My participation in the Immigrants’ Rights/International Human Rights Clinic was by far my most memorable experience in law school. Professor Farrin Anello assigned my partner and I to a time-sensitive case. The client was a young woman who recently fled Guatemala and had entered the United States without a visa. After being apprehended by U.S. Customs and Border Protection, she was sent to Delaney Hall Detention Center right here in Newark, where she was being held when we met her. Her bond hearing was rapidly approaching, and Catholic Charities brought her case to the attention of the Center for Social Justice. After reviewing the documents from our client’s initial interview with an asylum officer, we believed that she had a strong domestic violence-based asylum claim.

In 1963, Martin Luther King, Jr. wrote a public letter while he was imprisoned in Birmingham jail. In it, he said, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” Of course I’d heard this quote many times throughout my life, but I suppose in all honesty it affected me in the way most grandiose platitudes did: not much. We all innately feel that injustice cannot be tolerated, however, until injustice finds its way into our day-to-day lives, we are hard-pressed to find the motivation to take action, or the ability to comprehend what it truly means to face injustice.

Students planning to attend law school have a variety of success indicators they should consider when choosing where to apply, and many resources with which to consult. Most of these are based on raw data: location, numbers, scholarship retention, rankings, and employment rates. But one is not. It’s a factor that no internet source, brochure, or twitter feed can give you information about, and may, in many cases, be the most important factor. Let’s get to the data first:

Newark? Yes! Newark!

Whether you work or study in Newark, it is always nice to be introduced to new places to go and things to do. To provide some inspiration for expanding your social horizons – I wanted to share some local favorites of students and faculty.

One of the most sought-after credentials for students currently in Law School, is Journal membership. How many Journals a particular Law School may host varies considerably, but Seton Hall Law School is home to only three: The Seton Hall Law Review, Seton Hall Circuit Review, and the Seton Hall Legislative Journal. All three Journals are tremendously prestigious, and the small number ensures that only truly worthy members will be invited to join.

Surviving law school while pregnant and raising three small children (two of them twins!) is by no means easy. How do I manage? How do I do it? Well, it’s truly a perfect storm, and it really comes down to a positive attitude, surrounding myself with those who love and believe in me, and wanting deep down inside, above all, to make a difference and a better world.

Learning that Seton Hall University School of Law is a Catholic institution, prospective law students who are not Catholic may wonder what sort of welcome they might receive here. This may be particularly true for non-Christian students.

I was a member of the Interscholastic Moot Court Board while I was a student at Seton Hall Law, and I competed in three moot court competitions during that time. Moot Court enables students to compete against other schools to learn how to present issues and mock arguments before panels of practitioners and real judges. The students get scored on their performance. Through Moot Court, we learned the essential skill of presenting our case, speaking persuasively and clearly before an appellate panel. The process involves getting questions from professors and practitioners, who probe the issue that the students are to present before the mock appellate panel.

Students walk out of law school, for the most part, in a similarly privileged position: with one of the most respected degrees and earning potential beyond what most of the country could dream. We do not all walk into law school so privileged. At Seton Hall, I know just as many students whose parents are attorneys as students whose parents never received a Bachelor’s degree (a group which I am included in). Accordingly, the journey through law school looks different for each student: some enjoy the ability to work non-paid internships, while others work weekends at coffee shops and restaurants.

Seton Hall’s first year curriculum includes a class that is not found at many other law schools. It is called Introduction to Lawyering, and it is broadly ambitious. The course introduces students to the core skills, values, and professional habits that are integral to lawyering across many areas of practice. Fundamentally, the course is grounded in the practical experience of real lawyers. It is modeled on what real lawyers do. Seton Hall used to offer a class that is more typically offered at law schools across the country – Legal Research and Writing. So how does Introduction to Lawyering differ from Legal Research and Writing and why did we make this change?