Student Highlights and Opportunities

Student Highlights

In 2025, the faculty selected Joseph P. Keller for the Best Published Comment by a Graduating Student Award for his Comment, Limiting Step Therapy on Mental Health Medications: Why a More Expansive Approach is Needed. This Comment, supervised by Center for Health & Pharmaceutical Law Professor Tara Ragone, deftly analyzed recent state step therapy legislation in the context of the nation’s ongoing mental health crisis and complex health insurance regulatory system. Joe made incisive, nuanced, and practical recommendations for states and Congress to enact more expansive and effective step therapy regulation. Professor Ragone was not surprised by Joe’s superb Comment, as he consistently asked insightful, thoughtful questions and received the highest grade in her Mental Health Law class.

National Health Law Competitions

The Center for Health & Pharma offers students multiple opportunities to challenge and distinguish themselves by competing in an array of national health law competitions.

Seton Hall Law’s nationally ranked moot court team competes each fall in the National Health Law Moot Court Competition at Southern Illinois University Simmons Law School in Carbondale, IL. Co-sponsored by the American College of Legal Medicine and the American Health Law Association, this competition attracts law student teams from across the country to research, write appellate briefs, and argue contemporary issues of health law and policy. Teams from Seton Hall Law regularly advance past the preliminary rounds and excel in the elite rounds.

In 2024, Seton Hall Law’s team of Tanya Panossian-Lesser and Joseph Keller placed third in the SIU Health Law Moot Court competition, and Joe earned Fifth Best Oralist honors in the preliminary rounds.

Seton Hall Law students also regularly compete in two national health law transactional competitions in the spring semester.

The Annual L. Edward Bryant Jr. National Health Law Transactional Competition at the Beazley Institute for Health Law & Policy at Loyola University Chicago School of Law challenges students to dissect a fact pattern that presents thorny, complex legal and regulatory issues woven throughout a potential business opportunity for a hypothetical health care client. The three-student team researches and drafts a legal memorandum summarizing their legal and business advice for the client. Then the team members showcase their transactional lawyering skills in simulated presentations of their analysis and legal advice before panels of expert practitioners.

Center for Health & Pharma Law at Seton Hall students Bernard Robert, Kristen Liu, and Marisa Nardelli represented Seton Hall Law in the National Health Law Transactional Competition at the Beazley Institute for Health Law & Policy at Loyola University Chicago School of Law. Three judges awarded them near perfect scores on their presentation regarding thorny and complex health care regulatory and compliance issues.

The Health Law Regulatory & Compliance Competition at the University of Maryland Francis King Carey School of Law similarly requires a team of 2-3 law students to analyze a hypothetical fact pattern concerning a number of interactions among entities engaging in health care activities that implicate regulatory and compliance oversight. But the competition’s unique format adds an additional challenge: teams receive the fact pattern at the start of the in-person competition rather than in advance. Teams then have only 90 minutes to analyze the fact pattern and prepare presentations of their findings and recommendations to two panels of practicing regulatory and compliance attorneys - one representing government investigators and regulators, and the other private clients. Competition excellence demands sophisticated, nuanced knowledge and understanding of complicated health law regulatory and compliance doctrine and practice. Not surprisingly, Seton Hall Law’s nationally ranked health law program prepares students to thrive in this environment.

Center students’ legal writing also stands out from the crowd. Lauren Rutkowski earned second place in the 8th Annual American University Washington College of Law National Health Law Writing Competition. Her paper examined a circuit split over the causation standard of False Claims Act actions that result from Anti-Kickback Statute violations, and argued that Congress should amend the Anti-Kickback Statute so that the causation standard will be clearer and also subject those who violate the AKS to civil liability under the False Claims Act. Thomas Feil received an honorable mention for his paper, “Taking Your Medicine: Insulating Drug Price Negotiation Program from Fifth Amendment Challenges,” in the Ninth Annual American University Washington College of Law Writing Competition.