I attended CLEO's  Sophomore Summer Institute this past June at Thurgood Marshall School of Law in Houston. It was by far the greatest experience of my life.
I came back to Dallas a whole new person, but I also came back to Dallas only to find out that I lost my job. I did not let it disappointment me. I decided to update my resume and search for a position in the legal field since I obtained an Associates Degree in Paralegal Studies.
I applied for many positions and three out of the many called me back. There was one position that I applied for that required me to complete an assignment to make sure I could actually do the work. I remembered during my stay in Houston all of the professors were gracious enough to allow the students to contact them for anything and everything.
I needed help on the assignment so I contacted Professor Ana Otero. She told me she would help me as long as I completed the research. I spent my whole entire 4th of July weekend trying to complete this assignment. Professor Otero took time out of her busy schedule to not only help a fellow CLEO student, but she also gave me a wonderful recommendation. She personally called me to make sure I understood what I was doing and told me to call her anytime.
The CLEO SSI program gave me lots of experience, the advantage of networking with law students, former judges, law professors, and lawyers, and an opportunity to further advance my knowledge in the legal field. The CLEO program also prepared me for law school as well as working in a law firm settting. Because of my experience with CLEO, I did get the job. The attorney was very familiar with CLEO and very impressed that I was apart of such a prestigious program.
I plan to attend other programs for CLEO and I hope I have encouraged other students to be apart of CLEO as well!
Thanks,
Jessica Ezeanya

Edited: 07/21/2009 at 03:16 PM by CLEO Blog Moderator

We had our first exam today in Professor Clark's class and I feel pretty good about it. I suppose I should wait until I get my score before becoming too relieved. All in all though, it was an ok experience--much easier than I expected! I think that's because we were so worried that we felt it necessary to put everything into studying. Hopefully it paid off!

Our first exam will be taking place tomorrow in Professor Clark's Contracts class!! There's a lot of material so I'm going to have to study a lot to do well. Thankfully the exam is mostly multiple choice. This will be our first exam so I hope everything goes well, otherwise it won't be a very good start to the weekend.

To become an attorney of law, one must have the mindset that he or she is a "creator of circumstances" and not a creature of circumstances.  Such a belief must surely be practice in order to complete law school because law school is very demanding.  Yet, the rewards one can achieve after completing law school can be stupendous.

Without question, a successful attorney of law is a "creator of circumstances" for he or she finds a way to steer the law for the good of the legal situation.  Thus, one must keep in mind that a creature of cirumstances is one who settles for less, and most certainly will end up being a victim rather than a victor of circumstances whereby the latter correlates profoundly with the attitude one must have to complete law school and go on to become an aspiring attorney of law.

Tonight's homework was a little less than last night's, so I was able to complete my readings for Prof. Clark semi-early. Of course I will still have to review them with a groub tomorrow, but getting done earlier is pretty awesome. The cases we had to read tonight focused on "consideration". I'm not sure I fully understanding the cases, but I'm hoping that sleeping on it and reviewing them tomorrow will help. Prof. Webking introduced us more to some crazy formal logic in the morning. I can't wait to find it more fun than intimidating.

Today was an interesting start to the program. I enjoyed the first class reading Socrates and answering those analytical questions on the board.  I thought that the next class instructed by Professor Clark would be the toughest and most intensive of them all. It wasn’t that intense and it provided me a thorough understanding of the cases that we have read from the night before.  The walk around this campus back and forth to the law building, cafeteria, and the dorm seems to be the most exhausting thing of them all.  After a while I should be use to it. I really did think that I really wasn’t going to enjoy both classes because I thought it both of them actually would be really intense, but I was relax with an open mind, and ended up learning a great deal today.

Today was somewhat stressful, yet exciting all the same. We attended our classes for the first day; Justice, Law, and Logic forced me to think outside of the box. Professor Clark's class was really interesting as well. We analyzed two cases by way of the socratic method and the trial process.

The work load is heavy, yet I am learning to manage my time and ask questions to arrive at comprehension. Also, I am really enjoying getting to know my colleagues. It is really nice to be amongst a group of such diverse, motivated students. I am sure that I will build life long friendships here.....

 

Today has been very overwhelming; even though it was suppose to be relaxing.  I am kind of scared of what to expect, but in all I am trying to stay positive.  I hope I will actually receive time to sleep.  Overall I do plan to succeed.  Everyone seems nice and excited about the program, but nervous about all of the work we may recieve.  I will put my all into this, and hopefully I will be one of the ones that will be on top! We shall see!