Student News

This year at Chicago-Kent College of Law, standout students were recognized with honors, stipends, and fellowships. Here is a look at of some of this year’s most distinguished students:

Enrique Espinoza ’21 was awardedanationalPeggy BrowningFundfellowshipto workattheChicagobranchof theNationalLegalAdvocacy Network,anonprofitadvocate forlow-wageworkers’rights. Alongtimehospitalityworker, Espinozasaysheenrolledin lawschoolinhis40sbecause hewantedtotacklesomeof thelaborissueshe’dobserved inhisdecadesonthejob. Andmanyofhisclientsare immigrants,likehim:Espinoza arrivedintheUnitedStates fromMexicoin2007.“The clients’storiesmirrormy stories,”Espinozasays.

Ashley-MarieSutherland’23

tookthetopprizeof$30,000at Pitch@IllinoisTech,astudentrunbusinessplancompetition. Sutherlandandherhusband runHEIRSFarm,ahydroponicsstartupinChicago’sBackof theYardsneighborhood on the South Side.Theysaytheyhope toproducefreshmicrogreens, includingdiasporiccropsfrom Africa,toaneighborhoodthat sorelyneedsit.Sutherland isfocusingonpatentsand intellectualpropertycourses atChicago-Kent,hopingto applyitintheagritechfield.

Hussein Nofal

’22 received the Gary Laser Professionalism Award for his work in Chicago-Kent’s immigration clinic. The Laser Award goes to students working at the Law Offices of Chicago-Kent’s clinics who show promise and maintain the highest standard of ethics. Nofal, whose family is from Palestine, worked on multiple asylum cases at the immigration clinic, and was singled out for his work ethic and empathy. Noting that many Palestinians are refugees, Nofal says, “You really feel for those people who are refugees from other countries as well.”

Hayden Dinges ’21 and Sakshi Jain ’21 were recognized by their Moot Court Honor Society peers with the Marc Grinker Student Commitment Award. The award is given for Moot Court Honor Society members who showed commitment and support to their fellow students. Dinges and Jain were anonymously nominated by their peers to receive the honor. After graduation, Dinges started as an appellate attorney at the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office, and Jain started as an associate at Ice Miller’s Chicago office.

Monica Pechous ’20, Isabella Romano ’21,

Clayburn Arnold ’21, and Emily Motin ’22 received the 2021 Fleischman Family Awards for Excellence in Criminal Clinic for their diligent work in Chicago-Kent’s Criminal Law Clinic. The team helped successfully petition for the compassionate release of a man from federal custody in Duluth, Minnesota. The 66-year-old man, who had high blood pressure and 5 ½ years left on his sentence, became concerned by a large COVID-19 outbreak in the surrounding county.

Jaylin D. McClinton ’22

was identified as one this year’s Next Generation Leaders by the American Constitution Society, a progressive nonprofit dedicated to building a diverse legal community in defense of democracy and the United States Constitution. The leadership program singled out 28 law school students in 2021 who “have the requisite skills, knowledge, and talent to act now during this critical moment in our country,” ACS president and former U.S. Senator Russ Feingold said in a written statement. The leadership network now has more than 400 members since it started in 2007. Joey Carrillo ’21 received an Equal Justice Works fellowship to help expand Legal Aid Chicago’s outreach to the LGBT community. Carrillo finished three previous internships with the nonprofit’s Children and Families practice group, and had noticed a dearth of LGBT clients. He will approach outside social service organizations, offering training for those that don’t focus on LGBT clients and asking for referrals from those that do. Equal Justice Works partners with law firms as well as outside funding organizations. Carrillo’s fellowship will be sponsored by the law firm Greenberg Traurig and Discover Financial Services.

Kelby Roth ’22

won the Willis R. Tribler Law Student Writing Competition, sponsored by the Illinois Institute for Continuing Legal Education. She wrote about how a potential increase in COVID19-related civil actions against emergency medical personnel will face a high bar due to state regulation. “Attorneys should take a resourceful

Monica Pechous Isabella Romano Clayburn Arnold Emily Motin

and fact-intensive approach to these suits,” Roth wrote, citing the 1993 Illinois Emergency Medical Services Systems Act, which provides broad immunity from civil liability to emergency medical personnel. “They [attorneys] have a duty to inform their clients of this extremely high bar to recovery—especially because these cases are costly and time consuming, without much success.”

Jennifer Nacht

’21 won the Dolores K. Hanna Trademark Prize for her outstanding performance in a course in the school’s intellectual property program. Nacht also distinguished herself in the annual Saul Lefkowitz Moot Court Competition—the only moot court competition in the United States with a focus on trademark law—which helped single her out for the prize. She hopes to attain a job in patent litigation.

Samantha Buddig ’21 was awarded the Sandra P. Zemm Prize in Labor and Employment Law for an essay describing a union contract negotiation at her family’s long-standing business. Buddig wrote about working on the packaging line while her family was negotiating the company’s next collective bargaining agreement with its local union. “I like to say that I had an ear on both sides of the wall, for I gained a perspective from our unionized employees that sat on the negotiation sessions and, inevitably, from management when I would come home for dinner after my shift,” Buddig wrote. The prize is given to a student who shows commitment to pursuing a career in labor and employment law representing employers, a pioneer spirit, and a gracious and generous attitude toward helping those in need.

Natasha Crespo ’21 attained the first-ever Public Interest Fellowship with Indiana Disability Rights, the state’s agency that enforces disability laws. Crespo, who went back to school to become a lawyer after observing disability rights violations in her prior career as a librarian, also created and presided over the Disability Advocacy Law Student Association. “After I got that heart valve replacement, I felt I needed to do more with my own abilities. I wanted to be part of the bigger solutions,” Crespo says. She’s open about her heart valve replacement, saying, “I want to be public, because I feel there’s so many law students who have health issues and feel they’re alone, and can’t relate. Or don’t want to tell people,” Crespo says. “They’re not alone. They’re not.”

Zoe Appler ’22 became the first student in Chicago-Kent College of Law history to win the Top Gun National Mock Trial Competition. The competition is for the best student advocates in the country: a single student from each of the 16 schools that had scored highest in the team National Trial Competition. Appler was the only second-year student to compete.

She and her backup, Valerie Letko ’21, had just 10 hours to review a 300-page case file and draft an opening statement, evidentiary motions, direct and cross examinations for four witnesses—and, of course, the critical closing argument.

Appler argued against Harvard Law School, Georgetown University Law Center, University of the Pacific McGeorge School of Law, University of California, Berkeley School of Law, and Wake Forest University School of Law in the competition.

In the final, Appler went up against her old mentor and team captain from her undergraduate years to take the $10,000 prize via a unanimous decision. She was a summer associate this year with Swanson Martin & Bell in Chicago.

Natasha Crespo

Lorianna Anderson, Kath-

erine Hanson, and Alex White, all of whom are slated to graduate in 2022, were awarded Stevens Public Interest Fellowships for work with local nonprofits. Hanson’s fellowship was with the Illinois Human Rights Commission, assisting administrative law judges and the commission’s general counsel’s office. Anderson’s was with the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office, where she notes, “Not a lot of people advocating on the defense or the state [attorney’s] side look like me, but a lot of people involved in the court system do. It’s a matter of representation. I think you should have people who are representative of the communities that they serve.” White’s was with the Legal Aid Society, where he worked on family law cases, such as custody disputes and orders of protection, for low-income individuals. The Stevens Fellowships come with an $8,000 prize to help pay for living expenses.

Katherine Hanson ’22 placed highly in a pair of notable writing awards for her paper on how a recent United States Supreme Court case could weaken a peculiar sexual harassment defense made by “equal opportunity harassers.” She was named as the 2021 winner of the Mary Rose Strubbe Labor & Employment Writing Prize and placed second in the Louis Jackson Memorial National Student Writing Competition for her paper, entitled “Conduct, Causation, and Comparators: Revisiting the Defense of the Equal Opportunity Harasser After Bostock.” An equal opportunity sexual harasser describes an employer who, in effect, harasses both men and women at work; the term led to a legal defense that if such an employer harassed people equally, Title VII claims against them would fail. Bostock v. Clayton County, Georgia, expands the definition of discrimination to also include gender identity and orientation; Hanson argued that this standard could be used to broaden plaintiffs’ arguments against “equal opportunity harassers.”