Student Spotlight: Zachary Sullivan '10
Participating in Notre Dame Law School’s one-of-a-kind GAILILEE (Group Alternative Live-In Legal Education) program reminded me why I originally wanted to attend law school. While I really loved my first semester classes, it was easy to be consumed by studying and forget the law’s role in the “real world.” Over winter break I was in a group of six first-year students in Washington, DC, visiting a variety of organizations to learn more about public interest law and problems facing the urban poor. In a whirlwind few days, my group met with lawyers eager to talk to us about how we could put our law degree toward the public good, including ones from the International Rescue Committee (a United Nations partner that aides refugees), DC Appleseed Center (a group that seeks to improve public policy in the city), and DC’s Prisoners’ Project of the Washington Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights and Urban Affairs (a group that advocates for the humane treatment and dignity of prisoners). GAILILEE exposed me to so many problems that I had never thought about, including the prisoner who is abused by a guard and must navigate the prison’s unforgiving process for filing a complaint or the refugee who does not know where to turn when she is a victim of a crime in a seemingly lawless refugee camp. My group often found ourselves walking out of visits confidently declaring we had found the type of law we wanted to practice, only to make the same declaration after the next one. My worries about if there was a type of law that would fit me after law school have been replaced by the much-welcome problem of having too many types of law from which to choose. I return for my second semester with a bounce in my step having been reminded of the undeniable relevancy of my classes. The eye-opening experience GAILILEE afforded also served to remind me once again that Notre Dame is truly dedicated to “educating a different type of lawyer.”
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