Author: Isabella Calise

What Law School Has Done to the Way I Read the News

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The other day, I was scrolling through Instagram when I came across a video of a flight attendant walking down the aisle of a plane holding a cat.

Presumably, the cat belonged to one of the passengers. The flight attendant was holding it up and asking everyone, one row at a time, if it was theirs. It was one of those videos that was clearly supposed to make you smile. A cat had somehow gotten loose on a plane, a flight attendant was trying to reunite it with its owner, and everyone was apparently having a pretty good time.

The news story ended there.

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Three Questions to Ask Yourself When Picking Your Practice Area

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No, this is not a BuzzFeed quiz.

There won’t be a personality type at the end telling you that you’re a “natural-born M&A associate” because you picked spreadsheets over courtrooms. Unfortunately, I also can’t promise that answering three questions will magically reveal your dream practice area.

I actually came into law school with a pretty good idea of what I wanted to do. I wanted to litigate, and I was already interested in white-collar defense. But if I’m being honest, I hadn’t really stopped to think about it on a deeper level. I knew I had experience in criminal law and liked the idea of it, but I wanted to make sure I liked the actual work too. If you took away the cool-sounding practice-area name, would I still want to do the job?

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Your (Unofficial) Guide to St. Paddy’s Day Weekend in Boston

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Yes, it’s Saint Paddy’s — not Patty’s.

I’ve somehow managed to write about something law-related in every article I’ve contributed to this blog so far. Today, however, I’m choosing joy. Coming off of spring break and realizing that morale is still… let’s call it… fragile in Crim Law, I think it’s time we talk about something more exciting than case briefs and writing competition materials.

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Lessons from a Jesuit Education: Growth, Purpose, and the Practice of Law

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Because, I, too, once didn’t know what a Jesuit education entailed. Now, I can’t imagine who I’d be without it.

By way of background, I’ve been a Catholic school kid pretty much my whole life—since second grade, technically—and I actually liked it. When my parents offered to switch me to the local public school after we moved when I was nine, I chose to stay where I was. I wanted to keep wearing my jumper and tie (yes, girls could wear ties too) and keep going to religion class.

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I Survived the Waitlist—and You Can, Too

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Because the admissions cycle is hard enough, here’s a little story of having hope during (and surviving) the process.

When the word “waitlist” appeared in bold on my decision portal, I slammed my laptop shut so fast it nearly caught my fingers. I had braced for rejection, prayed for acceptance, and instead landed in the purgatory no one prepares you for. I’m not a betting woman, but if you had asked me then whether I thought I’d get in, I would’ve said no. Still, seeing it stung.

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Discovering Advocacy Before the Courtroom: My Journey to Law School

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One Monday morning in the summer of 2022, I was greeted at work by my boss eagerly telling me today I would be meeting the defendant in the self-defense case I just started working on. After anxiously waiting until lunch, I watched with surprise as a young boy—barely five foot seven and still sporting a baby face—walked through my door and told me he was just seventeen yet was being tried as an adult for second-degree murder. 

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