2017 Kalinka Award recipient Karen Blakemore, center, with 2017 LSU Law NELMCC team members Kelsey Balzli and Taylor Herpin. (Not pictured is 2017 NELMCC team member James McKenney.)
Karen Blakemore was awarded the 2017 Kalinka Award for Advocacy Programs Coach of the Year at this year’s Advocacy Programs Banquet, which was held April 5 at the Cook Hotel and Conference Center on the LSU Campus. Named in honor of the late Professor Susan C. Kalinka, the Kalinka Award recognizes a coach of one of the Law Center’s moot court or trial advocacy external competition teams who embodies the inspiration and dedication of Professor Kalinka.
Blakemore is the coach of the Law Center’s National Environmental Law Moot Court Competition (NELMCC) team. She was selected as this year’s Kalinka Award recipient for her extraordinary commitment and dedication to her teams. Blakemore sets a high standard for her moot court teams, arranging dozens of oral argument practices for her students before area practice leaders in environmental law and continually motivating them to ever higher levels of achievement. She is always willing to do whatever is needed to ensure that LSU Law students excel, and she gives her all to the program and to her students. In the words of one of her team members, “she is a mentor, a friend, a teacher, and a role model.”
Blakemore is an environmental regulatory consultant at CK Associates, assisting industrial clients with regulatory interpretations and compliance assessments. She is a 2007 graduate of the LSU Law Center, where she was the 2005 recipient of the Wex S. Malone American Inns of Court Scholarship and a member of the championship team at the 2006 National Environmental Law Moot Court Competition. She practiced environmental law for nine years with Phelps Dunbar, LLP.
This year’s NELMCC team placed fourth overall at the competition, which had nearly seventy teams participate this year, and each of LSU Law’s three team members received a Best Oralist recognition from the judges in each of the preliminary rounds that LSU argued in.
