In the past 6 months, I had to teach myself how to walk again. The summer in between my 1L and 2L years of law school, I underwent a double knee surgery: a meniscus repair and a MPFL reconstruction. My body had given up on me, and I needed to fix it now. Worried about not having the time to fully rest and recover if I did the surgery just a few years later as a licensed attorney, I agreed to the procedure for the 1L summer instead. At the age of 23, I felt like a toddler. I couldn't drive. I couldn't walk, let alone run or hike. I couldn't navigate stairs, meaning I was left in my apartment for 3 weeks. I was on a feeding schedule so that my medications could be taken at the proper times. Overnight, I lost all of my autonomy and could do nothing for myself. For someone that had spent the weeks leading up to surgery in Iceland, hiking waterfalls in Oregon, and weightlifting in the gym, this was devastating. Not only did I lose my independence, but I also felt like I lost all the activities I enjoyed that made me feel like me. I couldn't go to game night. I couldn't go swimming. I couldn't meet up for drinks. I felt trapped. I felt alone. I moved to Oregon for law school despite having no prior relationships, connections, or family in Oregon. I live alone, besides my cat who is certainly not big enough to help me with physical therapy. This meant that when I found out about the needed procedure, I anticipated doing it alone. I had friends from school, but helping someone recover from a big medical procedure within a year of meeting seemed like a big ask. However, I was so wrong. Some of these classmates are the one that got me home from the hospital and up to my non-ADA compliant apartment. Others set up meal delivery. Others still would bring game night to me in between my medication schedule. Despite not having any blood family in Oregon, these people showed me something much stronger: found family. Law school sent me to people who cared and knew how to show up. People who have asked me to their weddings, despite only knowing each other for a few months at the time. Without law school, I would not have been able to recover from such a major procedure.

At its core, sustainability as a societal priority is about ensuring that our actions today don’t compromise the well-being of future generations. It’s a commitment to living within the means of our planet, using resources wisely, and minimizing harm to the environment. It's a commitment that in order to be effective, needs to be adopted individually and collectively across local, national, and international boundaries. Sustainability needs to be a priority in all fields, even if a position doesn't fall inherently within an environmentally related structure. I believe that we collectively often fall into a "not my problem, someone else will handle it" mindset. I have heard that sustainability is "something for those crazy hippies to think about" or that "one person's actions are not going to change the trajectory of environmental damages." However, all of our systems are connected; non-sustainable resource extraction in the United States then adds to the cumulative impacts of climate change worldwide. Consumerism thrives in one country because it is being fueled by production and labor in another country. Sustainability is necessary in all fields for the continued growth and success across national borders, and therefore, requires a collective effort. As a future environmental lawyer, my focus is not just on the sustainability of future resource use, but also on the impacts that people, specifically communities that are already overburdened and underserved, are currently facing. Specifically, my interest is in how exploitative resource use and extraction, coupled with disproportionate benefit sharing, is unsustainable environmentally and socially. Because the global community has not accepted sustainability as a priority, we have seen rapid degradation of our planet, exploitation of resources, and rising human rights violations. My goal as a lawyer is to make these harms more public while supporting the communities who are facing the brunt of environmental harms and damages. Policy, law, and social sciences need to incorporate sustainability considerations to better understand the distribution of impacts. To best represent the people, I need to understand how current environmental processes affect them and the future implications of continued unsustainable use of land and resources. Environmental law, to me, is not just about protection of animals or the Earth, although important. Sustainability is a commitment to the future generations and inherently includes a social component to ensure that people can continue to live with access to food and water. I intend to focus on the human component embedded within sustainability for future and present generations. We are all in this together and share this Earth.

I came to Oregon to pursue environmental law with a focus on natural resource use and allocation. I am passionate about the human-oriented side of environmental advocacy, especially protecting and enhancing public health and providing quality access to safe and clean environments for all people. Through this pursuit, I also believe that all communities should have access to natural resources like water and clean, safe food, and that such resources should be protected for future generations. I would like to pursue this field while advocating in the fight for environmental justice and preservation of our nation’s land and resources. While at Lewis & Clark, I have been a member of the Northwestern Environmental Defense Council (NEDC) and Students for International Environmental Law (SIEL), assisting in research of local, national, and international environmental concerns and their effects on the resident populations. I am now in leadership for both organizations, assisting 1Ls with becoming involved with environmental law, including leading the clean water student group of NEDC. Through these opportunities, I have been able to write public comments and create public comment guides that put the legal concerns into lay terms so the public can understand what is happening in their own neighborhoods. Focusing on the public involvement and access to justice within my own communities is a big part of why I came to law school. Having firsthand experience with the foster system and seeing how the legal team did not have the best interest of the kids at risk in mind, I knew I wanted to be a change to that. I came to law school because I saw the flaw in the legal system and how people who were inside of it got treated. I knew I wanted to be a legal professional that people in need and in vulnerable situations could trust. In unstable and traumatic situations, getting legal professionals involved can often raise the tensions and stress. I want to be a part of changing the legal landscape and providing the needed assistance, while being aware of the sensitivities of each individual’s situation. I am interested in resource use and allocation and environmental harms internationally, as well as locally. This year, in my 2L year, I am participating in the International Animal and Environmental Legal Clinic on Lewis and Clark’s campus. This has given me a fantastic opportunity to see how policy does not only have local implications, but nationally and internationally. I also have been able to further explore how people and non-human species are impacted globally by environmental issues and environmental crimes. Environmental impacts are not restricted to only local communities but have effects that carry, often disproportionately impacting minority and lower income communities that have been systemically removed from policy and access to justice. I hope to become involved in resource conservation, land use and allocation, and environmental policy, being a part of our natural world so that it may continue to exist for generations to come.

Having firsthand experience with the foster system and seeing how the legal team did not have the best interest of the kids at risk in mind, I knew I wanted to be a change to that. I came to law school because I saw the flaw in the legal system and how people who were inside of it got treated. I knew I wanted to be a legal professional that people in need and in vulnerable situations could trust. In unstable and traumatic situations, getting legal professionals involved can often raise the tensions and stress. I want to be a part of changing the legal landscape and providing the needed assistance, while being aware of the sensitivities of each individual’s situation. While working at Aurora Municipal Courthouse, I was able to see the necessary work of Public Defenders in providing legal services in combating the injustices of systematic poverty, incarceration, and racism. I was also able to interact with all parties in a courtroom, seeing how each professional had a role to play in the outcome of each case. Through my work with the courthouse, I helped to maintain the cases, provide all necessary hearing information to all parties, and provide resources to Pro Se parties. This experience and interaction with all different kinds of parties moving through the legal system drives my intentions behind my law degree and is something I plan to carry through my practice. Currently, I spend a lot of my Wednesday nights volunteering pro bono at Saint Andrews Legal Clinic in Portland, Oregon. I am halfway through my law school education and intend to practice in public interest law once I get my J.D. A big component of this work is making legal resources more accessible and removing the barriers that community members may face. Family law was a big factor in me coming to law school in the first place and it is important to me to continue to build up these communities that I came from and have direct experience with. I am new to Portland, Oregon and am trying to get involved in the local communities of my new home to build connections but also to recognize the problems that individuals around me may face. Empathy is an essential skill in lawyering and by giving back to my community I hope to remove barriers to legal resources and make it more accessible to have voices heard when they are asking for help.

I came to Oregon to pursue environmental law with a focus on natural resource use and allocation. I am passionate about the human-oriented side of environmental advocacy, especially protecting and enhancing public health and providing quality access to safe and clean environments for all people. Through this pursuit, I also believe that all communities should have access to natural resources like water and clean, safe food, and that such resources should be protected for future generations. I would like to pursue this field while advocating in the fight for environmental justice and preservation of our nation’s land and resources. Now more than ever, this fight is essential to guarantee a healthy environment for not only the current generations, but for future generations. While at Lewis & Clark, I have been a member of the Northwestern Environmental Defense Council (NEDC) and Students for International Environmental Law (SIEL), assisting in research of local, national, and international environmental concerns and their effects on the resident populations. I am now in leadership for both organizations, assisting 1Ls with becoming involved with environmental law, including leading the clean water student group of NEDC. Through these opportunities, I have been able to write public comments and create public comment guides that put the legal concerns into lay terms so the public can understand what is happening in their own neighborhoods. It is important to me that environmental knowledge is accessible to communities that are being directly impacted. I am also interested in how policy and regulations are necessary to make clean energy accessible and more widely used. These experiences have given me the necessary research tools to be able to provide the legislative analysis of local, national, and international policies. I am interested in resource use and allocation and environmental harms internationally, as well as locally. This year, in my 2L year, I am participating in the International Animal and Environmental Legal Clinic on Lewis and Clark’s campus. This has given me a fantastic opportunity to see how policy does not only have local implications, but nationally and internationally. I also have been able to further explore how people and non-human species are impacted globally by environmental issues and environmental crimes. I have continued to explore the international impact of environmental harms through research in Iceland. In Iceland, my research was focused on how the increasing tourism impacts the local ecology, environment, and culture. I then worked with my research team to develop and publish a tourism guide accessible to encourage sustainable and respectful travel. The intent behind this was to make environmental knowledge more common while recognizing the impacts that tourism may have on Iceland.