Law school can zap away your time in a way unlike most other things. Below, I’ve included 5 of my favorite simple recipes that I can throw together with just a little bit of preparation and that make for a great dinner or a delicious leftover lunch — and [in my unexpert opinion] are nutritionally sound enough to fuel you for the long class days and intense readings.
Read on…
Continue readingBoston College Law School gives its students a wide range of classes to take that are taught by some of the best scholars in the field. Yet, while learning about the law in a classroom is crucial to becoming a successful attorney, nothing prepares you for day-to-day practice more than getting hands-on experience before graduating. That’s where BC Law’s clinics come in.
Law students in their second and third years of study can apply for coveted spots in any of the school’s fifteen clinics. No matter what someone’s legal interest is, there’s a clinic for them! To help students better understand the opportunities available to them, the BC Law Impact Blog is highlighting each of these clinics this semester. Here is our interview with the director of the Immigration Clinic, Mary Holper.
Tell us about your clinic!
In the Immigration Clinic, students represent clients who are either physically separated from their families and communities through immigration detention, and/or risking further separation through deportation. Students advocate for their clients’ release from detention by preparing and arguing bond motions in immigration court; for some clients, students must also prepare and argue habeas corpus petitions in federal district court. Additionally, students defend clients against deportation by preparing and arguing defenses to deportation, such as asylum and other humanitarian protection, as well as waivers of deportation for long-term residents and legal status based on family ties.
Continue readingOver a year ago – before I had even started my 1L year – I wrote my first post for the Impact Blog, which was largely about whether I felt moving from creative writing to law would be a smooth transition. With three semesters now under my belt (and the weariness to show for it), I thought it would be fun to revisit that topic and see just how accurate my predictions were.
My perhaps overly-optimistic younger self believed that law school could be a progression of the creative writing skills I developed in college; that much of what I learned would carry over into the legal world. While that belief wasn’t 100% false, it turned out to be a bit more complicated than that.
Continue readingI used to be normal. With normal ideas about normal things. You know, everyday stuff. I knew that only people could be people. I knew that property divided broadly into “houses and similar,” “cars and similar,” and “other.” I understood the Constitution. And I didn’t have this recurring dream where I’m waiting for a train and fireworks are going off, but instead of pinwheel lights and colorful explosions, the fireworks spell out “No Liability Without Fault.” The law (and lawyers…) was something best left alone unless absolutely necessary, and when it was necessary, I imagined it looked a lot like Judge Judy’s courtroom. It was a simpler time, with simple ideas and dreamless sleep.
Then I started law school.
Continue readingBoston College Law School gives its students a wide range of classes to take that are taught by some of the best scholars in the field. Yet, while learning about the law in a classroom is crucial to becoming a successful attorney, nothing prepares you for day-to-day practice more than getting hands-on experience before graduating. That’s where BC Law’s clinics come in.
Law students in their second and third years of study have the opportunity to apply for coveted spots in any of the school’s fifteen clinics. No matter what a student’s legal interest is, there’s a clinic for them! The BC Law Impact Blog is highlighting each of these clinics this semester, starting with Project Entrepreneur. Here is our interview with the clinic’s director, Larry Gennari.
Tell us about your clinic!
Project Entrepreneur uses corporate and entrepreneurial law to foster the successful reentry of individuals with criminal records back into society. Our outside clients are justice-involved, and most of them were previously incarcerated. By the end of the course, students develop the basic skills necessary to counsel aspiring entrepreneur clients; an understanding of the general legal issues critical to new ventures, as well as the specific legal issues pertaining to each assigned client; an appreciation for the unique challenges facing returning-citizen entrepreneurs; and an understanding of how a lawyer can best assist an entrepreneurial client in presenting or pitching their business idea to an audience of investors, strategic partners, and other stakeholders. Corporations is a prerequisite/co-requisite course for this clinic, and Professional Responsibility/Ethics is highly recommended.
Continue readingEntering the second semester of 1L, I’m definitely a little burned out. But I’m no longer burdened by the uncertainty I had when I came to law school. I’m a little wiser now. Here is what I wish I knew for my first semester of law school.
Many of us get to experience the luxury of not being on call every day. For all of my first semester classes, I either had an on-call day or panel system. In one of my classes, I wasn’t called on until the very end, so I prepared each and every Wednesday, week after week to be ready. A little annoying, but it paid off. This may seem obvious, but letting your mind think you’re always on call makes your understanding that much better. While not always feasible, it pays off in the long run – you’ve had more time to process the material and it makes finals season that much easier.
Continue readingAfter a long, relaxing, and unproductive break, we’re back at school. While it can be nerve-wracking to start a new semester, with new classes, professors, and expectations to manage, it can also be a chance for a fresh start. We like to set resolutions for ourselves each new year to (hopefully) guide how we’ll live moving forward, but as law students, the same practice can be useful before returning to the classroom. Here are three of my resolutions for this semester that I think could be beneficial for us all.
Outline (Semi) Regularly
I’ve heard the advice that law students should add to their outlines every week, and I even know students who follow this practice. While that sounds borderline impossible for me, I also recognize that my strategy of waiting to outline until classes end is also…not ideal.
Continue readingThis guest post by BC Law Professor and Associate Dean of Academic Affairs Daniel Lyons first appeared in the AEIdeas Blog.
“What about the kids?” plays an outsized role in the short history of Internet law. From the Communications Decency Act to the Child Online Protection Act, California’s violent video game law, and more, the contours of online regulation have been shaped well-meaning legislation that turned out to be unwise, unconstitutional, or both.
Last month, the Senate Commerce Committee reported out a bill poised to become the next entry in this dubious canon. The Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA) purports to protect minors from the very real risks posed by social media. But it does so by placing a vague duty of care on a wide range of Internet-based companies in a manner likely to chill significant amounts of online speech and do more harm than good to minors and society in general—in the unlikely event that it survives judicial review.
The crux of the act is Section 3, which requires “covered platforms” to take reasonable measures to prevent and mitigate specific harms to minors, including:
Continue readingThe United States is in the midst of an unparalleled affordable housing and homelessness crisis. The most conservative estimate puts the number of individuals forced to live unhoused each year at around 580,000 nationwide, while the episodic nature of homelessness means that this number is likely much higher and perhaps closer to 5 million. At the same time, there is a critical shortage of affordable housing in the United States and there are only thirty-six units of rental housing for every 100 households with extremely low incomes across the nation.
In response to this crisis, various jurisdictions across the United States have introduced some form of a right to shelter. For instance, a comprehensive right to shelter has existed in New York City since the 1970s, with some 75,540 people spending a night in a city-provided shelter during March 2023. Other more limited right to shelter legal regimes exist in Washington, DC, which provides shelter in severe weather conditions, or in Massachusetts, which provides shelter to eligible families. Similarly, the Ninth Circuit’s 2018 decision in Martin v. Boise upholding the constitutional rights of individuals experiencing homelessness provides the potential contours for a limited right to shelter built around Eighth Amendment jurisprudence.
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BC Law: Impact 