The fourth annual winners of BC Law’s prizes recognizing faculty excellence and innovation have been announced. Natalya Shnitser is the recipient of the Excellence in Scholarship award, for her article “Overtaking Mutual Funds: The Hidden Rise and Risk of Collective Investment Trusts” (Yale Law Journal). The Faculty Prize for Innovation in Pedagogy has been awarded to the team of Lis Keller, Maureen Van Neste, and Joan Blum, for their work piloting new AI tools for students.
Associate Dean for Faculty and Global Programs Paulo Barrozo cited the difficulty in selecting the winners from such a deserving crop of nominations. “The Prize Committee had the best of problems: truly outstanding nominations, each fully deserving of a prize,” Barrozo said in announcing the prize recipients. “[All of the nominees] and the Law School should feel proud and deeply fortunate.”
Shnitser’s prize-winning article delves into the phenomenon of collective investment trusts (CITs). CITs, though unfamiliar to most, are increasingly a part of popular 401(k) retirement plans, and may soon eclipse traditional mutual funds in terms of sheer valuation in the plans. The article lays out the history of the development of CITs, which have been in existence for more than 100 years with little to no SEC oversight or other regulatory scrutiny.
Shnitser‘s article examines the lurking danger of these opaquely structured funds as they become more common in 401(k)s run by major investment firms, citing the inclusion of illiquid high risk assets in them, such as private equity. The article, which is already deeply impacting scholarship and practice, has relevance for a broad swath of stakeholders such as law professors, fund managers, and investor advocates, helping them better understand the intricacies and scale of the problem and to intelligently address the issues CITs are increasingly raising as part of their work.
The Innovation in Pedagogy trio did trailblazing work this year with the thorough and thoughtful way they critically introduced and taught students new AI-based resources for lawyers. The three faculty members are part of the Law Practice group at BC Law, which is known for its innovative approaches to teaching students the building blocks of legal research and writing.
With BC Law students gaining access in the spring 2025 semester to new AI-assisted research and drafting tools, Blum, Keller, and Van Neste worked to get ahead of the numerous issues that can arise with unmitigated and untrained use of the tools. This is especially germane in the field of legal education, where it is crucial to lay a foundation for law students to use AI responsibly and ethically, while maximizing their potential to assist students in their education.
Using advance access they had to the tools as faculty members, they devised and incorporated into Law Practice course sections rigorous exercises for students to complete. These included using the tools for legal research, and simulating professional tasks such as responding to a hypothetical email from a supervising attorney. They walked the students through AI search results, identifying weaknesses in legal justifications provided, and looking out for occasional “hallucinated” or false data, helping students to critically evaluate what AI was returning and to systematically refine the results as needed. This process, which keeps the students’ legal knowledge and sound judgment at the helm of the AI tools, served to both vet and concentrate the information into a more useful form, and more effectively harness the power and promise that these tools hold for future legal practice.
These two awards were created in 2022 at BC Law to recognize distinguished accomplishments by BC Law faculty. You may read more on past winners from 2024, 2023 and 2022.