Law Faculty Honors Colleen R. Smith, J.D. ’15 with I'Anson Award
Great Professional Promise Dean Davison M. Douglas presents the faculty's I'Anson Award, which recognizes great professional promise, to Colleen Smith, J.D. '15 at the Diploma Ceremony. Photo by Gretchen Bedell
Colleen R. Smith, J.D. ’15 received the I'Anson Award, the highest award given to a graduating student by the Law School faculty, during the Law School's Diploma Ceremony on May 17. The award recognizes great professional promise as demonstrated through scholarship, character, and leadership, and is named in honor of Lawrence W. I'Anson (1907-1990), a graduate of the College of William & Mary and former Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Virginia.
Law School Dean Davison M. Douglas presented the award to Smith and told the audience that among Smith's achievements in law school she was class valedictorian.
Smith is a summa cum laude graduate of the College of Idaho, where she majored in mathematics. At Idaho, she was editor-in-chief of the student newspaper, student body president, an All-American in soccer, and an All-Conference in cross-country and track. In 2010, the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics named her female Scholar-Athlete of the Year.
The recipient of the Law School's Mary Siegrist Hinz Leadership Fellowship, Smith served as the William & Mary Law Review's Symposium Editor and as Vice President of the Student Bar Association. Her paper, Scouting for Approval: Lessons on Medical Device Regulation in an Era of Crowdfunding from Scanadu's "Scout," won first place in the Food and Drug Law Institute's 2014 H. Thomas Austern Memorial Writing Competition.
During the Class of 2015 Awards Ceremony, held on the eve of graduation, she received numerous recognitions, including induction into Order of the Coif (membership in which is the highest academic recognition a law student can achieve), the Carter Kaplan & Co. International Financial Law Award, a Legal Practice Scholar Award, and a Gambrell Professionalism Award.
Smith will clerk in 2015-16 for a federal district judge for the Eastern District of Virginia, and in 2016-17 for a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit. She will then join the Washington, D.C., office of Covington & Burling.
About William & Mary Law School
Thomas Jefferson founded William & Mary Law School in 1779 to train leaders for the new nation. Now in its third century, America's oldest law school continues its historic mission of educating citizen lawyers who are prepared both to lead and to serve.