STUDENT PROFILE Get to Know: NSL 4L Qianlu “Lily” Ying

helping immigrants better understand the legal system of the U.S. and become assimilated into American society, Ying said, adding that in the past year she has worked with other Chinese American attorneys to give public online lectures on American political and legal topics.

Now in her final year of law school, Ying said she hasn’t settled on a particular area of practice and is keeping an open mind about where her legal career will take her. But she’s particularly interested in employment, administrative, constitutional, and criminal law at this point.

Lily Ying’s dream job has always been teaching philosophy. But life has a way of changing your dreams and steering you to a career you didn’t even know you wanted.

Born and raised in Shanghai, China, Ying (born Qianlu Ying) received her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in philosophy from Fudan University in Shanghai. Ying, who will graduate from Nashville School of Law in May, had a one-year visiting scholarship offered by the John Templeton Foundation and studied in the philosophy department at Baylor University, an experience that led her to pursue a PhD in the United States.

She met Wei Huang when they were graduate students in Shanghai, and they married in 2010. They came to the United States in 2012 when she received a full scholarship to enroll in the PhD program in political philosophy at University of Tennessee, Knoxville. She received her degree in 2018. She and Huang have two children, 10 and 6 years old. In 2018, she came to Nashville to do paralegal work with the Wang Law Group, PLLC. The firm, a general practice involving civil litigation, immigration, criminal and family law, personal injury, business litigation, and corporate compliances, is led by NSL Alumna Vivien Wang ’10.

A necessary condition of Ying’s job at Wang Law Group was enrolling in NSL. “It’s an arranged marriage,” Ying said. “But I quickly fell in love with NSL, especially because of the study of constitutional law. It related to my political philosophy study, and I still think it’s kind of a continuance of my philosophy education. That helps me a lot.”

Ying said her job at Wang Law Group is a great fit for her. “Vivien is a first-generation Chinese American too, and her work is mainly to serve the legal and cultural needs of immigrants in the Nashville area,” she said. An important part of the firm’s services is

“There’s a Chinese saying, ‘put your feet on the watermelon rind, slide yourself to wherever it slides,’” she said. “I’m following my heart and doing what I like. I didn’t choose law myself, but I’m passionate about it — the pursuit of knowledge and justice. I like serving the working class, serving people who have legal needs. It suits me well.”

Her long-term goal is to develop better legal skills and enrich her understanding of the U.S. legal system. And she wants to do more comparative legal research on different legal institutions — in China, Japan, Europe, and the U.S., for example. “The firm is very dynamic, and I’m still learning. A lot of the work is very challenging,” she said.

Ying said that attending NSL and getting to know her classmates has been life changing for her. “They come from all kinds of jobs, and they’re all very different from me. There are different classes and different cultural groups. It’s been really eye opening. I always tell my American friends that I didn’t have culture shock in the first six years I was here, the culture shock really happened at NSL. I feel like I’ve really gotten to know real American people.”