Law Firm and Church Join to Create Memorial Award

Pastor Michael Badger, Bethesda World Harvest International Church; Thomas Knab, Hiscock & Barclay LLP; Kerese M. Foster '09; Christopher Emdin; Dewane Harris, member of Bethesda World Harvest International Church.

An unusual partnership between a law firm and a Buffalo church has resulted in a student award that honors the memory of a young University at Buffalo Law School graduate.

The Monique E. Emdin Memorial Award Fund is a collaboration between Hiscock & Barclay LLP and Bethesda World Harvest International Church. The joint effort will raise $25,000 as a permanent endowment to support a yearly award to a graduating third-year law student.

The inaugural award winner, third-year law student Kerese Foster, was honored at UB Law's Students of Color Dinner, held at the Buffalo Niagara Marriott on April 2. She will receive $1,000.

Emdin, a Maryland native and 2007 graduate of UB Law School, died of cancer on March 8, 2008. She was 28 years old.

"She was probably one of the most engaging and brightest personalities you'll ever meet," said Thomas Knab, a partner at Hiscock & Barclay, where Emdin worked as a summer associate and then briefly as a full-time associate after graduation. "She had a sky's-the-limit future, and everybody who met her immediately fell in love with her."

The firm's management committee agreed to match up to $7,500 in contributions from attorneys and staff across the firm's six offices nationwide. Staff members also conducting fund-raisers including a bake sale and a jeans day.

Emdin, a committed Christian, was a "very active member" of Bethesda World Harvest International Church, at 1365 Main St., said Bridget Richardson, president of the church's board of trustees. "She was on our worship team and worked with the young people – just a real vibrant, active person in our church," Richardson said. "The young ladies getting into their teenage years, she spent time with them, had them over to her house; she would take them out and do things with them. Her relationship with Jesus Christ was a very important point of her life, and she not only talked it but walked it and lived it." Church members have pledged $5,000 toward the award endowment.

The award in Emdin's memory is to be given to one or more graduating seniors at the Law School who are members of groups traditionally underrepresented in the legal profession and who demonstrate a commitment to community service, including significant service in faith-based communities, and/or have made significant contributions to the Law School through involvement in student groups. Preference will be given to students who demonstrate financial need.