The Best Part of this Semester

By Diane, 2E

As the 2014-2015 Evening Student Bar Association (“ESBA”) President, I’ve been offered opportunities that have colored and enriched my law school experience.  I’ve been invited to leadership brunches and luncheons, in addition to a number of Q & A panels that I’ve been asked to participate in or moderate.  I’ve also been asked to partake in the interview process for a potential new faculty hire.  Overall, being a part of the ESBA is a great opportunity to meet professors, alumni, and fellow students.

Just last week, the ESBA held an evening alumni mixer.  Four alumni from the LLS evening program came to share their experiences and offer students their words of wisdom.  Amazing finger foods and drinks were served at the same time.

I remember sitting in the audience last year at a similar event and feeling impressed by the passion the alumni had for Loyola Law School.  Needless to say, it felt great knowing that I had networked enough within the span of a year to invite an alumni friend to participate in the panel this year and to be on “the other side” as the panel moderator this time around.

Being an active member of the ESBA is truly rewarding—but like anything, it is what you make it.  I’ve chosen to make the most of the opportunities LLS has given me.  As a result, I have come to know many of the wonderful professors and staff on campus as well as the alumni who are passionate about sharing their experiences with new generations of lawyers-in-the-making.

The Best Part of this Semester

By Reichen, 2E

The best part of this semester happened for me at exactly half way through it.  I clerk at the law firm of Girardi-Keese, which is very close to school, and it has an Aviation Law department.  As a prior pilot, I’m very lucky to be managing all of the firm's aviation cases that most often revolve around airline and aircraft safety issues.

Just recently, as in yesterday, I was asked to write an amendment to a complaint we earlier submitted on one of our cases.  The issues that arose from a leave to amend granted by the federal judge in the case were, literally, issues I had learned about in Civil Procedure just the 3 days before.  It sounds crazy, but I knew how to solve the issues proposed by the judge in the memo and discuss them intelligently with my supervising attorney because I had learned how the issues play out by learning them in class over the prior three days.  Talk about serendipity.

Civil Procedure as a class is definitely one of the biggest challenges I’ve faced while at Loyola.  There is so much to memorize and learn in a short period of time, so it can be frustrating when you have to read the same thing over and over for a few days before you understand it.  When this happened at my firm, I realized I knew more than I thought I did, and being able to apply it made it that much more understandable.  To top it off, I brought the issue to Professor Vairo (my Civ Pro professor) and she offered to help me make sense of what I was working on outside of class.  It’s nice to know that I have a working level of knowledge in law already and to have faculty supporting me through it all to help me do my best, and to do the best for the firm and our client.