Other Law School Issues

Adventures in DC

scherae — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 15:53:39 -0500

I apologize for starting this blog so late into the summer (how does time go by so fast?!), but I still wanted to share some of my thoughts with you. This summer, I have had the pleasure of doing an internship at the National Disability Rights Network in Washington, DC. NDRN is a national, non-profit organization that oversees and provides legally-based advocacy services to people with a wide variety of disabilities on topics ranging from healthcare to employment to education, among may others.

My Mommy Still Wants to Be a Lawyer

mnienaber-foster — Mon, 7 Apr 2008 19:53:33 -0500

A little more than a year has passed since I posted my first story with Ms. JD. (see post here: http://ms-jd.org/my-mommy-wants-be-lawyer ) Despite the time lapse, I did not forget about Ms. JD and she was never very far from my thoughts.

But I felt that I had contributed all that was worthy at that time and I needed to wait to accomplish something more profound or at least survive my first year of law school before I decided to wax more poetic about law school.

So what happened? Well, a lot. Some things changed, but many things stayed the same. Everyone still thinks I'm nuts. I may even be starting to agree with them. People still ask me what my poor children and neglected husband are doing to occupy the time that I spend at school and work. I still think law school is tough and I think my job at Legal Aid is even tougher. But I love (almost) every minute of it, and above all, I still want to be a lawyer.

The most amazing changes I've seen this year have nothing to do with law school and everything to do with the amazing little creatures I call my children. They are not 3 and 1.5 anymore. They are 4 and almost 3, both going on sixteen. They speak in full sentences and pour their own milk. They sing their ABCs and love Scooby Doo. They negotiate everything from later bedtimes to extra snacks. And they ask me so. many. questions. (Mom, why do we have bones? Are there bones in my head? Can I see my brain? Why can't I see in my belly? How did I get into your belly when I was a baby? How did I get out? Is there a baby in your belly now? My belly's full. Can I have more yogurt?) I continue to be fascinated by their perspective on life and their literal take on everything. But I stand by my claim that they keep me sane, especially in the context of law school. I just don't see how anyone can tell me that passing the Bar is going to be anywhere as difficult as teaching a human child how to use the potty.

But I think the changes that Ms. JD readers would find most interesting are those that impacted my experience as a student. I found that members of the faculty and administration at my school were very supportive of my post. They complimented and commended me, and for better or worse, I became one of the poster children for moms in law school. I was not sure what to do with that, until another student walked in to our SBA meeting named Shantae.

Shantae was a part-time evening student working full-time, but she would shortly be quitting her job to start our full-time day program. But she was not entirely happy with what the school had to offer. She was the mother of two and she thought that student organizations were not providing programming to a large section of the student body: those that were parents. I was thrilled to see that I was not alone. Shantae seemed to want many of the things I wanted: family-friendly programs, an opportunity to bring children to the law school, and above all else, some kind of validation. We wanted to know that our fellow students recognized and appreciated our situation, and were open to catering to it.

Eventually, Shantae helped me give birth to what our fellow student (and single dad) Doug called our "Chocolate Bar Review". Our younger, hipper fellow students had their bar reviews at local hot spots, and we decided to have our Chocolate Bar Review on a Sunday afternoon in our student commons. I had very low expectations and envisioned five or six parents sitting around a table commiserating with each other while our children ran circles around the commons with juice boxes. In the end, we had all of those things, but on a much larger scale. There was pizza, cupcakes, kids crafts, my mother singing with her guitar, and the tables in the commons had to hold about 75 people. We were overwhelmed by the turnout and all of the sincere appreciation we received from the student parents. They were relieved to meet other parents at the school, they were excited to show their kids where they go to school, and they were happy to get that validation. They felt renewed that the school was acknowledging them.

Shantae and I did not stop there. She took the lead on organizing an Easter Egg hunt at the school. Once again, I would have been fine with some fruit punch and six dozen plastic eggs filled with candy. But Shantae had the kids playing "Pin the Tail on the Bunny" and making bunny crafts out of cotton balls. And I can only imagine what she had to do to convince her husband, Todd, to climb into a bunny suit to surprise the kids after their egg hunt. We had a great turnout which included new people who had heard about the success of the Chocolate Bar Review.

Shantae and I are excited about the next year for parents at our law school. There will be more family-friendly events, and we will continue to build our network of parents. And we hope to share those plans with other schools. I can only imagine how excited we would be if we found out that another school had adopted our "Chocolate Bar Review" idea. It's not trademarked—use it all you want!

I think that less people ask me "How do you do it?" these days. I hope that it is because I am showing them, with every chance I get, that I am doing it because I am a mom, not in spite of it. The kids continue to inspire and motivate me, and that has not changed, even though I am finishing my second year of law school. Granted, it has not gotten easier. I still try to study while Hot Wheels whiz past my head, and my husband communicates with me mainly through e-mail and text messaging since face-to-face contact is either non-existent, brief, or conducted in a semi-conscious state. (It's 2am—stop studying!) But I still think we're doing just fine.

Ms. JD provided the platform for me to bring my ideas about parent-students to my administration and I will forever be in the debt of those who created this website for me, and obviously, for all of us. And now, I am so excited to be a part of the new part of Ms. JD: the National Women's Law Student Organization. Granted, my daughter claims that she wants to be a doctor like her daddy, but just in case she changes her mind, I feel like I'll be a really cool mom some day if Maggie goes to law school and I can tell her that I helped blaze the path for NWLSO.

I hope that every law student will take a minute to think about what she is passionate about, what is important to her as a student, and how her school's administration or student organizations could help to make sure that those ideas are being properly implemented in their law school. Never in a million years did I think that there was a single other person in my law school that would want to hang out with me and my kids on a Sunday afternoon. Now I know that there are about 73. You never know what you will get if you just ask. So what do you need? What is important? What are your student organizations missing out on? How could your administration serve you better? It's up to you to get that ball rolling. Good luck!

Mary Nienaber-Foster

2L, Capital University Law School

Columbus, Ohio

mnienaber-foster@law.capital.edu

Center for Reproductive Rights and Columbia Law Announce New Fellowship

didiscott — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 12:16:16 -0500

Choosing a Law School

cgrant — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 16:44:27 -0600

Law school is as much about receiving an education as it is about networking and making connections, both in the intellectual and in the career-building sense. Going to a brand-named law school will open doors by name alone. However, are these doors, traditionally ones that open and close for men on men’s terms (see any number of writings about the glass ceiling or pink ghetto), the doors that women want to travel through?

In my own law school application process, I visited about ten schools prior to applying (ranging from top tier to bottom tier). Those visits inspired me to drop schools off my application list or place others at the top. Traditional rankings were not that important to me. Rather, I was most concerned with the percentage of female professors and female students. This worked for me; reflecting in my third year of law school, I got everything out of law school that I was looking for.

My advice to women applying to law school? Determine what is important to you. Do you want professors to be accessible? Do you want to participate in class on par with your male counterparts? Do you want to find a mentor at law school? When you visit law schools on your application list, ask other students what their experiences have been like. Ask women, ask men. Knowing this information might be more useful than standard rankings.

Weekly MILS Roundup (Moms in Law School)

Anna — Sun, 10 Feb 2008 11:49:10 -0600

The Moms in Law School Roundup posts on Sundays, alternating between blogs by PT-law mom and A Little Fish in Law School (a/k/a butterflyfish). This week is MILS #32, hosted by PT-law mom. It's an easy way to keep up with (and join) a virtual neighborhood of moms in law school!

Thanks to butterflyfish for the tip in the comments [on our previous article about MILS]. Happy Sunday, everybody!

Meet Stephanie Enyart and the National Association of Law Students with Disabilities [Clippings]

Anna — Sat, 9 Feb 2008 10:30:00 -0600

This month's issue of Student Lawyer, the ABA Student Division's magazine, profiles Stephanie Enyart in the article "Tackling Law School as a Blind Student." She's a 3L at UCLA and founding president of the National Association of Law Students with Disabilities. One of the group's goals is to develop a set of best practices to provide reasonable accommodations for law students with disabilities. We here at Ms. JD are all about best practices and improving the profession, so I wish them the best. If you have suggestions or interest, please visit nalswd.org.

One of my classmates is blind (hi, T!) and she operates so smoothly around the school that I've surely never given her situation as much thought as I should. We sing in a choir together ("Habeas Chorus" -- insert lame groan here), so I've learned that leaving the classroom door ajar helps her locate us by voice when we haven't scheduled a particular room in advance. That's something that other student orgs which gather informally should probably also learn to do. We've also learned that the considerate thing to do is leave space at the seminar table near the door, so that she doesn't have to navigate around our bodies and bookbags. With these small accommodations, she arrives to take notes on her Braille machine much faster (and dare I say, better) than I could ever type on my laptop.

Every student's story is different, so I appreciated the perspective of Stephanie's story. It's worth reading.

Minority enrollment in law schools falters [Clippings]

Anna — Thu, 7 Feb 2008 15:33:13 -0600

Law.com reports that "Minority Enrollment at Law Schools Is Faltering." Leigh Jones of the National Law Journal speculates that "rankings pressure and anti-affirmative action may fuel the problem."

Arizona, Colorado, Missouri, Nebraska and Oklahoma all have initiatives under way to place questions on November ballots that would end programs that increase minority and female numbers in education and in government. [Emphasis added --Ed.]

Vernellia Randall, professor at University of Dayton School of Law and author of the study America's Whitest Law Schools, fears "It's going to get worse before it gets better."

Ruminations of a law school mama

bangalee57 — Thu, 7 Feb 2008 10:35:58 -0600

I’m so proud of myself … I earned a place on the Dean’s list! While I don’t like to admit it, this is my first time on the Dean’s list and to be so highly ranked since High School. I have finally remembered how to work and study.

Anyway, my academic accomplishment has generated another round of comments from fellow students, calling me crazy for trying to be a law student as a single mama. The most frequent comment though is “I don’t know how you do it, I can barely take care of myself.” Sometimes comparisons are added as to the differences between caring for a child and caring for a dog. My response has faithfully been that I just do it, and that I don’t know of any other way of living.

I’m not unique: my student mentor was a single mama of two girls and there are many married students with children - infants on up to teens.

I thought I’d record a few of my thoughts on the special circumstances of having kids while in law school, more for fun and for posterity than anything else. If I remember, I’ll even make it a regular series of posts.

MILS = Moms in Law School

Kalokagathia — Thu, 18 Oct 2007 15:10:28 -0500

Saramel over at Reasonable Expectations has teamed up with A Little Fish in Law School and PT-LawMom to rotate a weekly roundup of blog posts by moms in law school (MILS). There are a number of excellent law student mom bloggers out there and this is a cool way to bring them together for your reading pleasure.

Call for Papers from JD Students - Yale Journal of International Law Young Scholars' Conference

phyllis — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 14:16:15 -0500

THE YALE JOURNAL OF INTERNATIONAL LAW ANNOUNCES ITS SIXTH ANNUAL YOUNG SCHOLARS' CONFERENCE

CALL FOR PAPERS FROM JD STUDENTS
Deadline: December 10, 2007

The Yale Journal of International Law (YJIL) is accepting submissions
for its Young Scholars' Conference, which will take place on March 1,
2008. The Conference aims to encourage scholarship in international
law among current J.D. students by giving them an opportunity to
present a paper and receive feedback from distinguished professors in