J-Dro

I have had a lot of great professors during law school, but only one fits the bill of e pluribus Unum. I've had Prof. Drobac 4 of the six semesters of law school. She was my first year contracts professor, as well as my family law and sexual harassment law professor. She wrote the textbook on sexual harassment law. I think that is cool because I can actually say I took a class from someone who wrote the textbook on that subject.

The reason I like her mainly is that she doesn't take herself too seriously. She has a doctoral degree from Stanford, but still likes to have fun. The margins of my notebooks from her classes are filled with one liners that crack me up. One time she lectured while eating a donut. It was fantastic.

I also like her because her exams are the fairest of them all. She doesn't try to hide the ball from you and she tells you upfront what she is looking for on her exam. She also has a rubric that she distributes after the fact to show you what she expected. No law school professor typically ever does that. You really can't ask for anything more and I've been relatively successful on them, which helps her likability factor.

The interesting part in all of this is that she is a flaming liberal. Almost completely opposite of where I stand. Her motto is "I will march in the streets for your right to march in the street" for points of view that she doesn't agree. She practices what she preaches. Even though she clearly supports same-sex marriage, she did the best job of any professor representing both sides of the issue, which I appreciated.

At the end of the day, I'm grateful for J-Dro. My first year of law school was tough, in many respects, but also grade wise compared to where I was at at BYU. Because I did so well in her class I realized that I could be successful at law school. My grade in first year Contracts helped me realize that if J-Dro thought I could do it, then I could. It was a pleasure being taught by J-Dro. I will miss her.

Civil Practice Clinic

The past two semesters I've had the chance to be in a clinical course that gets you actual cases and the opportunity to do real legal stuff. I got to become a Certified Legal Intern which means that I've taken more than 45 credits and Professional Responsibility and have a supervising attorney watching what I do. This basically lets me be a real attorney as long as I have a supervising attorney signing off on things.

Prof. Hagan was my supervising attorney and she was fantastic. She did a good job of letting you have complete control. Even when I didn't know what to do, she would force me to figure out what to do. Really good at knowing exactly what to say. She also taught us basic skills that every attorney needs to know (i.e. how to be a lawyer).

We have this really cool workspace in the Law School that is basically its own separate law practice.

The cases we take are pro bono. That means that we don't charge for our services and we help those individuals who can't afford to pay for legal services. It is very rewarding and I learned a lot in the process. My busiest case was a landlord/tenant case where the landlord didn't give back the security deposit. It was interesting because it was an appeal of small claims decision. To make a long story short, after a three year legal battle I was able to get my client her security deposit back. It was really rewarding. I got to attend a hearing, write a motion for summary judgment and deal with an unresponsive attorney. Stuff that happens on a regular basis in the real legal word. If you ever go to law school, make sure you take a clinic.