Hello everyone,

I hope this week has been good to you with the celebration of our very own Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday. I spent the holiday in New York City with some Teach For America friends and it was awesome! It's amazing how much Harlem has changed... I think 20 people asked to braid my hair as soon as I got off the train - that was different. But, I saw the lovely Apollo and all the other great things Harlem has to offer like the food and eclectic people. I took the bus that is frequently called the "Chinatown bus" to get there from Boston and it was awesome! Nothing better than a $20 ride to get you to the Big Apple for a small law school getaway...

Anyway, I wanted to write this week and update you all on my coop process and how it's been going. As I mentioned in one of my previous blogs, I was very torn between doing another coop at a District Attorney's office and doing a public defense coop. As I told you, I decided to apply to juvenile prosecution & defense and some civil litigation firms.

Given I am creating my own coop, I started by sending out my resume to some organizations that I researched on Westlaw. (Just as an aside, if you plan on completing a coop with a firm that NUSL has a connection with, you cannot, I repeat, you CANNOT contact them on your own!!! These are the rules!)

Given all of the places I am interested in are in Georgia and not on the list, I threw my name in the hat for the Georgia Department of Education and other small firms that do defense work. None of those panned out for various reasons, however, I did call up my first coop employer (a Georgia state judge) and she was very instrumental in helping me figure out a strategy. NUSL does have relationships with several Georgia employers that conduct general defense work. The judge told me that completing a defense coop would be great for my future hopes of attaining a clerkship and that having experience on both sides of criminal matters would ultimately make me more marketable. Nothing like a great network of experienced lawyers and judges to remind you of the bigger picture.

So, tomorrow morning, I am participating in our formal coop process (for the first time) and trying my hand at public interest criminal defense work. Wish me luck! Hopefully in the next two weeks, I can officially tell you where I will complete my last coop.

Have a great rest of your week and weekend!!!

Posted by Aisha at 11:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Hello everyone,

I hope that you're having a great week - I just finished my last assignment for the week and at 7:45 PM on a Thursday, that is AWESOME!!!

Anyway, my last entry concerned finding housing in Boston and I received a great question that I felt warranted a follow up blog entry. The question regarded housing while on coop - what do NUSL students do if they're cooping out of town?

Well, as I think I mentioned, I have done all of my coops in the Atlanta area and my husband and I own a house there. So, what does that mean for my Boston housing when I'm away? Well, fortunately for me, my roommates have never charged me for my vacant room while I'm gone. So, my situation is not typical. What most students do at NUSL is sublet their apartment/house to law students on the other rotation or they simply pay rent while they're away (not the preferred option in my opinion).

I even know of one circumstance where there are four people who live in the house and two of them are on the fall/spring rotation (meaning they are on coop during these rotations) and the other two are on the summer/winter rotation. They have signed a lease that ensures they coop out of town and for the past two years, their situation has worked out flawlessly.

So, don't fret if you're worried about housing on coop. It works out and NUSL students will help you work it out.

If you all have other questions, please post a comment to my blog and I will either comment back or address your question in another blog.

Take care everyone!

Posted by Aisha at 7:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Hello everyone,

I'm sorry for the late blog posting. I spoke at an information session last Wednesday night for prospective students and from there, my week rocked, but my blog posting suffered. So, I apologize for that.

Anyway, I want to devote this topic to Boston housing. Coming from Atlanta, housing was definitely a concern for me because I had no idea where to live or how to go about finding a place to live where I would feel comfortable.

So, the first thing I did was look at the email that the admissions office sent that included a brief overview of Boston neighborhoods. Given that NUSL is in Roxbury, I wanted to live somewhere relatively close. I narrowed my search to Jamaica Plain because not only is it close, but many law students live in Jamaica Plain and it's very close to both the bus that drops you off right in front of NUSL and the orange line which stops on campus.

So, once I knew which neighborhood I wanted to live in, I started my hunt on craigslist. I love this website! Not only has it been great for selling and buying things, but I found a great and affordable apartment pretty quickly by using it. I found a lovely couple living in Jamaica Plain who consistently rent a bedroom in their house to graduate students. I lived with them during my first year and it was a great experience.

My second year, I moved to Dorchester. Dorchester is a bit far from NUSL and I wouldn't recommend living in this neighborhood without a car, but I chose to live here so that I could live with my friend who needed some help with childcare.

My third year, I moved back to Jamaica Plain and I currently live with two of my classmates. My friend in Dorchester was having her third child and I really wanted to be closer to school so that I could spend more time with my classmates for my last year of law school.

All in all, I have thoroughly enjoyed each and every living situation I have been in. It took some courage to move here and live with people I didn't know, but it ended up working out. Many of my friends who also came to NUSL from out of town did something similar to me, but all of us have our own unique stories. If you're moving here from out of town, please don't hesitate to contact current students for assistance. We're a friendly bunch at NUSL.

Have a great week!

Posted by Aisha at 4:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Hello everyone out there in cyberspace!

I hope that you had a wonderful holiday and that you were able to get some rest - I know I was! Over here at NUSL, we have seven weeks left in the quarter and there is so much to do! I am still waiting to hear about coop and I am sure that something will come out of my new approach to finding an internship. More updates on that later...

Also, I don't know if I mentioned it before in my posts, but this week, I wanted to write about an awesome opportunity that NUSL offers to its third-year students. Given this is my rotation's last academic quarter, NUSL wants to ensure that we get a jump start on preparing for the bar. Thus, every Friday, we have a three hour optional course in bar preparation. This is one of the most exciting things I am doing this quarter because the program has found a great professor to teach us bar success strategies. He has calculated how many hours we should study on a whole and on average, how much time we should study each subject on the bar.

Once you hit your third year of law school, thinking about the bar is something that is always in the back of your mind - at least, it's something that has been in the back of mine! So, taking this class has definitely put my mind at ease in more than one way! Of course, this class does not replace any commercial courses that law students might (and in my opinion, should) take, but it is definitely a HUGE help!

Talk to you all next week!

Posted by Aisha at 1:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)