Speakers
Ben Aguiñaga (’15)
Louisiana Solicitor General
Ben Aguiñaga is the Solicitor General of Louisiana. He earned his B.A. from Baylor University in 2012 and his J.D. from LSU Law in 2015. He served as a law clerk for then-Justice Don Willett of the Texas Supreme Court and Judge Edith Jones of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. He spent a year as the chief of staff for the Civil Rights Division at the U.S. Department of Justice in Washington, D.C. He subsequently served as a law clerk for Justice Samuel Alito of the United States Supreme Court in the 2018 Term. Most recently, he was an Issues and Appeals associate at Jones Day for four years before transitioning to Louisiana in January 2024.
Hon. David C. Joseph (’03)
United States District Court for the Western District of Louisiana
David C. Joseph was nominated by President Donald J. Trump in January of 2020, and confirmed by the United States Senate on July 28, 2020, to serve as a U.S. District Judge for the Western District of Louisiana Division, currently assigned to the Lafayette Division.
Prior to his appointment as U.S. District Judge, Judge Joseph served as the Presidentially-appointed United States Attorney for the Western District of Louisiana from March of 2018 through July of 2020 – serving as the chief law enforcement officer in the Western District of Louisiana responsible for the prosecution of criminal cases brought by the United States in an area encompassing 42 of Louisiana’s 64 parishes and including the cities of Shreveport, Lafayette, Lake Charles, Monroe, and Alexandria.
Before he was appointed U.S. Attorney, Judge Joseph served as a criminal Assistant United States Attorney in the Western District of Louisiana from 2014 through 2018 where he prosecuted a wide variety of criminal offenses – focusing his practice on financial crimes, investment fraud, and public corruption. Judge Joseph also served as the liaison between the U.S. Attorney’s Office and Fort Polk and was the lead prosecutor for crimes committed on the Army installation.
Prior to joining the Department of Justice, Judge Joseph served as a commissioned officer and prosecutor in the United States Army Judge Advocate General’s Corps, as a Senior Attorney in the Professional Liability & Financial Crimes Section of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, and as an attorney at an international law firm, where he focused his practice on commercial and complex litigation.
Judge Joseph received his Bachelor’s Degree of Business Administration from the University of Oklahoma and his Juris Doctorate from the Paul M. Hebert Law Center at Louisiana State University, where he was a member of the Louisiana Law Review and was inducted into the Order of the Coif. Following his graduation from law school, Judge Joseph clerked for Justice Jeffrey P. Victory of the Louisiana Supreme Court and Judge John V. Parker of the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Louisiana.
Chloé M. Chetta
Partner, Barrasso Usdin Kupperman Freeman & Sarver, L.L.C.
Chloé M. Chetta is a member of Barrasso Usdin Kupperman Freeman and Sarver, L.L.C. She is licensed to practice in Louisiana, Texas, and Mississippi, and her practice focuses on most types of complex and commercial litigation, with special emphasis on appellate issues.
Before joining the firm, Chloé served as a law clerk to the Honorable Sarah S. Vance, who was then the Chief Judge of the Eastern District of Louisiana and the Chair of the Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation. Chloé also clerked for the Honorable Stephen A. Higginson of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.
Jeffrey J. Gelpi
Partner, Kean Miller LLP
Jeffrey J. Gelpi is a partner in the New Orleans office of Kean Miller, where he focuses his practice on defending Fortune 500 and other major oil and gas companies in high-stakes lawsuits and class actions. Before joining the firm, Jeff served as a law clerk to the Honorable Carl J. Barbier of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana. Jeff later served as a law clerk to the Honorable Edith Brown Clement of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.
Hon. Jane Triche Milazzo (’92)
United States District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana
Judge Jane Milazzo was appointed as a United State District Court Judge by President Barack Obama on October 12, 2011, after being unanimously confirmed by the United States Senate. Prior to her appointment, Judge Milazzo served as a state court judge for three years. Judge Milazzo graduated from LSU Law in 1992, and immediately went into practice in her family’s law firm. Her judicial career began after 16 years in private practice. As a state district court judge, she served on the executive committee of the District Judges Association. She currently serves on the Board of Directors for the New Orleans Federal Bar Association.
Judge Milazzo regularly speaks to lawyers on issues of professionalism, advocacy, and complex litigation. She currently presides over the multidistrict litigation, In Re: Taxotere (Docetaxel) Products Liability Litigation. She is married to her husband, John. They have six children and five grandchildren.
Stephen J. Herman (’94)
Special Counsel, Fishman Haygood L.L.P.
Steve Herman is a past president of the Louisiana Association for Justice, a fellow of the International Academy of Trial Lawyers, a member of the American Law Institute, and the Immediate Past President of the New Orleans Bar Association.
The author of America and the Law: Challenges for the 21st Century, Mr. Herman teaches an advanced torts seminar on class actions at Loyola Law School and an advanced civil procedure course in complex litigation at Tulane. Chair of the LSBA Class Action, Mass Tort, and Complex Litigation Section, Herman also serves on the Rules of Professional Conduct Committee. A former President of the National Civil Justice Institute and the Civil Justice Foundation, Mr. Herman is probably best known for serving as one of two Lead Counsel for Plaintiffs in the BP Oil Spill / Deepwater Horizon Litigation.
Eric Schuller
President, Alliance for Responsible Consumer Legal Funding
Eric Schuller is the current President of the industry trade association The Alliance for Responsible Consumer Legal Funding (ARC). In his role, Eric directs and manages all the Government Affairs issues that confront the industry on national bases. He has testified on issues relating to regulation of the industry across the country.
Schuller was a recent member of the Board of Directors of State Government Affairs Council (SGAC) and is the current Chair of the Public Outreach Committee. In addition, he has served on the Board of After the Impact Fund that assists former NFL players and veterans affected by Traumatic Brain Injuries. Eric is an Advisory Board Member of the Dispute Financing Library of the Center on Civil Justice at NYU Law School. He is an active participant in the Council of State Governments (CSG), National Conference of State Legislators (NCSL) and the Attorney General Alliance (AGA) and National Association of Attorneys General (NAAG).
Previously, Eric was the President and Executive Director for Operation Homefront Illinois, an organization that supports the members of the military and their families. Prior to Operation Homefront, he was on staff for the Lieutenant Governor of Illinois. Eric retired from the United States Army and National Guard after 23 years of service. His background was in Military Intelligence, Counterintelligence and Military Police Operations. Eric has a bachelor’s degree in Business from the University of Illinois at Chicago.
Mark Behrens
Co-chair Public Policy Practice Group, Shook, Hardy & Bacon, L.L.P.
Mark A. Behrens co-chairs Shook, Hardy & Bacon’s Public Policy Practice Group in Washington, D.C. and is a leading national expert on civil justice issues.
He has over 30 years of experience working on civil justice issues and defense litigation. Behrens has authored over 150 amicus briefs and testified before the U.S. Congress and most state legislatures. He has also published more than 50 law review articles, earning recognition for his scholarship, including a Burton Award for Legal Achievement. Behrens is a member of the American Law Institute. He holds a J.D. from Vanderbilt University Law School and a B.A. in economics from the University of Wisconsin.
Prof. Summer Chandler
Associate Professor of Law, LSU Law
Professor Chandler joined the Law Center faculty in 2021. Prior to joining the Law Center faculty, she served as a visiting assistant professor at Southern University Law Center. She also served as an assistant professor at Concordia University School of Law. Prior to joining Concordia University School of Law, she was as a visiting assistant professor at the Georgia State University College of Law.
She brings a wealth of practice experience to her teaching. Prior to joining the academy, Professor Chandler practiced for fifteen years in large national and international law firms, focusing her practice on business bankruptcy, commercial real estate related litigation and transactions, and other business transactions and disputes.
Professor Chandler’s research interests are in the areas of bankruptcy and legal ethics. She teaches business and commercial law courses, including: bankruptcy, business associations, contracts, and payment systems. Professor Chandler is a graduate of the University of Michigan Law School. She obtained her undergraduate degree from the University of North Carolina – Asheville.
Professor Chandler has been published in several journals such as the Vermont Law Review, Drexel Law Review, and the Missouri Law Review. She is also published as an editor and contributing author in “Intellectual Property Licenses as Executory Contracts in Choppy Waters: Navigating the Intersection of Bankruptcy and Intellectual Property” and as a co-author of “Fraudulent Transfer Litigation in Georgia Business Litigation.”
Prof. Margaret S. Thomas
Professor of Law, LSU Law
Professor Thomas joined the LSU Law faculty in 2011. She teaches and writes about federal civil procedure and the federal courts. Her scholarly interests also include the interplay between foreign affairs, procedure, and federalism.
Professor Thomas came to LSU Law from California, where she taught as a fellow and lecturer at Berkeley Law from 2009-2011. At Berkeley, she taught Civil Procedure II in the J.D. curriculum, and she developed courses to familiarize LL.M. students from civil law countries with American structural constitutional law and litigation practices.
Previously, Professor Thomas practiced law as an appellate attorney in Los Angeles with California’s premier appellate boutique, Horvitz & Levy LLP. Representative matters include international trademark infringement, personal jurisdiction over foreign entities, international choice of law, celebrity rights of publicity, punitive damages, enforcement of arbitration agreements, and complex insurance disputes. In 2008-2010, she was recognized as a “rising star” in appellate law by the publishers of Southern California Super Lawyer: Rising Star Edition, an award recognizing outstanding attorneys under 40 with fewer than 10 years of practice.
Prior to joining Horvitz & Levy, she served as a law clerk for Judge Pamela Ann Rymer in the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and Judge George H. King in the United States District Court for the Central District of California.
Professor Thomas received her BA in German Literature and European Studies from Amherst College, graduating summa cum laude. She received her JD from Berkeley Law. While a student at Berkeley Law, she was the Essay and Book Review Editor of the California Law Review. Upon graduation, she was selected for membership in the Order of the Coif and awarded the Thelen-Marrin writing prize, recognizing the faculty’s selection of the year’s best published student work.
Kyle W. Siegel
Partner, Barrasso Usdin Kupperman Freeman & Sarver, L.L.C.
Kyle W. Siegel maintains a practice focused on complex litigation, with substantial work in products liability and toxic torts cases both in Louisiana and jurisdictions across the country. She has represented clients across a variety of industries, including medical device, pharmaceuticals, oil and gas, and consumer products. Kyle has significant mass tort and multidistrict litigation jury trial experience, playing an integral role in five bellwether trial teams representing major pharmaceutical and medical device companies. She has prepared numerous experts for deposition and trial testimony in disciplines such as toxicology, pathology, orthopedic surgery, and biomechanical engineering. Kyle has also participated in several bench trials on toxic tort claims and developed experts on land loss, geology, and environmental risk assessment issues in energy litigation.
Before joining her current firm, Kyle worked as a litigation associate at Latham & Watkins in New York, focusing primarily on securities litigation, government investigations, and white-collar defense. Kyle also served as a law clerk to the Honorable Rhesa Barksdale of the United States Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals. Kyle received her Bachelor of Arts degree from Stanford University and her Juris Doctor from University of Virginia School of Law.
Hon. Darrel James Papillion (’94)
United States District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana
Darrel James Papillion is a United States District Judge serving in the Eastern District of Louisiana. He was nominated to the federal bench by President Joseph R. Biden on March 21, 2023, and was confirmed by the United States Senate on May 30, 2023. President Biden signed his judicial commission on June 1, 2023, and he took the oath of office and began serving as a federal judge in New Orleans on June 2, 2023.
Before his elevation to the federal bench, Judge Papillion was a founding partner in the Baton Rouge law firm of Walters, Papillion, Thomas & Cullens, where he practiced from 2009 to 2023. Prior to starting his own firm in Baton Rouge, he practiced from 1995 to 2009 at his firm’s predecessor firms and at McGlinchey Stafford in New Orleans.
Over his nearly 30 years as a lawyer, Judge Papillion handled many complicated personal injury and wrongful death cases and developed a well-known expertise in products liability law. He represented both plaintiffs and defendants, including multi-national automotive and heavy equipment manufacturers as well as persons who were severely injured in accidents or their surviving family members in wrongful death cases. He also worked as a mediator in numerous civil cases, was appointed as a Special Master by Louisiana’s Nineteenth Judicial District Court in complex matters, and served as a Special Prosecutor for the East Baton Rouge Parish District Attorney’s Office.
Over the course of his career, he tried many cases to verdict, earning him membership in the American College of Trial Lawyers, the International Academy of Trial Lawyers, and the International Society of Barristers.
He was the 2016-2017 President of the Louisiana State Bar Association and served as President of the Baton Rouge Bar Association in 2014. He has been an Adjunct Professor of Law at Louisiana State University Law Center since 2000; has authored numerous articles in law reviews, journals, and other legal publications; and has taught hundreds of hours of continuing legal education courses for lawyers and judges.
He earned his undergraduate and law degrees from Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge and served as a law clerk to Louisiana Supreme Court Associate Justice Catherine D. Kimball, who was the first woman to serve on Louisianas highest court and who later became the first woman to serve as Chief Justice of the Louisiana Supreme Court.
Stacie Lambert DeBlieux (’04)
Attorney, Salim-Beasley, LLC
Stacie is a 2001 graduate of Louisiana State University with a major in Economics and a 2004 graduate of LSU’s Paul M. Hebert Law Center. During law school, Stacie clerked for the Honorable James J. Brady, U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Louisiana, as well as several large defense firms in Baton Rouge. After graduation, Stacie took a job as an associate with Allen & Gooch in Lafayette. There, she concentrated primarily on the defense of businesses and municipalities against federal claims.
In 2006 Stacie joined the Louisiana Department of Justice as an Assistant Attorney General. She soon began representing the State in some of its largest and most complex plaintiff cases against big business interests such as the pharmaceutical, insurance, and auto industries. With a focus on consumer protection and antitrust enforcement, Stacie became Section Chief of the DOJ’s first Complex Litigation Unit, often working hand-in-hand with other state and federal enforcers and leading efforts on behalf of forty or more states.
Stacie has served as the lead attorney for Louisiana in a variety of complex litigation matters, including all Katrina-related cases against the insurance industry, auto cases such as Toyota unintended acceleration and Volkswagen diesel emissions, antitrust multidistrict litigation cases involving the delayed generic entry of Suboxone as well as the price fixing of generic pharmaceuticals, and the State’s cases against Facebook and Google. Most recently, Stacie headed the State’s lawsuit against the opioid drug manufacturers, was a member of the 13-state committee negotiating the national $26 billion settlement with Johnson & Johnson and opioid distributors and served on the ad-hoc committee for the Purdue Pharma bankruptcy matter related to the national opiate litigation.
Garland Cassada
Attorney, Robinson, Bradshaw & Hinson, P.A.
Garland Cassada practices in the areas of commercial and corporate litigation, and insolvency, corporate reorganization and debt restructuring matters. He has particular experience representing purchasers of and investors in distressed businesses and assets and is a leader in restructuring issues related to companies with asbestos and other mass tort liability. Garland has been a frequent speaker at bankruptcy seminars, including a LexisNexis Wall Street Forum on Asbestos where he spoke about structuring transactions to avoid successor, fraudulent transfer and veil piercing liability.
Garland previously served on an ad hoc committee, chaired by The Honorable Judge Edward R. Becker, to assist the Judiciary Committee of the U.S. Senate in drafting bankruptcy-related provisions for S.852 (Fairness in Asbestos Resolution Act of 2005).
Prof. Elizabeth Burch
University of Georgia School of Law
Elizabeth Chamblee Burch is the Fuller E. Callaway Chair of Law at the University of Georgia. Her teaching and research interests include mass torts, class actions, and civil procedure. She has been a Visiting Professor at Harvard Law School and her scholarship has won several awards including the American Law Institute’s prestigious Early Career Scholars Medal for the potential to improve the law governing class actions and multidistrict litigation; the Fred C. Zacharias Memorial Prize for professional responsibility scholarship; and the Mangano Dispute Resolution Advancement Award for groundbreaking scholarship on multidistrict litigation.
Professor Patrick D. Murphree
Jacksonville University College of Law
Patrick D. Murphree is an Assistant Professor at Jacksonville University College of Law whose research interests include complex litigation and law and culture. He holds a Ph.D. from Indiana University-Bloomington and a J.D. from Loyola University New Orleans College of Law. . His recent article on removal and remand in federal multidistrict litigation, which appeared in the Louisiana Law Review, was inspired by his time practicing at a plaintiff-side mass tort, class action, and antitrust firm. He is currently working a project connecting legal ethics to the work on Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard.
