Month: February 2025

The Conversations That Matter: How Mentors Changed My Life

/ Christopher Tan / Leave a comment

The coffee was burnt. The décor, forgettable—muted earth tones, a token abstract print on the wall. The air-conditioning droned overhead, numbing the space, while the espresso machine sputtered and sighed into the empty café. But the conversation was life-changing. I was twenty-two, sitting across from an attorney at Bloomberg in Hong Kong, trying to calibrate my enthusiasm, trying not to seem too eager, too green.

He sipped his espresso, glanced at a fancy watch, and then, just as I started doubting my ability to navigate this unfamiliar dynamic, he leaned forward and asked, “So, tell me about yourself?”

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One Size Does Not Fit All: The 2L Summer Job Search 

/ Samantha Torre / Leave a comment

You might be familiar with the term “two roads diverged in a yellow wood.” The poem, written by Robert Frost, reflects on the ways different choices can lead to different journeys and different destinations. 

If – like me – the journey you’re contemplating is the 2L summer job search for Big Law firms, it’s less two roads diverging in a yellow wood, and more one of those massive highway interchanges – where it feels like there’s about 8 different paths you could take, all of them go somewhere different, you can’t make out any of the road signs, and it’s all happening at about 80 miles per hour. 

What firms are you looking at? What part of the country? Do you want a big firm? A small firm? A small office in a big firm? A small practice area in a big office in a big firm? A big practice area in a big office in a small firm? Some other ungodly combination thereof? 

And then – practice areas, which are different from industries. Litigation or corporate? Corporate litigation? Complex commercial litigation? Transactional? Disputes? A specific area of litigation? A specific area of transactions? Do you want to decide on your practice group as a summer associate? Anything involving technology? Anything involving labor and employment? What about real estate? Are you planning to clerk? Are you interested in pro bono? 

And that’s just if you know you want to do a Big Law Summer. For example, many of my friends are interested in Big Law, but also want to explore public interest or government jobs. 

So, you know, no stress. 

At the same time, as you seek out people for advice – older students, mentors, professors, CSO, practicing attorneys and so on – you find that while the advice is helpful and based on experience, it often contradicts. Some people love networking, others emphatically do not, some people were sending out applications in March and others waited until after spring semester finals. 

While it all seems confusing, and as mentioned above, there are multiple different paths, I’ve come to understand that multiple different paths are kind of the point. There is no one-size-fits-all plan for 2L recruitment. 

For example, I plan on returning to California after graduation. I’m from San Diego, and I hope to begin my legal practice in Southern California – and definitely want to be a summer associate in a Southern California office. As such, my process looks a little different than many of my peers. 

Whereas my classmates can meet attorneys for coffee within the city of Boston, I often connect with attorneys in Southern California via Zoom. While there are certainly more alums from BC law in Boston than in San Diego, the alumni network in California have all been open and willing to connect and talk about their experiences as various firms. Additionally, I can reach out to attorneys who attended the same undergraduate school as me, or attended my undergraduate school for law school and vice versa. When I attend events in Boston, my goals are to generally understand the culture of a firm and show interest to recruiters who can hopefully connect me with offices in San Diego and Los Angeles. 

Many firms have virtual events – where you can connect with attorneys across the country. Furthermore, legal recruiters are a great way to start getting connected with an office. 

And if you’re not sure where to start, Boston College has some great resources to put you on the path that is right for you: 

  1. The Career Services Office: The Career Services Office has the benefit of knowing how the 2L job search is going on a macro level – they talk to a variety of students, and track job offers, acceptances, and interviews. Additionally, meeting with CSO can help you create a plan that does fit you, looking at a variety of different factors, including market, practice area, location and application timelines. They also know BC grads personally and can connect you with alumni who might be particularly helpful to your search.
  1. 2L and 3L Students: Speaking to 2Ls is helpful because their application process – hopefully – will be the most similar to the current application process. 2Ls can offer valuable advice on what worked and what didn’t when applying to firms. 3Ls have worked in the firm as a summer associate — they offer great insight into firm culture. Additionally, it can feel easier to ask questions to 3Ls instead of cold emailing an Associate or recruiter.
  1. Firm Prospects, Vault, Chambers Associate and other web pages: In my search for out-of-state firms, these websites have been invaluable. First, they’re a great way to find firms in different cities. Additionally, the websites will break down practice areas, explain which of the firm’s offices host summer programs, and provide insight into firm culture. 
  2. Career Services Office Big Law Recruiting Website: CSO created a website tailored to the class of 2027 2L job search. Students can see historic GPA data, dates that firm portals open, and access resources such as sample cover letters.

Samantha Torre is a 1L student at BC Law. Contact her at torrs@bc.edu.

In New Magazine Issue, Our Community Shines Through

/ Sangeeta Kishore / Leave a comment

BC Law Magazine has been writing about what makes our community special for over thirty years. I always look forward to a new issue, and the Winter 2025 edition is full of stories of alumni, faculty, and students doing pretty amazing work that speaks to our mission of delivering justice all over the world.

I found the cover story, “Then Came the Reckoning,” particularly compelling. It was not an easy read, telling the story of alumna Erica Brody fighting for justice for a group of children abused by their foster parents, but the results were truly astonishing–literally changing the way the system works in Massachusetts. One of the most frightening things about the case was not just what happened in those foster homes (one in particular over many years), but how the state agency involved in placements actively worked to cover everything up. And until Erica and her team fought for change, the agency was pretty well protected by state law. Well worth the read, but we should offer a trigger warning for depictions of abuse of children. 

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Bringing the Climate Crisis Close to Home

/ Ian Hurley / Leave a comment

“When one tugs at a single thing in nature, he finds it attached to the rest of the world.”
— John Muir, My First Summer in the Sierra

When I started my career in journalism, I often heard this maxim about audience building: All news is local. The general idea underlying the concept (if you’re a journalism professor avert your eyes) was that no matter how national the story or the publication, it related to some localized community. The “locality” could be geographical, but equally, it could be about different identities, economic standings, experiences, etc. 

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From Biomedical Engineering to Litigation: Meet Ruchita Jain

/ Sangeeta Kishore / 5 Comments

There are numerous roads to law school, and no one-size fits all path to a successful legal career. Follow along with our series highlighting BC Law students and how they got here! 

Our first four entries were with Sara Womble, a 2L from Winston Salem, NC, Elias Massion, who comes from Nashville, TN and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Samina Gagné from London and Columbia University, and Alvin Synarong from Murfreesboro, Tennessee and Princeton.

Name: Ruchita Jain

Hometown: Edina, Minnesota 

Educational Background: B.S. in Biomedical Engineering from Boston University

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Protecting Kids and Adults Online: Device-Level Age Authentication

/ BC Law Impact Guest Posts / Leave a comment

This guest post by BC Law Professor and Associate Dean of Academic Affairs Daniel Lyons first appeared in the AEIdeas Blog.

Recently, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in Free Speech Coalition v. Paxton, which involves a constitutional challenge to a Texas age verification law for websites containing sexually explicit material. The case offers the Court the opportunity to revisit two cases decided at the dawn of the Internet Age finding such requirements violated the First Amendment. This post looks at the legal and practical arguments against the law, and asks whether shifting verification from websites to devices might alleviate some of those concerns.

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Finding Love at BC Law: A Valentine’s Day Story

/ Alexandra Staller / Leave a comment

Happy Valentine’s Day, BC Law! Remember to tell your law school people that you love them!

Love is all over the place in law school. It probably makes sense since law students spend so much time together (shout out to our workload for inspiring a forced proximity trope). I had the opportunity to talk with BC Law class of 2016 alum Meghan Morgan about how she met her husband back in her first semester of law school in Fall of 2013 during one fateful 1L softball game. Fun fact: Rob actually helped to create BC Impact. Thank you to both of them for sharing their story with me and for letting me share it with the BC Law community. Let this be your sign to join your section’s softball team next fall.

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The Long Shadow of Home: A Reflection on Legacies and the Cycles of Law

/ BC Law Impact Guest Posts / Leave a comment

This guest post was written by Marco Cobian ’25. A slightly different version is appearing as BC Law Magazine’s Winter 2025 In Closing column.

Growing up in Ramona, California–a rural and dispossessed, secluded and dust-strewn town tucked into the upper-hinterlands of San Diego County–I was acquainted with the rhythms and cycles natural to a certain way of life. Among these were the buzz and crackles of the morning commute, of pickup trucks leaving early for their daily pilgrimages only to return in the evening to start over again the next morning. This is the cycle that defines Ramona–the departure and the inevitable return, week after week, year after year, generation after generation.

This too, is the cycle that defined my family. I was born and raised in Ramona, just like my father before me. Moreover, I was born and raised in Ramona, the son of a first-generation American, the grandson of two undocumented Mexican-immigrants who settled in Ramona in their late-teens; I was born and raised the proverbial and vaunted embodiment of their hopes and dreams. As all three generations of my family ventured outside of Ramona and glanced at horizons just beyond the town’s borders, the gravitational pull of this cycle wrenched them back in, and just like that, the cycle repeated. And with each iteration, a certain impression of reality solidified in the psyche of my family–fortified by structural barriers and generational trauma, this cycle created limits on what one could imagine oneself being and doing. 

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‘Being’ a Law Student and the Freedom of Choice

/ BC Law Impact Guest Posts / 1 Comment

This guest post was written by second-year law student Staniel Brutis.

I. INTRODUCTION

“The cornerstone on which all things are based is man’s concept of himself. He acts as he does and has the experiences that he does, because his concept of himself is what it is, and for no other reason. Had he a different concept of self, he would act differently.” – Neville Goddard

Coming into my 1L year, I wanted to understand what it meant to be a law student. Specifically, I looked to become the “ideal” law student. In search of an answer to this question, I interviewed several of Boston College Law School’s professors and members of staff. In that moment, I figured that they were individuals who had accomplished the goals I set for myself, and it would be best to learn from their experiences. Each person was asked the same question,“ What is one word to describe the ideal trait of a student?” Here are their responses:

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The Most Important Thing I Learned from Taking the Civil Litigation: Housing Justice Clinic

/ BC Law Impact Guest Posts / Leave a comment

This guest post was written by Melanie Barber, a second-year student at BC Law.

In the fall, I participated in BC Law’s Civil Litigation: Housing Justice Clinic. I enrolled in the clinic because I was personally motivated by the work. I (like many Boston-area students) have collected my fair share of landlord horror stories and I relished the opportunity of holding landlords accountable. I also wanted to strengthen my understanding of civil procedure, which was not my strong suit when I took it as part of the 1L curriculum. Most importantly, I felt a growing obligation to use my legal education to critically consider access to justice issues.

Before our first seminar, my professor asked us to read an essay from Atul Gawande’s Complications. In this essay, titled Education of a Knife, Gawande reflects on his experience as a surgical resident learning to place a central line. He writes of his self-doubt and mistakes. It was an interesting read, but I remember thinking: what is my professor trying to suggest here? I am only a 2L trying to navigate the first few weeks of Evidence and Professional Responsibility. My professor isn’t going to throw me into a trial, right?

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