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Law in Contemporary Society
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My Law School Legacy-- By TobinKassa - 06 Apr 2023 When I decided to pursue a legal education, I lead with the mindset that my relationship with law school would be transactional. I had two priorities as an incoming student: (1) doing well in classes then (2) landing a job post-graduation. However, as I navigate this bleak legal landscape, I feel the need to increasingly think about my legacy. Over the past few months, I have been working on an initiative to bring together African and Caribbean communities in the legal industry. The initiative is in partnership with my classmate and friend Shelly and under Columbia Law’s Davis Polk Leadership Fellowship Initiative. As students who partially grew up overseas, Shelly and I instantly bonded over our shared experience as first-generation immigrants. A couple of weeks into our first semester, we connected to talk about the struggle of juggling two identities – on one side, embracing our heritage and on the other, assimilating to a new space. We discussed how this struggle was more pronounced in law school and the legal industry where community representation is even more sparse. So we decided to join forces and launch a project dedicated to uplifting the experiences of African and Caribbean students and legal practitioners. We called it “Connecting Caribbean and African Lawyers of New York” (CCALNY [Cal-Knee]) and rooted it in three pillars. Through the initiative, we seek to (1) strengthen the network of our legal community, (2) celebrate the culture of our regions and (3) spotlight active legal work in our regions. The first pillar aims to build a stronger network of African and Caribbean legal practitioners. Our community is based in a culture that is both foreign and Black. Historically, America has not been receptive to the needs of people with those two characteristics. As such we face a double jeopardy of adversity when climbing career ladders as we neither check the box of being American nor being white. With a lack of overlap between our identity and our career, our network tends to feel weaker as fellowship is scarce and disjointed. To remedy this, we are hosting our inaugural event on Thursday April 6, 2023, to announce the launch of the initiative. The event will be vital in reversing the feeling of isolation by creating visibility as we bring together over 150 students and practitioners together. The second pillar seeks to embrace and celebrate culture. Through CCALNY, we want to acknowledge the unique contributions that individuals from different countries and cultures bring to the profession. We want to dismantle the dichotomy in our dual identities and promote a space where we can show up as our full selves. This emphasis on culture and tradition will help our legal community build strong relationships and maintain traditions that are central to our identities. The third pillar focuses on raising more awareness of the varying legal issues that Black-majority countries face. We will seek to build partnerships with lawyers, students, and organizations of various backgrounds to spotlight legal activities in African and Caribbean regions. The legal issues could range from the overrepresentation of Black migrants in deportation proceedings, to the successful development of technological advances, to the consequential climate policy issues that impact our regions. There is a breadth of cutting-edge developments in African and Caribbean international law that many students would benefit being engaged with. Highlighting similar work affecting our home countries goes a long way in spreading knowledge, fostering mentors, and guiding careers. Through CCALNY, I hope the legacy of our work carries on through community-building and research. Our mission is to create a sustainable space for African and Caribbean Black lawyers that will transcend our years at Columbia Law School. I am excited for CCALNY’s legacy and future events centered on the experiences of Black international students. I am also hopeful that the next generation of students grows inspired to carry on the dialogue and advance research on various social issues affecting the African and Caribbean communities.This is an excellent summary of your initiative and an effective advertisement for this very important aspect of your approach to law school. The first paragraph shows us a trip from a "transactional" approach that involves "doing well in classes" and "getting a job" to a "legacy" approach that achieves particular acts of organizing and lawyering doing law school that will—one rightly hopes—continue to be of community value. Between these destinations was a third possible framing: where you figure out what you need to learn in order to have the practice you want, not just in law school but as your way of life and living. This takes from and builds on both your previous framings. It transcends the "job" with the practice, and "doing well in classes" by establish your own learning goals and holding the institution responsible for providing what you need to achieve them. But it recognizes that your mode of practice in law school—which would be even better if you could figure how to get either a client or a philanthropy that would pay you to do this now-growing practice—is part of a model for life after graduation, and should be studied and reflected on as such. You are entitled to restrict access to your paper if you want to. But we all derive immense benefit from reading one another's work, and I hope you won't feel the need unless the subject matter is personal and its disclosure would be harmful or undesirable. To restrict access to your paper simply delete the "#" character on the next two lines:
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