Student News

Everything was going according to plan for Dhara Patel. She had leveraged her graduate-level training in accounting to build a successful career for herself, first at a Big Four accounting firm, then at a smaller consulting group. Eventually, she left the corporate world and joined her family’s business, where she started her own consulting company. Patel quickly realized how often she worked with attorneys in this new role and how much legal work was embedded in her new responsibilities, from drafting leases for residential and commercial tenants to writing employment contracts for office workers. Getting her JD just made sense.

Jing Kong, a 3L student at Rutgers Law School, has been named the latest recipient of the Hon. Giles S. Rich Diversity Scholarship. This competitive and prestigious award is granted each year by the New York Intellectual Property Law Education Foundation (NYIPLEF) to a minority student representing a group that has been traditionally underrepresented in the legal profession. A trailblazer both personally and professionally, Kong is the first in her family to attend college, earn a Ph.D., immigrate to the U.S., attain U.S. citizenship, and earn a J.D. This summer, she will launch her legal career as a summer associate with the life sciences patent litigation team at O’Melveny & Myers.

Rutgers Law’s National Appellate Advocacy Team won this year's Touro Law & Religion Appellate Advocacy Competition. Second-year part-time students Ralph Passante and Brian Clark bested 19 schools to take the top spot in this competitive tournament.

Two Rutgers Law students were selected as New Jersey State Bar Foundation (NJSBF) post-graduate law fellows who will work with nonprofit organizations on public interest legal matters. Elias Bull '24 (Newark) will join Make the Road New Jersey to work on community education and group litigation to protect and support immigrant and low-income tenants. Joelle Paull '24 (Camden) will join the Fair Share Housing Center to help address the housing shortage for New Jersey's lowest income residents by preserving existing affordable homes, working to extend affordability controls, and conducting outreach on New Jersey's affirmative marketing standards and enformcement mechanisms. 

The Rutgers Law National Trial Team’s current season has become a season of championships. The National team won their third Championship title in a year this past weekend at the Texas Young Lawyers Association (TYLA) National Trial Competition Regional in Philadelphia. Rutgers Law third-year students and team competitors Livie Ruhl, Elizabeth Weinman, and Melanie Zelikovsky earned the Championship title at the Criminal Courthouse in Center City and will compete in the TYLA National Competition in April. Livie also won the award for Best Advocate in the Competition. 

Thanks to summer internships offered through the Center for Transnational Law (CTL), Rutgers Law students interested in international law and human rights can hone their skills while living and working like a Latin American local. Now accepting applications for summer 2024, these unique internships place students in non-governmental organizations across Latin America where they’ll enrich their classroom education with global, hands-on work.