tell me how do you keep going after say the first five or six what
is within you that says no i'm not gonna accept this
excuse me it's okay
my faith in god
and
having a dream
when you know
that you're called to do something you're destined to do something in life
at times
you know the journey can be long
it could be hard
but when you know you're called to do something in life you keep going
you just keep going
so I was a paralegal at the department justice
i was working immigration law
and still working
and still trying to get into law school
and uh... around two thousand seven i will never forget
i was going to columbia south carolina
for
training at the department of justice we have training for our paralegals down at columbia south carolina
and before i left for training I received an e-mail
from one of the admissions 0:01:14.860,0:01:15.960 personnel here
who sent me an email regarding the school's and so at this point I had applied to thirty four different
thirty four times law school
and i was like I was thinking to myself lord I know if you call me to do this you'll open up the
door
i know I have to do my part but
you have to do something too lord
meet me half way
so at this point I was still trying to get in law school
uh...I was going on travel
like I said to south carolina
so I saw the email I said okay massachusetts school of law i didn't know anything about the school i say
I'll check into it when i come back from travel I came back from travel
and so I researched the school and found out about its history and what it could offer
me
and I still didn't know if I wanted to come to massachusetts I didn't know anything about the area
and an attorney of mine i'll never forget she told me clynnetta
her name was clynnetta too
uh...her name actually is joanne johnson
and she told me clynnetta you have applied to law school so many times over the past
five years
and
they were all aba
and when I told her about this school that it was a non aba school
she said
this is a non aba school
if you can't get into a non aba school
at least you could say you have tried all avenues
don't give up
i applied
came here for the interview process and the admissions process
and the rest is history within
less than a month my whole life changed
I had to tell my job I was going on a leave of absence and and the government
and i literally
picked up from maryland and moved to massachusetts
and it was the best decision I've ever made
for so many reasons
i can go down a list first of all
this school when i came to the school
the admissions process itself
was enlightening it was different
the admissions process
of the question the q and a was more into
how i have established myself as an adult since i've graduated from undergrad not so
much what does it take to get into school but
the person who interviewed me he was more interested well what have you established as
an adult in the workforce what have you done because i believe the school takes into account
your experience
as a person in the workforce as opposed to a person that's coming straight out of undergrad
even though there's nothing wrong with that experience there's something to be said when you are
working in the workforce and you come back to school you can bring that type of knowledge
and experience
to your experience in law school so they were very interested in
my background my history with regarding
immigration law
uh... what I did at st. mary's
and then it was just enlightening to be able to get into a school where the lsat was not a
big factor wasn't a factor at all it wasn't a factor at all actually and that had been my situation
I realized that that score was very important
because i was a student on the same level as any other student the great
grades personal statements everything but
what differentiated me from other students
was the score you know what we have found and it might help to know is that there really
is no correlation between the lsat score and you've helped to prove it as well
is the ability to successfully complete law school and be a great lawyer i mean look at
your own accomplishments here you're graduating now with honors
you have been a highly successful in the trial advocacy teams uh... competing against schools
like harvard and syracuse and more often than not whipping them
uh... and you're graduating with the dean's award for significant accomplishments i mean it's
it's what's here yes and here that counts it's not what
a multiple-choice test says that you should have the ability do because
you've proven
by a longshot that you're going to be just one terrific lawyer you know
thank you