Break’s Over! Time to Work

January 24, 2022

Since coming back from winter break, I have been making a lot of progress in my search for interviews. Along with being in the process of scheduling multiple interviews, I interviewed a third year law student at Emory and two attorneys that own a civil rights law firm last week.

My first interview was with Aila Irshad, a law student and former ISM student. We had an interesting conversation regarding law school, which I had not had the chance to explore much until now. Through our conversation, I learned about how to maximize my chances of getting into law school, gained advice on taking the LSAT, and the challenges faced by students in law school. The most significant part of our interview revolved around that last aspect. I learned that the students I would be working with in law school are typically privileged and usually have many connections within the legal field. This is a disadvantage for me as I do not have that same advantage, which means I must work hard now and during my undergraduate years to establish meaningful connections and network with those already in the field.

I have already begun this process in ISM through the professionals I have been contacting. In particular, I found the attorneys I spoke with last week to be very helpful. I had the opportunity to interview Mr.Eliot Shavin and Ms.Corinna Chandler. They are both well-accomplished and have a law firm that handles exactly the kind of civil rights cases I hope to work on. In our interview, I learned that Mr.Shavin passed up possibly becoming a partner at a large law firm in Houston because that would prevent him from taking on many civil rights cases. That just goes to show the passion Mr.Shavin and Ms.Chandler have for what they do, and I hope to continue maintaining contact with them. I plan on scheduling another interview with them so I can learn more about establishing and running your own law firm.

For this week, I want to discuss with Mr.Pirtle and explore the possibility of asking Mr.Shavin and Ms.Corinna to be my mentors. The biggest issue with that is that their office is still mostly virtual and I am not sure how interested they are in being mentors. While I would be delighted to have them as my mentors, I found it hard to gauge their interest in that possibility during our interview. That being said, I know I must keep my options open so I will finalize the meeting times for the interviews I am in the process of scheduling this week as well. In addition, I will continue to follow up with the other professionals I have contacted last week.