Andy:
First of all, Julian is terrific and a pleasure to work with. Where I think maybe I had the most impact on Julian was helping him relatively early on in the program when Julian realized -- as happens when you're an active individual who wants to participate in a lot of things that are interesting and meaningful to you -- that he had overcommitted, not just to Students for Justice, but across the board. What was rewarding to me, and I think helpful to Julian, was talking him through how to figure out what to do with that situation. We spent time reviewing Julian’s different commitments, figuring out where he was having the greatest impact, developing a way to prioritize those commitments -how to think about which, if any commitments could be successfully transitioned to somebody else. And fortunately, that resulted in Julian remaining very active in Students for Justice and fulfilling the other important commitments he had made while maintaining a manageable workload.
Julian:
A high point for me was definitely Andy's help on how to transition from where I am to get to law school. Andy, as a practicing attorney, had a lot of really great advice. It might have been the best advice I've gotten since I told somebody I wanted to go to law school. He told me when I should be taking the LSAT, and what it looks like. He told me what I should be looking at when trying to assess what schools I want to actually attend.
Andy:
We started talking about why Julian liked Morehouse, and the environment that he thought he did his best school work in. Then we transferred those concepts to law school, and we took a step back and said, OK, let's figure out the criteria that are important to Julian’s selection of a law school. There's a wide variety of law schools in terms of their size, their ranking, their full-time/part-time arrangements, etc. We started working on developing a list of what was important to Julian to think about in a law school, even before he applies.
Julian:
But then also Andy looked over my resume and said, hey, would you like me to send this over to some of my lawyer friends to see if any of them have any positions? And then he advocated for me. I got a call shortly after that from Greenberg Traurig, a large law firm in Atlanta, offering me a summer internship, and the person who called mentioned that I had been highly recommended. So, I really thank Andy. Getting the internship happened just because he helped me out, because he cared and wanted me to get some real-world experience with the practice of law.
Andy:
For anyone thinking about law school, to me it's key, if you can make it happen, to get a little experience inside a law firm. So that's how we discussed Julian working for a law firm in Atlanta. Fortunately for me, I went to Vanderbilt Law School, so I have a number of really good friends who now have made their careers in Atlanta. At Greenberg Traurig, where Julian’s going, he’s definitely going to get to work with excellent lawyers and other staff members and in an environment where work ethic, diversity and inclusiveness are valued. I’m a big believer in on-the-job experience. That’s a big part of what Students for Justice is all about.
