As a student at BYU Law School, Adjunct Professor Kevin Murray took a class from Professor Eugene Jacobs designed to give students hands-on real estate experience. While waiting for his turn in front of a mock city council to get approval on their development projects, Murray watched a fellow student's plan go up in smoke.
"This student's development would require significant interference with a Provo business, and a local mayor was part of the mock city council. She stopped him and told him they wouldn't approve the project because the business owner was important to the community and its residents. As I watched him try to handle the city council, I thought, 'If this ever happened to me in real life, what would I do?'" Murray recalls.
Creating a career in real estate and environmental law
Soon after, as a new lawyer working in Dallas, Texas, he got the chance to find out. A partner dropped a file on his desk and told him he had to handle a city council hearing that evening.
"I looked into his file and realized a prominent Dallas resident who owned property nearby would be impacted if this multifamily housing project was approved. I called him that afternoon, explained the project, and as part of the conversation I offered to name streets after his children if he would support it. He loved that idea and gave me an affidavit supporting the project," Murray says. "When I went to the meeting that night, as I had seen happen when I was a student, the mayor said they couldn't approve the project because it would be too detrimental to the neighbor. I handed the affidavit to him and the council members. They looked at each other and motioned an approval."
At work the next day, Murray's partners and mentors asked how the meeting went and were shocked when he said the project had been approved.
"They gave the project to me because everybody knew it was going to get turned down, so it was low-risk to hand to the new guy. When it didn't, they saw me as a star," he says. "I credit this class for jump-starting my career, because it set me on a path to success through trust and confidence with my partners and mentors."
Upon graduating in 1984, Murray had begun his career as a real estate attorney. The market crashed a few years later, but Murray's science experience set him up to effectively understand and explain federal environmental statutes like CERCLA (commonly known as the Superfund). This ended up being an asset, because environmental law was in its infancy and firms were posturing to figure out how to manage environmental issues.
Since environmental issues often affected land, the projects went to the real estate group—and Murray had a grounded understanding. While his practice focus shifted to environmental law, the real estate crossover provided a unique skill set in working with clients developing environmentally challenged properties.
"I was lucky that the infancy of the law allowed me to get a massive amount of responsibility early in my career. Because I had started in real estate and that was my focus, it gave me an interesting niche other people didn't have. I began doing real estate work relating to environmentally challenged properties," Murray explains. "Clients came to me for particular expertise I gained because when I came out of school, it was fortuitous that real estate and environmental law experienced this crossover. I have been in the right place at the right time several times."
Giving back to both BYU and Utah Law students
When Murray moved back to Utah in 1990, Professor Jacobs was still teaching the real estate class at BYU and asked if he would co-teach with him. Murray was excited for the chance to give back and also offer an environmental perspective to students. He taught at BYU for more than 35 years and in 2007 began teaching a real estate transactions class at the University of Utah.
"Jennifer Huntsman (JD '11) was in my class, saw the BYU course, and asked why I wasn't teaching it at the U. She told the registrar about it, and they asked if I'd be willing to do it," Murray recalls. "My hesitation was trying to set up the local government arrangements, but I had a good friend and client who was the South Salt Lake city attorney. I asked if they would partner with us, and they said yes. I started teaching the class at Utah Law in 2015."
Since that time, Murray has worked with local municipalities including South Salt Lake, Midvale, and Herriman to create a hands-on experience that teaches students elements of real estate development and helps them understand public hearings and presentations.
"We ask the city to give us a half-dozen or more sites that are problematic for them. Students in the Real Estate Development course pick a site, choose what they want to develop on the site, and then spend a semester working on this development project," he explains. "It must require a land-use change, because for students' midterms, they go before a mock planning and zoning commission. Then, depending on the commission's decision, they go before a mock city council to get final approval on their project."
While the course requires a lot of individual research and work, Murray limits the number of students so he can spend more one-on-one time with class members and help them create a viable project.
"I'll look at what a student is working on and say, 'This isn't going to work because your parking or access is wrong.' The city will also meet with them several times as they're planning their project. Planning staff will sometimes say, 'We're never going to approve this unless you do the following,'" Murray says. "There are a lot of developers locally and across the country that will also give time to students. They can call them about what they're proposing to do. It gives them contact with real-world people."
Murray strives to make the experience as true to life as possible. The city planning and zoning commission includes professionals who actually work for the partner city's planning department, and the mock city council members have worked with Murray on the course for years and are involved in local government in the area.
"The only part that's not real is that the hearing can't last more than 20 minutes, because we need to get through a number of students during the course of a day. In real life, you would probably be standing longer than that, trying to persuade the council to develop your project," he says. "I'm less concerned about whether the project is approved and look more at how knowledgeable the student is with the intricacies of the project and how they persuasively handle the hearings (understanding the technique is different than in a litigation context). However, I have had several students graduate and go back to the city to work on the development project. Some leave my class intending to make a career in real estate."
Providing students with practical experience
One of those students is Jazmynn Pok (JD '21), who decided to attend law school after working in marketing for about 10 years. With both sides of her family involved in real estate, she did not want to enter the field until she worked during her 1L summer at Parsons Behle & Latimer and was exposed to a bit of real estate work.
"I learned about developments, entitlements, and title and survey review, and I really liked it, so I enrolled in a few different real estate classes at Utah Law, including Real Estate Development. The best part is the exposure to all the different websites and databases and having Professor Murray walk us through using them," Pok explains. “It was rewarding to problem-solve and talk through it with different groups of people. I felt that if I could do this over and over in a different way, I would love that. You go through all the frustrating, boring and tedious parts, but you also see the culmination and get the reward of having your project hopefully approved at the end.”
During the following summer when Pok returned to Parsons Behle & Latimer, the real estate course proved invaluable.
“I felt like I had much more baseline knowledge and met a lot of great contacts in his class,” she says. “The face-to-face exposure with practitioners adds tremendous value that you don't get in most classes.”
And when Pok joined Parsons Behle full-time after graduating, helping clients with land acquisition, new developments, and commercial and residential property, she was able to say yes to projects she normally wouldn’t have had experience with.
“I was much more comfortable and had a valuable high-level overview of what a whole project looks like. Through practice, that can take years to develop," she says.
Alyssa (Campbell) Diel (JD ’23), who now works at Holland and Hart helping clients navigate state and federal environmental regulations, says Real Estate Development helped her to think creatively about real-world problems.
“I strengthened my research and analytical skills through the many hours I spent researching the project and felt really proud of what I completed. The course also provided me practical real estate development experience that I still use today in my environmental law practice,” she says. “I look at real estate documents, title commitments, purchase contracts, and city and county ordinances frequently, so I walked into my practice already knowing how to use those tools. That was really valuable for me.”
Helping students succeed in future careers
Murray recalls that when he first began teaching Real Estate Development, the school would pay long-distance bills for students to call developers throughout the country. Students would also have to go to the county to get development maps and make phone calls to track down information they needed. Internet access has made the course easier, but success still requires a lot of work. He says it’s worth it.
“I come to Real Estate Development with different perspectives: as a former student, as a person who taught with the individual who created it, and as a professor who has been teaching it for a long period of time,” Murray explains. “The course will teach you how to research, identify the issues, and figure out what you need to know answers to. It is designed to teach you how to be a great associate and attorney.”