Inside BC Law’s Career Services Office: A Q&A With Assistant Dean Jen Perrigo

/ Courtney Ruggeri / Leave a comment

Landing a job both as a law student and post-grad can be stressful to say the least. You hear about all the ways in which your law degree can help you professionally, but how do you really know where and when to begin your search? Law firm or government? Clinic or externship? Do networking coffees really make a difference?

Whether you are a prospective student, current law student, or recent graduate, we can help. We sat down with Jen Perrigo, Assistant Dean of Career Services at BC Law, to answer some of these top-of-mind questions. 

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365 of 1L: Internal Monologue of My First Cold Call

/ Dan Riley / Leave a comment

I was never really worried about getting cold called.

For one thing, my name, appearance, and general vibe are so monumentally uninteresting that I knew I’d be functionally anonymous to my professors. For another, I came to law school straight through from undergrad. My academic career has been uninterrupted since kindergarten. So when people started to hype up the pressure of cold calling, this long-standing historic educational tradition built on the learning philosophy of Socrates, a daunting gauntlet every 1L has to traverse, I may have been a little nervous. That is, until I found out cold calling just means getting called on in class. I’ve been getting called on in class for 17 years. No big deal.

But then I actually had my first cold call. The following is an account of my internal monologue at that moment:

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Bar Review: Frolic or Detour

/ ianramseynorth / 1 Comment

There is a legal doctrine from tort law, delightfully called “frolic and detour.” Frolic and detour sets certain limits to when an employer can be held liable for an employee’s conduct. Imagine you’re a FedEx driver out on your route when you pull into a Dunkin’ Donuts parking lot to grab a coffee and you accidentally hit someone’s car. The coffee run was a reasonable bit of self-care, something most employers should expect their perennially sleep-deprived workers to do. And it was a quick and slight divergence from your work-prescribed route. So the odds are that the courts would see it as just a detour and FedEx will still be liable for the accident. But what if you take a break and head south out of Boston until you get to your favorite coffee shop in Panama City? In the eyes of the law, you’re on a frolic and FedEx is off the hook if you get into a fender bender on your way through Mexico.

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365 of 1L: A Word On Mentors

/ Devon Sanders / Leave a comment

This year, we are taking you through the biggest moments of the 1L year. The ups, the downs, and everything in between, keep checking back for the inside scoop on important events and milestones from our students.

Maybe it’s just that time of the year, but it seems like every day is getting a little bit busier at BC Law. As reading assignments seem to grow longer and longer, and due dates become closer and closer, I cannot help but feel the need to reach out to those who have been through the trials and tribulations of their first year of law school.

Lucky for us 1Ls, we have a lot of advice available to us. At the beginning of the year, LSA matched every new student with an upperclassman who helped welcome us to the school and shared their tips and tricks. Classes, moving, and just life in general, our mentors gave advice on it all. Throughout the first couple of weeks, many organizations that we had joined also began pairing us up with older members, specifically matching us with those who had similar interests. The result? A plethora of mentors to choose from, all knowing exactly what we are going through and who were eager to help.

I decided to ask around for the best advice mentors have given. Maybe it will help you too.

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Starting Over in the Middle: What It’s Really Like to Transfer Law Schools

/ Tatiana Becker / 2 Comments

Ask anyone who has gone to law school: the application process is a nightmare. It’s (digital) mountains of paperwork, recommendation letters, editing your personal statement and supplemental essays fifty different times, and coordinating transcripts on LSAC from undergrad and beyond.

And then you submit your applications, get in (hopefully) to a few different schools, contemplate your options, submit your deposit, and dive right in to 1L year. But what about people who transfer? There’s lots of speculation and whispering about whether it’s a good or bad choice, with the potential loss of scholarship money, class rank, job prospects in OCI, and the fear of having to start all over again with new teachers and new classmates.

For me, transferring was always my plan, but I had not anticipated how emotionally arduous it would actually be.

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BC Law Dean Nominated as President of Law Schools Association

/ Jaegun Lee / Leave a comment

Congratulations to our very own Vincent D. Rougeau, dean of Boston College Law since 2011, who is set to serve as President-elect of the Association of American Law Schools (AALS) next year!

AALS is a Washington, DC-based nonprofit that brings together nearly 200 law schools to advance legal education, support professional development, and promote diversity in the legal profession. The membership will officially vote on Dean Rougeau’s nomination (he is the only candidate) at their annual meeting in January 2020.

Dean Rougeau, an outspoken advocate for legal education reform, will succeed Harvard Law School Professor Vicki C. Jackson as the President of the nonprofit association. Before taking the helm at BC Law, he was a highly-regarded professor of contracts, real estate transactions, and Catholic social thought at Notre Dame Law School — where he also served as Associate Dean for Academic Affairs.

You can read more about Dean Rougeau’s nomination as President-elect of AALS on BC Law Magazine’s website.

Closing Casebooks and Opening Discussions: BC Law’s Campus Speakers

/ Elizabeth Gooen / Leave a comment

Part of why I decided to come to law school was to engage in deep, complex, and nuanced discussions about the law and current events. During college I was able to take courses that challenged and engaged these questions and provoked discussion on campus outside the classroom too. The 1L curriculum doesn’t have the same freedom of course selection as an undergraduate one. We select one elective class in the spring semester, but in the fall, our course schedule is entirely up to the Law School and long-standing professional norms. That isn’t a bad thing—undoubtedly, these doctrinal classes will make us better lawyers and teach us about the law. BC Law also has excellent, engaging, and caring 1L professors. But I imagine everyone else who goes to law school, just as I do, has a desire to discuss many legal interests that extend beyond the scope of 1L courses. Simply based on how often law is in the news, we obviously have questions about topics that will not be covered in class.

Fortunately, BC Law’s administration and student organizations help fill the gap.

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Diary of an Introvert

/ Roma Gujarathi / 2 Comments

Almost exactly five years ago, I remember beginning to work on my undergraduate college applications. One of my essay questions asked me to write about my favorite place. I considered this question for a while: I thought of my bedroom, my favorite study spot at school, my temple, but none of them resonated with me. After weeks of pondering, I realized that my favorite place wasn’t a physical space at all: it was inside my own head. 

Finally feeling satisfied with my topic, I wrote a draft to show my admissions counselor. She told me that my head wasn’t a real place and that the piece made me sound a bit like a recluse. She asked me to stick to a physical place, like a typical response would. I remember feeling slightly defeated and wholly misunderstood, but this wasn’t the first time. In a world that values sociability, collaboration, and action, we introverts often feel out of place.

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Inside BC Law’s Admissions Process: A Q&A With Dean McShay

/ Courtney Ruggeri / 3 Comments

Applying to law school is no easy task. You have to gather a number of recommendation letters, study for the LSAT while you are either in school or working, and craft the perfect narrative for your personal statement. In short, you need to figure out how to paint the best picture of yourself for an unknown admissions team.

The Impact blog previously did a series on tips for making your law school application stronger (see below links), but we thought it would be even more helpful to get the inside scoop on the BC admissions process from Assistant Dean Shawn McShay. Dean McShay has been overseeing admissions at BC for over four years, but has nearly twenty years of experience in law school admissions.

Here are Dean McShay’s responses to questions he receives from prospective students time and time again:

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Beyond BC: Faculty Leaders Testify Before Congress

/ Devon Sanders / Leave a comment

Our professors are shaping legislative conversation around the world. Just last month, Renee Jones, Professor and Associate Dean for Academic Affairs at BC Law, testified before the House Financial Services Committee regarding the risks of large private companies on investors, employees, consumers and society. Jones joins four (4!) other BC Law professors who have testified before the world’s highest committees in the past year.

While I remain impressed by the daily commitment our faculty shows to its students, I cannot help but add that these professors go above and beyond in showing their dedication to scholarship. Serving as leaders in their fields, the entire BC Law faculty are diligently working to educate actors and tackle pressing issues (like billion-dollar “unicorns,” donor advised funds and philanthropy, intellectual property and drug patents, broadband access, and banking regulation) well beyond the confines of the BC Law buildings–in fact, around the globe.

Pretty cool, right? You can read more about the recent testimony of Jones and BC Law Professors Olson, Lyons, McCoy and Madoff here at BC Law Magazine.