On March 5th from 12:30 PM to 1:30 PM I attended a lunch and conversation with Colin O’Brien in the Kuhn Honors and Scholars House for my academic event. Colin O’Brien is a lawyer for Earthjustice. At Earthjustice he practices environmental law. Due to the law in this area being less concrete and possessing more gray area, in O’Brien’s opinion, practicing this kind of law provides room to practice persuasion. He is an Ohio State University graduate who attended Yale Law School and Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies. At this lunch, O’Brien talked about his time at the Ohio State University, including how he got into law school and graduate school, his career post-law school and post-graduate school, as well as how we can begin to follow in his footsteps.
O’Brien shared advice with us concerning what makes a good law school application resume. A good resume should be well-rounded and it should showcase how you enriched your education. To begin the process of being a well-rounded person and therefore having a good resume, one must focus on a passion, follow a goal, and become culturally competent. Participating in clubs and earning a minor is a good way to achieve this. Another way to prepare to apply to law school is to gather strong recommendation letters. To do this one needs to develop strong relationships with an advisor or professor. Your recommendation letter should not just be a summary of your resume. The more unique and personal the recommendation letter, the better it is.
O’Brien shared other useful advice relating to law school. For instance, he told us that it is common to take a year off before attending law school and that we should not feel pressured to apply right after graduation. He also said that is important to work as a paralegal or intern in a law office. This is how you can decide if you really want to be a lawyer. Additionally, it makes you more marketable as recruiters look for people who will treat lower level staff with respect.
I found this lunch and conversation extremely helpful and relevant to my interests. It helped me put things into perspective and start making new decisions to meet my goals. For example, I have always had an interest in environmental science and law. O’Brien’s career is based around these two fields and, as a result, he gave an abundance of advice on how to be successful in them. His advice helped me make the decision to begin taking environmental science and environmental policy courses in the upcoming semester. Overall, I am grateful for this opportunity. Whenever I have the chance to sit down and talk with a professional in a field I have an interest in, I always gain useful information that is applicable to my life. I also gain new perspectives of potential careers and the possibilities within them.