A Day in the Life

Students Helping Students

One of the most common topics about which we receive questions here in Admissions is the level of competition at the Law School.  The answer I usually give is that our students are competitive with themselves but not each other, and are, in fact, more than happy to help one another wade through Fed Jur or Con Law I.  A great example of this is a session organized by the Law Women's Caucus (LWC) to help 1Ls choose the best elective for the Spring Quarter.  All 1Ls choose one elective from a selection of seven to eight 2L/3L classes, including Legislation (taught by Professor Gersen '04), Health Law (taught by Professor Malani '00), Economic Analysis of the Law, and Copyright (taught by Professor Picker '85), as their fourth class.  To aid the 1Ls in this process member of the LWC held an informal session where the upperclassmen shared their experiences and opinions on specific classes and about the way to choose classes more generally.  One of the 1Ls in attendance, Michelle Sowemimo ('10), shared her thoughts on the session:

"I found the session EXTREMELY helpful to understanding more about the electives beyond what was already available on the website.  The 2Ls and 3Ls who gave advice did an excellent job of balancing both the pros and cons of each elective.  This gave me a clearer idea of what each elective would entail.

I think being able to choose electives in the first year will really help me to start narrowing down my academic interests.  I also didn't realize until the session that I would be in classes with 2Ls and 3Ls which I think is also a great asset!"

Thanks, Michelle!  For more information on academic support services offered by the Law School contact Maureen Sheehan '04, Associate Director of Student Affairs, who is a great source of guidance about crafting your course schedule not only for the 1L  year but for the entirety of your law school career.

Student Organizations 101: Spring Break of Service

So we've been gone for awhile and I know many of you have been waiting with breathless anticipation of the next blog post so here it is ...  Student Organizations 101:  Spring Break of Service (SOS) with an introduction by Lindsey Marcus, one of the SOS leaders.

"For the second year U of C Law students participated in a service trip to the Gulf Coast organized by the Spring Break of Service (SOS) student organization.  Twenty-three students performed volunteer legal aid work in Biloxi, Mississippi with the Mississippi Center for Justice, a non-profit, public interest law firm committed to advancing racial and economic justice.  Nearly all of the Center's work at its Biloxi office is focused on responding to the massive and continually emerging housing-related legal needs of low-income people and communities left in Hurricane Katrina's wake. 

Among the projects students did were intake at walk-in legal aid clinics; follow-up interviews with Center clients who have been victims of contractor fraud; organizing and conducting a parcel-by-parcel inventory of a historically African-American community in Gulfport, MS to help the community access disaster recovery funds; conducting a door-to-door survey about a proposed industrial site that would be located in the middle of a residential community and that would also require the destruction of 70 acres of wetlands; and researching how Mississippi spends its disaster recovery funds.

To fund this trip SOS engaged in a number of fund-raising events here at the Law School including a bake sale and a special Valentine's Day-gram and also relied upon generous donations from Chicago law firms Winston & Strawn and Mayer Brown.  Alumni, the Law Students Association and the University Community Service Center also contributed to cover the participants' travel expenses.

Overall the trip was an amazing experience.  Although the damage Katrina caused no longer get much attention in the media, there is still a tremendous amount of work to be done.  Working with the Center reminded us of why we all went to law school in the first place."

Thanks, Lindsey!  Stay tuned for more student organization posts coming soon ....