Title IX Services.

One of the original and most influential leaders of our company, his education, guidance, and general counsel background and expertise were critical in our initial development and will continue to be so in our efforts to serve the nation’s higher education community.

Jim has over 30 years’ experience providing legal advice and counsel to complex organizations, including over 20 years’ combined service as the General Counsel for the University of Kansas and subsequently for the University of Nebraska. As such, he served as the principal legal advisor to the universities’ chief executive officers and other senior administrators. Both universities are comprehensive research universities with academic medical centers and student populations ranging from 28,000 to 51,000 on multiple university campuses. Faculty and staff employees ranged from 7,000 to 16,000. His duties included supervision of 10 or more attorneys and support staff and responsibility for legal advice on all university operational matters, including investigations covering student affairs, labor and employment matters, Title IX compliance, and intercollegiate athletics.

Prior to his university career, Jim was a career Army officer. His 25-plus years in in the Army were served primarily in the Judge Advocate General’s Corps, where he was promoted to the rank of Colonel. He served as the Staff Judge Advocate (SJA) for the 10^th Mountain Division and Ft. Drum, New York, where he had a staff of 21 attorneys and more than 50 support personnel to assist more than 10,500 soldiers and 2,000 civilian employees. He also served as the Deputy SJA for the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, New York providing legal services that included employment law, sexual harassment law, labor law, student discipline, intercollegiate athletics, and intellectual property law, as well as advice and oversight on investigations for staff and students. He has held above top secret security clearances and been involved in sensitive investigations during his career.

Jim is a graduate of the U.S. Military Academy, West Point, New York with a Bachelor of Science degree in general engineering. He is also a graduate of the University of Kansas School of Law where he was the Articles Editor of the Kansas Law Review and a member of Moot Court Council. Jim earned an M.A. degree in national security and strategic studies, with highest distinction, from the Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island, and he holds an LL.M., with distinction, in Administrative Law from The Judge Advocate General’s School, U.S. Army, in Charlottesville, Virginia. Finally, in addition to graduating from the resident course of the Army’s Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, he earned an M.A. degree in human resource management from Pepperdine University in Malibu, California.

Michele is a member of the BartlettJames Executive Committee and serves as a highly respected Title IX investigator. She provides a wealth of executive legal experience and seasoned judgment from her 24-year career in legal education and the myriad positions she held as a practicing attorney in other organizations. She has a distinguished background in diversity leadership and affirmative action matters. Michele is based in North Carolina.

Michele began her legal career with positions as an Associate Attorney General for the State of North Carolina in Raleigh, North Carolina, as a staff attorney for the United Auto Workers-General Motors Legal Services, as an Assistant City Attorney for the City of Shreveport, Louisiana, and as a Supervising Attorney for The Public Law Center at Loyola University in New Orleans, Louisiana. Married to a now-retired U.S. Air Force officer, she found herself moving to accompany her husband as his career required him to relocate around the country.

Settling into legal academia, Michele became the Assistant Dean of Admissions, Financial Aid, and Diversity Affairs at the Loyola University School of Law in New Orleans, Louisiana. There she served as the school’s diversity officer and routinely counseled students on diversity issues, complaints, and concerns while planning multicultural activities. She additionally advised the Law School Dean on diversity issues as they arose and drafted the Affirmative Action Statements for the ABA accreditation process, including a statistical analysis of student bodies regarding diversity. Michele also managed the Office of Admissions and Financial Aid while also serving as a member of the Administration, Staff, and Faculty Diversity Committee, as an advisor to the Black Law Student Association, and as an advisor to the Student Diversity Committee. She did this while managing an annual budget of more than two million dollars and meeting strategic recruitment and enrollment goals each year.

Michele received her Bachelor of Arts degree in English from the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. She earned her Juris Doctorate from North Carolina Central University of Law in Durham, North Carolina, where she was an Honor Graduate and a member of the North Carolina Central University Law Review.

Donna is regarded as one of the leading Title IX Decision Makers in America. Donna trains and oversees the BartlettJames team of retired judges who provide hearing assistance around the nation. Donna’s enviable 35-year career as an attorney and Military Judge marks her as one of the true leaders of our organization. She is superbly experienced in administrative, environmental, personnel, and contract law. Donna is based in Florida.

Donna served on active duty with the U.S. Army as a Judge Advocate for over twenty years, including 11 years on the bench as a trial judge, presiding over a thousand courts-martial. She presided over innumerable cases involving murder, sexual assault, drug trafficking, larceny and a wide variety of felonies. Earlier in her career, she served as both a prosecutor and a defense counsel. In the latter capacity, she was often requested by name by female service members who appreciated the sensitivity and skill she brought to her position. Donna has been published extensively on the practice of military justice and developed pattern jury instructions for other military judges to use. She was hand-picked to conduct a sensitive pretrial hearing into sexual assault allegations against the highest-ranking enlisted Soldier in Europe, a case with wide-spread media attention.

Donna retired from the Army as a Colonel and went on to advise the Army as a civilian attorney in several positions, culminating in her role as the Division Counsel for a regional headquarters for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Through her background as a litigator, she has developed outstanding interviewing skills and has been trained to relate to special victims, such as women and children in sexual assault situations. Donna has also worked extensively with underrepresented minority groups during her career.

Donna was in the first class of women to graduate from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, NY in 1980. That experience has given her a unique perspective on gender dynamics, especially as they relate to women facing a challenging and hostile environment. She later graduated from Villanova University School of Law, with Honors, and subsequently she earned an LL.M. in Military Law, with a Criminal Law Specialty, from The Judge Advocate General’s School, U.S. Army, in Charlottesville, Virginia and an MBA from Hawaii Pacific University.