range of skills, from understanding advanced legal principles to obtaining hands-on experience in the courtroom. In its 25 years of operations, the ALC has grown to become a major source of legal education and knowledge in the agricultural industry, helping future legal professionals to become proficient in a wide range of legal tasks related to farming and livestock, agricultural marketing and finance, food law, land use and many other areas.

The ALC also offers a research library of over 1,400 titles related to agricultural law, and an online database with the latest information on agricultural law topics. Students also have access to a wide range of publications, including the Agricultural & Food Law Manual and the ALC Newsletter; both of which provide the public and legal professionals with up-to-date information on the latest developments in the agricultural and food law sectors.

Additionally, the ALC offers a number of conferences and seminars each year to help attorneys, farmers, and other industry professionals stay up-to-date on the latest trends and developments in agriculture law. These conferences and seminars are designed to bring together experts from all aspects of agricultural law in order to identify and discuss the latest opportunities, challenges, and solutions in the industry.

The ALC also works closely with other Drake Law School centers and institutes to create a comprehensive curriculum to prepare future lawyers for their careers in agricultural law. Through these centers, students are able to gain experience and training in a range of topics, such as animal law and policy, food law and policy, farm and ranch management, rural economic development, and agricultural finance.

The center, open since 1983, was formed in an effort to give focus to the study of agricultural law, says its Director, Professor Neil Hamilton. There are courses on agricultural and food law for current J.D. students and also continuing education courses for lawyers in the region who work with clients in the agricultural field.

Also, the center's formation was a response to farmers' concerns that lawyers simply did not understand the issues related to rural and agricultural life. By training new lawyers who understand agricultural law, Drake has "certainly helped to change that situation here in Iowa and the Midwest," says Hamilton.

The food and agricultural law specialization certificate program at Drake started four years ago. Six J.D. students will graduate with certificates this year, and eight students expect to do so next year.

Agricultural law reaches into areas both expected and unexpected, including covering issues regarding the agricultural impact on a region's natural environment, land ownership questions, and estate planning. Then there are agricultural issues in international trade law, intellectual property issues, and health policy regulations. Drake's center "casts the net wider" to include food law, dealing with food labeling and safety, says Hamilton.

The study of agricultural law not only looks at the law's impact on agriculture and food, says Hamilton, but it also acts as "a window or portal into all legal issues." Still, Drake's courses do not stay on the theoretical side, using agriculture only as an example of larger issues. Instead, the courses and agricultural center here "take a farm-level approach with practical applications" for legal study, says Hamilton.

Students come to Drake specifically for the agricultural law program, says Hamilton, with many coming from rural farming backgrounds and seeking a foundation in the agricultural legal field. Graduates go on to careers in "a diverse field of practice," says Hamilton.

Third-year Drake Law student Amber Brady grew up on a family farm in central Texas and earned a Master's degree in Animal Science, with an emphasis on food production, before coming to law school. Her interest in food production issues continued, including food safety regulation and litigation. She decided not to pursue the certificate program, Brady says, opting instead to join the moot court and mock trial teams.

Still, Brady praises Drake's agricultural law program for the range and flexibility of its curriculum. If a student wanted to return to a rural hometown and open a general practice, she says, there are classes in wills and trusts and business tax with an agricultural focus; or if the student were more interested in policy, he/she could opt for that side of agricultural law. "You can make it your own," she says of Drake's program.

Students can even opt to study agricultural law through the summer institute at Drake, which includes courses on several agricultural topics, such as estate planning for farmers, the law of rural development, and taxation. The summer institute, which has been running for about 20 years, is a series of one-week, one-credit classes, with immersion in one topic from Monday through Thursday night and a final exam on Friday. Students then move on to the next course the following week.

In addition to its mission of education for law students and lawyers, the center supports writing and research through the Drake Journal of Agricultural Law, created by students about 10 years ago, and also through faculty scholarship. Brady is the Editor of the journal this year.

The center also focuses on public policy work as host to the nonpartisan State and Local Food Policy Councils. Drake Law's Agricultural Law Center faculty works on developing effective food and agriculture policy ideas and then provides the information to those shaping local food policies in their own states, towns, or tribes.

The Agricultural Law Center's website acts as a clearinghouse for policy information developed there and for information and strategies developed by local food councils. It also advocates for formation of new food policy councils. For this project, Drake has teamed up with the USDA Risk Management Agency, the National Agricultural Law Center, various nonprofit groups, and local government agencies.

Drake Law alumni have gone on to practice in law firms that have agricultural companies or farmers for clients, says Hamilton. They have also gone to work in Washington, DC, for law and agricultural policymakers, have become in-house attorneys for the Farm Bureau Federation; or gone on to the University of Arkansas' LL.M. program in Agricultural Law (which Hamilton helped to create before coming to Drake).

Brady will be one of those taking a firm job after graduation. She will return to her native Texas and work in the litigation section of a law firm, dealing primarily with oil and gas issues. Eventually, she hopes to work in agricultural litigation, she says.

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