As the University counts down to Commencement, UConn Today is featuring some of this year’s outstanding graduating students, nominated by their academic school or college or another University program in which they participated. For additional profiles of students in the Class of 2011, click here.
While some see law as a set of restrictions, a system that codifies what people may and may not do, Lucas Meyer sees it as a way of implementing protection and change.
Meyer, who is graduating from UConn’s School of Law this May, hopes to use his legal education to protect the environment and to keep people and corporations from abusing the land. He credits time he spent as a child visiting the Adirondacks for spurring his concern and love for the environment.
“The Adirondacks have a terrible problem with acid rain,” he says. “My time there as a kid was my first exposure to the impacts that we as a society have on world around us.”
After graduating from Yale University with a BA in English, Meyer moved to Oregon, where he volunteered at an environmental law nonprofit called Environmental Law Alliance Worldwide. It was his experience there that ultimately helped him decide to go into environmental law. He came to UConn in fall 2008.
At the law school, Meyer has served as vice president for the Environmental Law Society and as senior articles editor for the student-run Connecticut Public Interest Law Journal, which is based at UConn.
He also participated in the Semester in Washington, D.C. Program, which places selected UConn law students as legal interns in federal agencies, legislative offices, or national-level public interest organizations. While in D.C., Meyer interned with the U.S. Department of Justice Environmental Enforcement Section, which is responsible for the civil enforcement of environmental statutes such as the Clean Water Act and the Clean Air Act.
“Like many people, I value clean drinking water and clean air,” says Meyer. “The time I spent in D.C. working with the Department of Justice was the highlight of my time at UConn. I want to use my law career to make an impact – and this program showed me how I might be able to do that.”
Following graduation Meyer, who recently qualified for the 2012 U.S. Olympic Team Trials in Men’s Marathon running, is taking a job with Carmody & Torrance LLP, a law firm in Connecticut.
