On Thursday, March 3, the Stevens Alumni Association hosted an Alumni Pre-Law Panel in Bissinger. The panel consisted of Stevens alumni Basam Nabulsi (class of ’79), Scott Charney (’93), and Sophy Sedarat (’04) with alum Joseph Garvey (’71) as moderator. The panel was designed to teach students about the importance of the law, what the law is about, and interest students in a possible law minor. Though everyone on the panel was a lawyer, they have all used their law degrees in different ways and come from very different backgrounds, giving the audience a look at the many faces of the law.
The alumni were very honest about the work a law degree and career would entail. During the beginning of the event, Garvey told the audience “[Law] isn’t really a business, it’s a practice.”In business, one works to accomplish a certain task using tried-and-true method. The law, on the other hand, tests one’s patience with difficult clients and cases, subjects one’s schedule to the will of judges and trials (in fact, scheduled panelist Nima Ameri (’08) had to cancel at the last minute because of an ongoing case), and presents a unique challenge with each case. Furthermore, law school is a very different world from technical schools like Stevens. At Stevens, professors try to help and nurture students, teaching them what they need to know in the clearest way possible. Law school, on the other hand, takes away students’ safety nets, makes the material more nebulous, and makes tests more difficult and worth far more.
Yet even though law is difficult, it presents a number of advantages and opportunities. Both Nabulsi and Charney said that the technical skills involved in engineering compliment the communication skills used in law, making one well-rounded and better fit to tackle challenges than many of their colleagues. Sedarat, who is also an adjunct professor teaching Constitutional Law at Stevens, said law opens up doors that one might have never imagined, stating “If I didn’t have a law degree…I would have never had the opportunity to teach on a university level.” Even if one chooses not to become a full-time lawyer, pre-law is a very beneficial minor. It provides one with skills and a title that one can always turn to for a career, and the skills one gains in communication and negotiation can be invaluable in day-to-day life. In addition, the difficulties one faces in law school is not worthless: the legal world is rough, and school helps prepare students for the resistance they will face once they leave.
The Alumni Pre-Law Panel was an enlightening event. It showed that law can be a very rewarding field and that there are many paths to go down in the legal world, from intellectual property to criminal law to divorce law (all of which are fields that the panelists and moderator themselves work in). Garvey expressed that he and the other panelists hope the event would get students interested in pursing a pre-law degree, but that “even if they decide not to pursue one, we want them to consider the impact of law on their daily and professional lives.”
