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School Discipline Advocacy Service | Student Organization Voices Series

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Your Name: Araesia King Graduation Year: May 2021 Name of Organization: School Discipline Advocacy Service (SDAS) Position in Organization: Program Director   TLS: When did you join this organization? AK: I joined SDAS as 1L last year. Getting involved with SDAS was actually one of the reasons why I was excited about coming to Temple. I knew that I was interested in education law and this organization is a great way to learn the basics. I had looked up the program before coming to the school and made sure to sign up at the student activities fair. TLS: Why did you decide to join this group? AK: I chose to get involved with SDAS because it is a great way to interact with the community that I hope to work with in the future (students in the public school system and their families). I also was looking for a way to do some community service during my time here at Temple. TLS: What is your organization’s mission? AK: The organization operates in three schools in …

National Lawyers Guild | Student Organization Voices Series

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Your Name: Celia Givens Graduation Year: May 2021 Name of Organization: National Lawyer’s Guild (NLG) Position in Organization: Co-President TLS: When did you join this organization? CG: I signed up for NLG at the student organizations fair at the beginning of 1L fall. Later during the fall semester, I applied and was selected to become a 1L rep for NLG’s Criminal Justice Committee (along with the other current Co-President of NLG, Sarah Kim). TLS: Why did you decide to join this group? CG: Before I came to law school, I worked for four years at the Legal Aid Society in New York City as a paralegal in their Criminal Defense Practice. It was somewhat of a culture shock going back to school after taking time off to work and I missed being able to work with clients on issues directly impacting their communities. I was interested in joining NLG because they focused on the areas of law that I am most passionate about, including client-centered defense, criminal justice reform and direct-client services. TLS: What is …

The Temple Law Rome Program – An Unconventional Law School Experience

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“So, what are you doing this summer?” Every law school student hears this question regularly. Traditional answers include working as a research assistant, a judicial clerk, or a summer associate, and each of these experiences is unique and valuable. However, during my first year of law school, my answer to that question was an unconventional one. I studied abroad in Rome through the Temple Law Rome program. A number of factors contributed to my decision to go to Rome; I had always been interested in studying abroad and my closest friends were enrolled in the program. But in hindsight, this program delivered more benefits than I anticipated at the time of enrollment. For me, Temple Law Rome provided valuable insights that I used in job interviews and enabled me to really get to know my Temple Law professors. I spent my afternoons and evenings strolling through the city streets, periodically taking breaks to grab a cappuccino or a slice of pizza. The number of attractions to see in Rome is astonishing—the Forum, the Coliseum, the …

Teaching, Engaging, Achieving, and Motivating

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“Lift as you climb.” As I embark on various endeavors and gain knowledge, skills, and experiences, I feel morally obligated to use the resources I have acquired to help others progress and succeed. Throughout my undergraduate education and law school, I have become keenly aware of the lack of diversity and inclusion in the legal profession.  Specifically, there is a shortage of African-American attorneys and few African Americans and minorities in leadership roles within firms, companies, and organizations nationwide.  One way to address this issue is through opportunity and exposure. Since 2015, I have created five educational programs for minority students. The majority of my programs were created and implemented for students in the Greater Philadelphia area.  My latest initiative is the Teaching; Engaging; Achieving; Motivating program (T.E.A.M.), which I facilitated in Willingboro, New Jersey. T.E.A.M. was launched in January 2019 for 50 middle schoolers in Willingboro, NJ. The 14-week program consisted of 60-minute sessions held on Friday mornings at Memorial Middle School.  Students learned basic criminal law and criminal procedure including Miranda rights, police …

More Than Volunteering

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If you asked me five years ago if I ever saw myself completing a marathon, the answer would have been a stern no. Despite the fact that I loved team sports, I never considered myself a runner. However, this fall, when two students told me they wanted to complete the Philadelphia Full Marathon their senior year, I could not say no; I was their running mentor after all. Students Run Philly Style (SRPS) is a nonprofit organization that provides youth with mentorship, training, and opportunities to run nationally-recognized races without cost. SRPS encourages kids to “run” the streets instead of being consumed by the violence often found in their neighborhoods. I became involved with SRPS in the fall of 2016 while I was still a high school English teacher. Within three months, alongside four of my students, I was crossing the finish line of my first half marathon. Since then, we have completed the Philadelphia Half Marathon a second time, the Broad Street 10-miler twice, countless other informal races, and most recently, the 2018 Philadelphia …

The Lessons We Future Lawyers Should Learn From the Life of Nipsey Hussle

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During his 33 years of life, Ermias Joseph Asghedom (pronounced “Air-me-yaahs” and “Ahs-ged-om”), also known as “Nipsey Hussle,” was an ambitious and virtuous man who inspired millions to never give up, achieve their dreams and give back to their community. For those of you who have never heard of Asghedom, or only learned about him in the last week since his untimely death, please allow me to introduce him to you before I highlight some lessons we future lawyers should learn from Asghedom’s life. Asghedom was born in Los Angeles in 1985 to an Eritrean father (Dawit Asghedom) and an African-American mother (Angelique Smith) and raised in the Crenshaw neighborhood of South Los Angeles. As a youth growing up in the rough world of South LA, Asghedom joined the “Rollin 60’s” Neighborhood Crips gang. Despite his affiliation with the Rollin 60’s in his early years, Asghedom knew early on that he wanted to transition out of the gangster life and into one where he could become a musical artist and entrepreneur. Fortunately, Asghedom was able …

Learning to Ask

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I don’t even know what I don’t know. This was my mantra my entire 1LE year… and maybe even for a few of my 2LE classes. Law school is essentially a process to break down and rebuild the way you think and analyze information. As a 1LE, one of the first things you do is to spend hours pouring over the Bluebook, the citation reference guide for legal writing, trying to figure out how to cite cases that you hope are applicable to the paper you are writing. You also spend hours reading lengthy, wordy, Scalia dissents that have no bearing on the major takeaways from the case you’re reading, but that will be helpful to know down the line. More than likely, you are also in the throes of trying to figure out the different elements of ‘negligence’ and why a word that once seemed so simple, suddenly seems so complex. There’s also the added pressure to know those elements before Monday, because you’re on call and will need to answer questions in front …

My Philly Neighborhood: Commuting from the Suburbs

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I grew up in the Philadelphia suburbs, but was always drawn to the city itself. When I enrolled in Temple Law, I was excited to throw myself entirely into city life. I thought that during my time at Temple Law, it was essential for me to live in the geographic boundaries of Philadelphia. However, I quickly realized that this was not the case. Living in the suburbs as a Temple Law student is actually a very real possibility. We all know that law school can be expensive, and for me, living in the suburbs was a way to offset some of that expense. Luckily for me, my parents still live in the same suburb where I grew up and were willing to have me move back home after years of living on my own. As a current third-year law student, I commute to Temple Law every day using Septa’s Regional Rail System. The Regional Rail has trains that run from Philadelphia to the western suburbs, northern suburbs, and even New Jersey. I take the Paoli-Thorndale …

Coming Full Circle Through Guided Research

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During an undergraduate course on race in the United States, I was tasked with interviewing someone who identified as a “hyphenated American” to discuss this person’s experiences as nonwhite in America. I decided to interview my grandfather, a Mexican-American man who grew up in the American Southwest. While I was aware that all of my grandparents had faced some form of discrimination in their lives because of their Mexican ancestry, this exercise gave me a chance to learn more details about my grandfather’s experiences and contextualize those experiences with historical perspective. As that class ended, I knew that I wanted to continue to dive deeper into the history of Mexican-American people and other Latinx folks, and decided that I should double major in Chicano/Latino Studies. That decision completely changed the trajectory of my education. From that point forward, I viewed my political science studies through a new lens, analyzing the intersection of political systems and low-income minority populations. For most of my life I thought that the hardships my grandparents faced were those of a …

Temple Rome – An Internship Abroad

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I came to law school as what you may call a non-traditional student.  Sixteen years after graduating with my bachelor of science and working in the financial sector and then employee global mobility, I decided to return to school.  I first entered law school as a part-time student in the evening division at Widener Delaware Law, and then I transferred to Temple Law after my first year.  After my first semester at Temple, I transferred to the day division as a full-time student. When I transferred to Temple, I was most interested in international studies and, in particular, the study abroad program in Rome.  My main fields of interest in law are global business and U.S. business immigration.  Not only was I interested in the breadth of courses offered to prepare me for the workforce, but I felt the Rome program would give me an opportunity to understand another culture, another law structure (Italy practices civil law, whereas the United States practices common law), and another way of life.  Getting outside of my comfort zone …