Law students give back to community through KU’s Big Event

KU Law students volunteering through KU's Big EventKU Law students volunteering through KU's Big EventBright and early on April 13, a group of 15 KU Law students took time out of their busy study schedules to give back to the Lawrence Community with KU’s 3rd Annual Big Event.

The Big Event brings together students, faculty and staff volunteers to work at hundreds of local job sites throughout the community for a day of service. This year, the law students were assigned to three different houses to assist elderly homeowners.

As a law student, I believe it’s easy to become bogged down by upcoming finals, finding summer jobs, etc. It’s important to stay grounded and remember there are other things in life, outside of law school. KU gives students so many opportunities to de-stress from their schoolwork. Not only did the Big Event give us a perfect study break, but we were also able to give our time to help others.

My group was fortunate enough to help a retired Korean War veteran and his wife clean out their garage. They’ve lived in their house for more than eight years, and the garage desperately needed some TLC. For hours, we loaded up boxes and trashcans while talking with the homeowners. We learned about their marriage (married over 60 years!), their family, and their two cats.

At the end of a long day, covered in dust, the couple gave each of us a hug and told us if we ever needed anything, even a home cooked meal, they were only a few minutes away. We knew they truly appreciated our help. Not only did the couple have a clean garage, but everyone also had a great time getting to know each other. This couple and volunteering for the 3rd Annual Big Event will definitely be a memory I hold close to my heart.

Jackie Ratkey is a first-year KU Law student and secretary of the KU Public Interest Law Society.

Student organization spotlight: American Constitution Society

Professor Steven Ramirez, Loyola University Chicago School of Law, speaking at a KU American Constitution Society meeting at KU Law

The American Constitution Society at KU Law brings together students, lawyers, and judges who favor a progressive, rather than regressive, reading of the U.S. Constitution. We view other people as fellow citizens of a larger national community and believe they are entitled to the same rights and responsibilities regardless of race, sex, religion, national origin, or sexual orientation.

We believe the Constitution, and by extension many other areas of American law, can be understood only by reference to principles of decency, reason, humanity, and compassion. We see these principles as a starting point for enactment, as well as interpretation, of the law.

ACS’s mission is to harness these values of compassion and respect for each individual, and to integrate them into American law and public life, in order to build a stronger and more decent national community.

With this goal in mind, ACS at KU Law is honored to embark on efforts, sometimes with other student groups, to bring speakers to campus for presentations on imminent legal and political issues. We encourage lively and respectful discussion about these issues.

A few weeks ago, we were honored to host Professor Steven Ramirez of Loyola University Chicago School of Law, who has written extensively on business and corporate governance. He also just published “Lawless Capitalism: The Subprime Crisis and the Case for an Economic Rule of Law,” a book dealing with many issues involved in the financial crisis of 2008.

“I love capitalism,” Ramirez said during his presentation. “When it functions like it’s supposed to, it’s the best indicator of what works well – and that’s what we want in a meritocracy.”

He went on to discuss how the Obama administration’s failure to prosecute any of the CEOs who ran their banks over a cliff or participated in money laundering subverted capitalism by incentivizing getting too big to fail. Too big to fail, or jail, destroys the accountability that should be inherent in capitalism as a system. It encourages reckless lending practices on which the banks will still profit because they bought credit-default swaps – effectively betting against their own borrowers. According to Ramirez, banks “had an interest in these mortgages failing, and failing fast.”

ACS at KU Law had officer elections on April 9. If you would like to learn more about ACS at KU Law you can join our Facebook group, email ACSKULaw@gmail.com, or talk with me or one of the other officers in the hall at school.

– Tim Bogner is secretary of the American Constitution Society at KU Law.

KU Law Prom: night of ‘stress-free abandonment’ and reminder of amazing law school friendships

In high school, prom was an event that many thought would define their teenage existence. People planned for months, making seemingly life-or-death decisions like: What dress do I wear? Who should I ask? Where will we eat dinner? How big of a limo can we afford? And when can we leave? With so much build-up and apprehension, the actual events of prom—for most of those I know—never lived up to the hype.

Fast forward about half a decade, and there’s Law Prom. More formally known as the Barrister’s Ball, Law Prom is an event put on by KU Law’s Student Bar Association every year. Pretty much every law school across the country has a similar event at which law students from all classes dress up and get together for a night of formal(ish) entertainment. I prefer calling it “Law Prom” rather than “Barrister’s Ball” for two reasons: 1) the word “barrister” rings of powdered wigs and pretention, two things that are thankfully absent at the event; and, 2) because calling it a “prom” actually highlights how ironically dissimilar the event is to the one way back in high school. While high school prom was about everything but the event itself, Law Prom is all about a night of stress-free abandonment with your friends in the midst of what can be an otherwise stressful semester.

(Footnote: I should mention that perhaps the one constant from high school to Law Prom was the music. With the exception of Macklemore’s “Thrift Shop” and a few other relatively recent hits, the Law Prom’s DJ strayed little from the music that served as the soundtrack to the mixers and dances of my formative years. I distinctly remember self-consciously swaying back and forth at arms’ length with a girl—whose name I will pretend escapes me—to the very same *NSYNC song that played at Law Prom.)

Not only is Law Prom a welcome break from schoolwork and other mid-semester business, but it also serves as a reminder of all the amazing friends I’ve made in a relatively short time at KU Law. Plus, at Law Prom, there’s no Vitamin C song that has to play at the end. Maybe I should explain that: While I came to law school afraid that I’d be greeted by über-competitive, highlighter-wielding classmates, what I actually encountered was a small class of peers who want nothing more than to see everyone else succeed. We went from a group of strangers to a very close-knit community in an astonishingly short amount of time. Without a doubt, the folks I’ve meet at KU Law will be my friends and colleagues for a very long time, and Law Prom is a great reminder of that. I already can’t wait for next year. Who knows, maybe I’ll finally win the best hair award.

— Paul Cassat is a 2L and KU Law Student Ambassador.

Three clinics later, 3L flush with practical experience and more focused in job search

The University of Kansas School of Law provides students with 13 clinical opportunities. As a nontraditional law student, I find that the clinical opportunities are my favorite experiences at the law school. Over the past three years, I have participated in the Public Policy Clinic, the Externship Clinic, and the Legislative Clinic. Each of these clinical opportunities provided me with a practical and useful experience.

In the Public Policy Clinic, students select a legislative topic requested by a Kansas legislator. These topics are issues that will be relevant in the approaching legislative session. The student does extensive research, typically providing a legislative report on what other states are doing on similar issues. My topic was school bus advertising. I compiled a list of the statutory language from all the states that have started allowing school districts to sell advertising space on the interior and exterior of school buses. It was an interesting issue and proved very useful knowledge the following summer.

The summer of my 2L year, I took advantage of KU Law’s Externship Clinic opportunity. I accepted a legislative internship at the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL) for the summer, but because it was a nonprofit entity, I needed to do the internship for credit. That’s where the Externship Clinic is useful. I was able to obtain six credit hours for my time interning over the summer in Denver. At NCSL, the issues I worked on included transportation, and environmental and veterans affairs. State legislators from across the country would contact NCSL with information requests on what other state legislatures were considering on particular issue areas. I was able to use the research skills I learned in the Public Policy Clinic to provide informative answers. Also, as I mentioned, my clinic paper was useful because NCSL asked me to write a transportation review on school bus safety. I had submitted my paper on school bus advertising as my writing sample, and they wanted me to expand the paper into all legislative happenings dealing with school bus safety. I was able to build upon the research I had already done, and NCSL published my article. The Externship Clinic provided me the opportunity to work at a place that was not able to pay me, but provided me with the exact experience I sought. I would highly encourage all law students to take advantage of the clinic and spend their summer doing something they love!

This spring I am participating in the Legislative Clinic. Again, I love the experience. I really want a career in the policy and legislative field, and this clinic provides an opportunity to delve into the middle of the process. I am interning for the Senate Judiciary Committee at the Statehouse in Topeka. I spend at least two days a week there, and every day is full of new and exciting legislation and hearings. It has been a wonderful experience to see firsthand the process of proposed bills becoming law. This particular experience has helped me narrow my job search as a 3L: It confirmed for me that I want a career working with policy on an everyday basis, and I have focused my search.

With so many clinical opportunities at KU Law, every student has a chance to participate in at least one clinic. Some students are intimidated or nervous about leaving the structured classroom setting, but I would highly encourage everyone to take advantage of these amazing opportunities. Nothing you learn in a classroom will make you quite as marketable as the experiences you gain from working in a clinic. Success in a clinic provides students with confidence and assures future employers that the graduate they hire has the practical skills they want in a candidate.

— Crystal Cook is a third-year law student and a KU Law Student Ambassador.

KU Law: An international destination on the prairie

“International” might not be a word many people immediately associate with Kansas. But don’t let KU Law’s location on the prairie fool you.

As president of KU’s International Law Society, I have the honor of heading up one of the law school’s oldest student organizations; the KU chapter of ILS is over 40 years old. Yet KU’s international law tradition goes back even further. International and comparative law have been taught at KU Law since the school first opened its doors in 1878. I don’t think it is a coincidence that from its beginning in 1878, KU Law has never discriminated on the basis of ethnicity, race, gender or religion. This legacy of tolerance and openness has fostered a community of ILS members interested in expanding their horizons and engaging with the varieties of law practiced around the world.

ILS membership is diverse because every student has a unique reason for joining. Many of our members are international students. Indeed, in recent years up to 8 percent of law students at KU have been from outside the United States. We have law students from countries around the world, including China, Egypt, Mexico, Ethiopia, Korea, Turkey, Nigeria, Libya, Ecuador and South Africa. Over the years, ILS has been a place where people from various backgrounds can meet and discuss any number of international topics. Last fall, ILS held a lunch symposium featuring some of KU’s international students, many of whom have already earned law degrees in their own countries.

Many other ILS members are students from the U.S. who are interested in practicing international law. KU Law offers a robust International and Comparative Law Program. We have faculty members who specialize in international topics such as trade and finance, business law, public law, Islamic law and Chinese law. The International and Comparative Law Program at KU is fortunate to have world-class faculty members, and ILS is fortunate that these faculty members work closely with our organization to give guidance to our members at such events as the two yearly International Career Opportunities fora. KU’s international law faculty also have contacts all over the world, so ILS members never know when they might be introduced to a lawyer from Kyrgyzstan or a law professor from Israel!

Of course, sometimes ILS decides to put the books away and have a good time. Our year culminates with an annual wine tasting fundraiser where students and faculty get together, drink wine, and bid on silent auction items. Ticket proceeds and money raised from the auction go to Optimus Youth, an international charity founded by a KU Law graduate. This year’s wine tasting earned us the Best Philanthropic Activity Award from the International Law students Association.

Whether you are already international because of where you come from, or whether you are international because of where you want to go, ILS offers many opportunities for students to come together.

— Bradley Freedman is a 3L and president of KU’s International Law Society.

Summer abroad in Ireland provides unforgettable experience, conversation starter for job interviews

I had the opportunity to study abroad in Limerick, Ireland this past summer. It was, hands down, one of the best experiences I have ever had in my entire life. I find myself missing Ireland more and more every day. I was just looking through old pictures to include with this blog, and I am having a hard time coming up with reasons to not drive to the airport right now. No money? I’m already in debt. What’s a few thousand more? School? I’m almost a 3L. That’s close enough. All of my friends are here? I guarantee if I texted everyone who went to Ireland with me, they would all meet me at the airport right now. It was that awesome.

First, I know some people are worried that studying abroad won’t look so great on your resume for your first (or second) summer of law school. In my experience, that has been the item on my resume that interviewers have asked me about the most. People from KU Law either made the trip themselves or know someone who did. And those not from KU Law still seem to like talking about it.

Besides the beautiful places and friendly culture, the program itself is amazing. We took three international law classes, which were all completely fascinating, even for those of us who have no interest in international law. One of the coolest parts is learning from an Irish professor at the University of Limerick. My group was the first to spend a week in Dublin, as opposed to just a weekend. Although we all loved being in Limerick, having a week in Dublin allowed us to meet several Irish justices, watch an actual court proceeding, and tour Kilmainham Jail, which housed several famous prisoners during the Irish rebellion against England. And those were just the planned events. The program allows so much time for exploring on your own, and it includes trips to some amazing non-law sites as well, like the Cliffs of Moher and Galway. Did I mention I saw Bono’s house?

For those who still aren’t convinced it’s enough for your resume, you can definitely work before the program starts. I did the Judicial Clerkship Clinic for seven weeks before the program. I was able to get in the same number of hours as everyone else with no problem. And other than being super jealous, my judge was more than fine with me leaving early.

The program also allows plenty of time for traveling before and after. Several friends and I chose to travel the week before the program and the weekend after (to London for the Olympics!), and I know several others who traveled right up until school started. Europe is such an amazing place with so many amazing things to see, and this will probably be the last opportunity you have to go for a long time. I am so happy I took advantage of it.

If you have any questions or want to hear stories, please let me know. I’m more than happy to share all of my pictures, although, like this blog, they really don’t do the experience justice.

— Michele Kraak is a 2L and KU Law Student Ambassador. Learn more about KU Law’s study abroad programs in Ireland and Istanbul.