While maybe hard to believe, growing up in Northwest Washington D.C., I became accustomed to witnessing discrimination both blatant and covert. My family is one who has always worked diligently on the behalf of others, starting with my grandmother who is a starch advocate for the disabled. My grandmother protected the rights of my aunt who is intellectually disabled and other clients who could not speak for themselves, while my mother is a special education teacher and educator. These experiences inspired my desire to fight for social and civil rights as a civil rights attorney. I have taken several steps in pursuit of establishing my law career that has contributed to my personal development. The first step, a prestigious internship which came courtesy of the corporate work study program at my high school. Starting in the tenth grade I spent one day a week and every summer until graduation working at Kirkland & Ellis LLP’s Washington D.C. office. Kirkland is considered to be one of the world's most elite law firms, known for a litigation practice, aimed …show more content…
The program was named in honor of Houston who was known as “The Man Who Killed Jim Crow,” because he was the litigation director for the NAACP, taught and mentored Thurgood Marshall at Howard University Law School and was the mastermind behind Brown v. Board of Education. The program prepared me for my first year of law school by focusing on legal writing and contract law. In addition to writing daily briefs on historic cases such as Carlill v. Carbolic Smoke Ball Co. and Hawkins v. McGee, we also meet with federal judges such as George Russell III who is the District Judge for the District of Maryland. The internship exposed me to the essential things I would need to get into law school which included a practice LSAT’s and tips on test taking for the actual