Why I Wish to Become a California Lawyer – UCSC Scholarship Contest

May 22, 2013

Lincoln Law School of San Jose - Logo

Robert S. Kieve, in conjunction with Lincoln Law School of San Jose is proud to announce the 2013 Empire Broadcasting Lincoln Law School of San Jose UCSC Student Scholarship Contest.

This $5,000 tuition reduction scholarship is designed to encourage and support a well-qualified, incoming law student who has the potential to make significant contribution to the California legal community. The scholarship will be award to a UCSC graduate who applies to, is accepted and attends Lincoln Law School of San Jose in the 2013 entering class.

ESSAY SUBJECT: Why I wish to become a California Lawyer

In order to apply prospective students must:

  • Submit an essay of no more than 1000 words as part of the admissions application;
  • Meet all admissions requirements and be accepted and enroll in the 2013 entering class;
  • Have the applicant and enrollee’s essay determined to be both satisfactory and the best essay in the good faith and final judgement of the judges.
Judges for the essay will be John Hopkins, Hopkins & Carley, and Attorney at Law, Robert Kieve, President of Empire Broadcasting, KLIV & KRTY Radio Stations and Joseph H. Moless Jr, Dean of Lincoln Law School of San Jose. Their decision will be final.

DEADLINE: July 1st, 2013

Please submit application and essay to:

ATTN: Christy Jansky, Lincoln Law School of San Jose
Registrar
One North First Street, Suite 150
San Jose, CA 95113
(408) 977-7227
http://www.lincolnlawsj.edu

Q&A With LLS’s Peer Court Advocate & Mentor, Christina Adames

May 20, 2013

One of our esteemed recent graduates and San Jose Peer Court advocate, Christina Adames, shares her experiences and accomplishments working with the Lincoln Law School Peer Court/Mentoring Team of Santa Clara County.

  • How long have you been participating with Peer Court?

I attended my first Peer Court Training at Lincoln in January 2012 as a mentor and have volunteered every spare moment I have had for the last year and a half.

  • What is your role in the program?

When I first began volunteering with Peer Court in January of 2012, I was a mentor to the teens. My goal was to help provide the teen volunteers with a basic understanding of restorative justice, help the teen volunteers perform their roles as attorneys, clerks, bailiffs and members of the jury, and help instill a healthy attitude toward authority. I found throughout the past year and a half, my role in Peer Court has been so much more than a “hearing” mentor. I feel I have been able to provide the teens with a healthy female role model and someone to look up to.

After the initial Peer Court Training in January 2012, I contacted Deanna Burneikis, who had recently been asked to take over trainings. I told Deanna I wanted to help develop Lincoln’s Peer Court Training Program. From there, I helped develop our monthly trainings; I would put together the trainings and circulate them around for approval from the other training facilitators. Additionally, I helped develop Lincoln Law School’s Peer Court Training Program “Honor’s Course”, which is now being offered at Lincoln for credit. My goal was to come up with a way to teach our teens about our judicial system through life lessons and ways that would inspire them.

Soon thereafter, I found myself inspired. I began seeking donations from the community in support of Peer Court. I found myself forming relationships with the San Jose Earthquakes, Soccer Silicon Valley Community Foundation, Robinson & Wood, Inc., Santa Clara County La Raza, the San Francisco 49ers, Starbucks, Office Depot, and many more organizations that jumped at the opportunity to help.

Together with All-Star San Jose Earthquakes’ player, Justin Morrow, and with the help of Santa Clara County Probation, we set up and executed a “Recruitment Tour” throughout San Jose Unified School District where Justin went to different high schools and promoted participation in the Peer Court Program. Justin Morrow has become our “unofficial” spokesperson. I set up an interview with CreaTV featuring Justin Morrow and his participation with Peer Court, which was aired on Channel 30.

Additionally, I have put together the following fundraisers that have raised approximately $3,800 for Lincoln Law School’s Peer Court Training Program for 2012-2013:

(1)    Soccer Silicon Valley Community Foundation’s Annual Dinner: Lincoln Law School’s Peer Court Training Program was one of three featured charities at the dinner.

(2)    Patxi’s Pizza: 10% of all sales at Patxi’s on March 25, 2013 were donated to Lincoln Law School’s Peer Court Training Program.

(3)    Robinson & Wood, Inc.: Robinson & Wood, Inc. hosted a fundraiser on May 7, 2013 featuring Justin Morrow with 100% of the proceeds donated to Lincoln Law School’s Peer Court Training Program.

  • What interested you about the program, why did you want to be a part of it?

I realized early on that Peer Court inspires the teens that are involved. Peer Court empowers our youth by teaching them about our judicial system, allowing them to actively participate in our community, instilling confidence in them and inspiring them to stay in school. In addition, Peer Court sends a strong message to our youth that, although young, they have the power to change the course of someone’s life, including their own. My greatest accomplishment through all my work with Peer Court has been the relationships that I have formed with the teens that volunteer. I truly believe that Lincoln’s involvement has saved some of these teens’ lives. I realized that a lot of what our teens needed was a little encouragement and a lot of positive affirmation! Some of these kids had never heard, “I am proud of you” or “I am so impressed”.

  • How has being a student at Lincoln helped you in your position at Peer Court?

Being a student at Lincoln has helped me in the following ways:

(1)     The support is incredible. Dean Moless has allowed me to run with Peer Court, which has been the most instrumental thing he could have done. I have never worked well with boundaries! To me, boundaries and rules = a ceiling and being the feminist that I am, ceilings and I do not “click”. By trusting that I would represent Lincoln and its involvement with the upmost respect, Dean Moless has allowed me to jump on opportunities, make quick decisions, and take all of my ideas and put them into actions.

(2)     Lincoln’s Connections! Lincoln has the best alumni in Santa Clara County! I have been fortunate enough to have the support of Lincoln alumi and Santa Clara County Law Raza Association’s president, Patricia D. Castorena. Addititionally, I have been able to work closely with Lincoln Alumni and County Supervisor, Dave Cortese, on Peer Court projects. My association alone with Peer Court has opened many, many office doors.

(3)     Place to hold Trainings: As this program is more than just a hearing for first time offenders, Lincoln’s involvement has played a large part in the progress and success of the program.  In addition to teaching the teen volunteers and the offenders how to conduct a Peer Court Hearing, our trainings also strive to promote self-esteem and motivation for self-improvement, which is essential to interrupting the developing pattern of criminal behavior of the juvenile offenders.  This is the overall goal of the Peer Court Program.

  • What is one of your proudest moments from working with Peer Court?

One of my proudest moments from working with Peer Court has been working with one of our teens, Vidi. Vidi is the first person who introduced herself to me during my first peer court hearing. As the months went by and I became more involved with the program, I became closer with the teens, one of them being Vidi. When I met her, Vidi told me that she was failing out of school and was now at a continuation school. I constantly told Vidi about my college experience at DeAnza and then at San Diego State. I encouraged her and told her how proud I was of her that she never missed a hearing or a Peer Court Training. Quickly, Vidi brought her grades up, spoke to counselors and got herself back into her normal High School. She is now on track to graduate this year and is going to college.

Earlier this year, however, Vidi discovered that she had a brain tumor. The doctors told Vidi that she needed to eat healthier, take medicine that they prescribed and they would continue to monitor her to decide whether she would undergo brain surgery. Instead of allowing this news to get in between her and going to college, Vidi used this opportunity write a winning essay called “The Turn Around” where she received a college scholarship and was asked to give a speech at different high schools about her experience.

After reading her essay, I emailed Vidi:

“When I started volunteering for this program, I wanted to find a teen who wanted help, who was inspired by the process, and who would do a complete ‘turn around’, as you called it in your speech.  You are the first person that greeted me at my very first peer court hearing. You were the first person who explained what peer court was to me. You are the one person that I found in this program that I want to be life long friends with. You are going to do great things in life… I promise. I can see it! Continue to learn, continue to self-reflect, and continue to care more about others than you care about yourself. You have something very special about you and I look forward to watching you grow.”

Vidi is my proudest moment.


Women’s Legal History

May 19, 2013

A project of the Robert Crowne Law Library, the Women’s Legal History (WLH) website is full of articles and papers on women lawyers throughout history. It also hosts the Indexes and Bibliographic Notes for the book, Woman Lawyer: The Trials of Clara Foltz, written by Barbara Babcock, he first woman admitted to the California bar and the first woman appointed to the regular faculty at Stanford Law School.

You can search for a specific lawyer or simply browse through the alphabetical listings. The entries vary in detail, some are bare-boned others are are extensive. Most include at least basic facts about the lawyer’s career, such as where she went to law school, where she practiced, and the positions she held. Many include photographs and links to further research materials about the lawyer. The biographies can also be searched by ethnicity, law school, practice area, state, region or decade.

You can even follow the WLH blog for regular updates and additions to the database.

 


Lincoln Law School’s Peer Court is in the News!

May 15, 2013

Lincoln Law School’s Peer Court Program has made into some special features online and on the news. Catch clips of the discussion via CBS and Signature Silicon Valley below. We’re incredibly proud of this South Bay program and hope you will be too.


A comparison of Google Scholar, Fastcase, Casemaker, LexisNexis, WestlawNext, and Bloomberg

May 12, 2013

A great resource for lawyers and law students by by Carole A. Levitt and Mark Rosch.  Their findings may surprise you.

The premise:

We also thought it would be a good opportunity to compare three of the most popular free and low-cost case law databases (Google Scholar, Fastcase, Casemaker) and their citator services, with the more expensive databases (LexisNexis, WestlawNext, and
Bloomberg) and their citator services. It goes without saying that Google Scholar, Fastcase, Casemaker’s citators do not provide the editorial comment that LexisNexis, WestlawNext, and Bloomberg do. Instead, we were focusing on how well each citator worked. We decided to use the 2010 Tienda case for our test case to see if each citator listed the same citing opinions to Tienda. And, of
course, we wanted to learn if the 2010 Tienda case was still good law.


Thank You For Attending the Peer Court Fundraiser!

May 8, 2013

Thank you to everyone who attended the Peer Court Fundraiser last night, held at Robinson & Wood Inc. We had an amazing turn-out. Special thanks to San Jose Earthquakes All-Star Justin Morrow for making an appearance and helping support this fantastic program for today’s youth.

The peer court provides an educational experience for both juvenile offenders and teen volunteers. It enables young people to challenge themselves by taking responsibility for self government and responsible citizenship.

The ultimate goal is to interrupt the developing pattern of criminal behavior in juvenile offenders by promoting self-esteem and motivation for self improvement while forming a healthy attitude toward authority. (SJ Mercury News)

If you missed the fundraiser, but still want to donate to the program, donations can be made online at www.lincolnlawsj.edu or mailed to: One North First Street, San Jose CA 95113. Please makes checks payable to LL’s Peer Court Training Program.

Lincoln Law School is a nonprofit, tax-exempt charitable organization under Section 501(c)(3) of the United States Internal Revenue Code. Donations are tax-deductible as allowed by law. 

Legal-sector jobs reach a four-year high

May 8, 2013

Some good news for graduating law students! Employment in the legal-sector has been on the rise in March and in April.

According to the ABA website:

Jobs in the legal sector are at their highest level in four years, after two months of gains.

The legal sector added 2,100 jobs in April and 3,500 jobs in March, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. The March figures are revised upwards from an initial report showing a gain of 2,000 jobs that month. The Am Law Daily has the latest numbers.

The total number of legal services jobs now stands at 1.13 million, up by 10,000 from April 2012. At its pre-recession high in May 2007, the legal sector had 1.18 million jobs.


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