public interest

Find Your Firm: 1L Boot Camp Meet the Employers Night

/ Rob Rossi / Leave a comment

As I’ve written about before on this blog, 1L Boot Camp is an awesome program run by the LSA and Career Services to help first-year students make themselves as marketable as possible during their respective job hunts. This Tuesday’s Meet the Employers Night is in many ways the crown jewel of that program. After months of presentations about best practices for résumé formatting, interview attire, and networking strategy (to name a few topics), Boot Camp culminates with this unique chance for the 1Ls to put everything they’ve learned to use.

What exactly is Meet the Employers Night? Basically, exactly what it sounds like. Representatives from fifty-one (51!) government entities, public interest organizations, businesses, and law firms set up shop in the Law Library and talk with the 1Ls about what they do, who they’re looking for, and what their hiring processes are like. Which organizations will be in attendance? Here is the full list: Continue reading →

Things I Wish I Knew, Vol. 4: You DO know things and you CAN do things, even if you’re “just a 1L”

/ Charlene Ochogo / Leave a comment

“Just a 1L.”

I heard that phrase thrown around a lot when I was researching law schools. You shouldn’t expect to have a lot of stuff to put on your resume because you’re “just a 1L.” You shouldn’t expect to get a “real” job this summer because you’re “just a 1L.” What you have to say and what you bring to the table aren’t as important because you’re “just a 1L.”

So I think we can agree that all those people were very clearly wrong.

Me becoming one with nature at the Desert Botanical Gardens.

Me becoming one with nature at the Desert Botanical Gardens

Greetings from the desert! I’m extremely pleased to be blogging from sunny Phoenix, Arizona – which reminds me a lot of Florida (just substitute cactuses for palm trees). The best part? BC is sponsoring this mini vacation/incredible opportunity to get some hands-on legal experience.

I had the privilege of being selected to go on one of BC’s many spring break service trips. Our Phoenix quintet is spending this week working with The Florence Project, a nonprofit that provides legal services to unaccompanied immigrant minors. Last summer, the influx of children leaving Central America to escape persecution and poverty alerted many (myself included) to the fact that child detention centers are all around the country, often in our own communities. These children, who often speak only Spanish or a dialect from their home country and may be too young to read or write, rely on organizations like The Florence Project to advocate on their behalf in the hopes of reunifying with family members within the U.S., or, at the very least, not being sent back to their home country.  In the uphill battle to find grounds for asylum or some other visa that will put these kids on the path to become legal permanent residents, organizations like The Florence Project have to conduct a lot of case research and statute interpretation, not to mention finding out more about the conditions that caused the kids to flee in their countries in the first place.

Continue reading →