The UConn School of Law welcomed a professional, driven and extremely motivated class of 154 JD students and\u00a018\u00a0LLM students to its first semester fully back on campus in more than 17 months.<\/p>\n
Classes began\u00a0August 30\u00a0for all students — including second-year students taking their first in-person classes — and\u00a0four new faculty members<\/a>.\u00a0The vast majority of\u00a0classes, clinics and seminars will be held face-to-face for the first time since March 2020.<\/p>\n The incoming JD class consists of 131 Day Division students and 23 Evening Division students representing 87 undergraduate institutions hailing from 18 states and speaking at least 14 languages, including\u00a0Gujarati, Telugu and Vietnamese.\u00a0The class includes several pandemic-tested nurses, several Eagle Scouts,\u00a0an opera singer and five military veterans.<\/p>\n The average age of the class is 25. Eleven percent hold advanced degrees\u00a0and\u00a019 percent are first-generation college\u00a0graduates.\u00a0Twenty-seven percent of\u00a0class members\u00a0self-identify\u00a0as a member of an underrepresented minority group\u00a0and 61 percent are women.<\/p>\n Applications to UConn Law rose 46 percent from last cycle, with many applicants citing the pandemic as a factor in their decision to apply to law school. Lauren Majchrowski, UConn Law\u2019s director of admissions, said the increase resulted in a special incoming class.<\/p>\n \u201cThey are academically distinguished and active in their communities, have won coveted awards, led university sports teams to championships\u00a0and served as medical providers on the front lines of the COVID-19 pandemic,\u201d Majchrowski said. \u201cI have no doubt\u00a0they will succeed in every endeavor, and I am so excited to see what they accomplish in the next years as a part of our community.\u201d<\/p>\n Incoming students attended three full days of on-campus orientation. Masked and following safety precautions, they toured the campus,\u00a0participated in\u00a0faculty, staff and alumni panels and attended\u00a0classes.<\/p>\n \u201cI found orientation to be extremely helpful,\u201d said\u00a0Taylorann\u00a0Vibert\u00a0\u201924. \u201cHaving a couple classes before the first day settled my nerves,\u00a0and I felt much more prepared for the week ahead. The faculty set their expectations for our 1L year and imparted some great advice on how to balance the workload.\u201d<\/p>\n The\u00a018\u00a0LLM (Master of Law) candidates come from 13 countries, including Ghana, the United Arab Emirates and Ukraine. Fourteen are pursuing U.S. Legal Studies degrees, and the rest are divided among the Human Rights and Social Justice, Insurance Law, and Energy and Environmental Law programs.<\/p>\n In addition to the incoming LLM class, which features two Fulbright Scholars, the law school welcomed nine exchange students for the academic year. Carrianna Field, director of graduate and exchange programs, said the students\u2019 excitement at being on campus is palpable.<\/p>\n \u201cEach year there is considerable enthusiasm and excitement to get started at UConn Law in an LLM program,\u201d Field said. \u201cThe LLM students arrived this year with perhaps even more excitement than usual,\u00a0both because they were finally able to study in-person and because they already achieved so much to physically get to campus.\u201d<\/p>\n While most of the law school community moved to remote working and\u00a0instruction\u00a0in March 2020, the library has been open and staffed since November 2020. The law school\u2019s facilities staff remained on-campus, maintaining and updating it. The fruits of their labor include a new gym\u00a0in Knight Hall\u00a0and several new classrooms in the library.<\/p>\n \u201cIt is such an honor and pleasure to welcome\u00a0this\u00a0outstanding\u00a0and diverse\u00a0group of new students to\u00a0our beautiful\u00a0campus,\u201d Dean Eboni S. Nelson said.\u00a0\u201cI am confident that\u00a0they will harness\u00a0their considerable talents, knowledge and skills\u00a0to become leaders and advocates for\u00a0justice\u00a0throughout our state, country, and world. I am also thrilled to welcome our returning students to campus, especially our second-year students who are studying on campus for the first time. We are immensely grateful to all members of our law school community who have helped to make a safe return possible.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The School of Law welcomed an incoming class of 154 JD and 18 LLM students, plus many 2L students who were taking their first in-person law classes after a first year conducted entirely online.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":131,"featured_media":176903,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_crdt_document":"","wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_series":0,"wds_primary_attribution":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1857],"tags":[],"magazine-issues":[],"coauthors":[2158],"class_list":["post-176895","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-law"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-21 12:34:57","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176895","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/131"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=176895"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176895\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":176963,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176895\/revisions\/176963"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media\/176903"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=176895"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=176895"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=176895"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/magazine-issues?post=176895"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=176895"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n \u25a0 Aisha Alzaabi, LLM ’22<\/a>
\n \u25a0 Jacqueline Arena, JD ’25<\/a>
\n \u25a0 Luann Liang, JD ’24<\/a>
\n \u25a0 Shaquille Rickets, JD ’24<\/a>
\n \u25a0 Pearl Rourke, JD ’24<\/a>
\n \u25a0 Sebastian Torres, JD ’25<\/a><\/div>\n