Over Presidents’ Day weekend, I was able to attend classes at the University of Minnesota Law School with my sister Kali, who is in her second year of the program.
Kali graduated from Sartell High School in 2018, then attended the University of Minnesota, College of Liberal Arts for her undergraduate degree in political science and Spanish. Kali graduated with her bachelors degree in 2021 and decided she wanted to take some time to get experience in the law field while working, before making the big decision to continue onto law school. She took two gap years before applying to the University of Minnesota Law School. Now, she is in her second year of law school. This semester, she is taking four classes: First Amendment Law, Second Amendment Law, Crimmigration Law (criminal and immigration law combined), and Policymaking and Public Administration. While taking classes, she is working part time at an immigration law firm. She does support work for the attorneys, which includes legal research and analysis, as well as writing legal briefs and arguments. After she graduates, she hopes to work at a law firm that specializes in immigration law like the one she works at now.
Preparations for the school week started on Sunday afternoon. Kali and I went to the conference room in her apartment building to lock in and get some work done. She had a moot court brief due on Monday and had to read for both of her classes the next morning. A moot court brief is an assignment law students are given where they must prepare the court briefing to explain all of the facts of a made up court case.
On Monday, our day started out at her apartment in Uptown Minneapolis. It was very cold that day so instead of taking the bus like she usually does, we took her car and drove about ten minutes to campus. Kali had two classes that day and both of them were in the Walter F. Mondale law building. The building is full of law journals, books, libraries, study areas, mock courtroom classrooms, study spots, and lots of real plants.
First on the agenda for the day was her First Amendment class that began at 10:40am. The classroom we walked into had tiered seating for about 40 people and a podium and projector for the professor. We took a seat next to one of Kali’s law friends and then the professor started class. The topics we were talking about in class that day were the court cases of Tinker v. Des Moines and Jones v. North Carolina Prisoners Labor Union. Listening in on these discussions was very interesting to me as I had already learned about Tinker v. Des Moines in my AP Government class with Mr. Snyder last semester. The professor had the class do some practice problems as a whole group, deciding if different scenarios were considered constitutional or unconstitutional restrictions on speech. These discussions seemed very in depth to me because multiple people raised their hands and contributed their ideas and opinions about the problem. Participation in discussions really helps deepen the conversation, and in my experience in high school classrooms, there is often not that level of participation that makes students think deeper about a question.
This class ended at 12:10pm, and then we met up with Kali’s boyfriend Nick who is a graduate student at the U of M as well. We went to lunch at one of their favorite restaurants on campus called JJ’s Poke Bowls. After lunch, Kali wanted a midday sweet treat and also some caffeine to get through her next class. We went to Caribou in Hanson Hall, which is in the Carlson School of Business. To get there, we walked through the the Gopher Way, a series of tunnels that connect a lot of the buildings on campus. Kali got a hot mocha and I got a hot chocolate.
Our next class of the day was Policymaking and Public Administration that began at 1:25pm. The classroom was a similarly arranged in the same way as the classroom from earlier in the morning, arranged with tiered seating all facing towards a podium and screen that the professor would soon teach from. The class started right up with a quick overview of what was taught the last time the class gathered. The professor then jumped into what today’s lecture would be on. The topic of discussion was traffic cameras for running red lights and speeding. The class went over how these ways to regulate traffic can often have disparate results across a city. Whether these traffic cameras were more commonly placed in communities with people of color or poorer communities. Yet again, I was able to connect my own life experiences to this lecture. The professor told a story about how he used to travel from Tennessee to Minnesota every other week. During his trips, traffic cameras in Iowa would catch him speeding, and he joked that he has paid a lot of money to the state of Iowa. Our oldest sister lives in Iowa, and we know you have to be careful with your speed down there. It was very interesting to me how students in the class dissected the topic of traffic cameras into both positive and negative aspects. The students lead the whole discussion, with the professor throwing in points and questions here and there.
Class finished at 2:50pm, then we met up with Nick. Together we walked to the car to drive home to their apartment. I really enjoyed my day at law school with my sister. It was very fun to see a group of people so passionate about the classes they were taking and the degree they were working towards. It made me appreciate how hard all these students work to achieve their goals of becoming a lawyer and helping people who can’t always help themselves, just like Kali said. This visit was also fun for me because next year I will be attending the University of Minnesota with them!
