“The takeaway for me [from the spring break trip to New Orleans] was to question what the role of the lawyer is in an essentially unjust system: to focus on the personal, one client at a time, with fierce advocacy, or to focus on the policy, taking on the long slog to change the law and hopefully reality. There is no right answer. But as James Baldwin said, ‘Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.’ This trip was not just an opportunity to serve, it was also a challenge to face the harsh reality yet hopeful promise of the law at work, in stark contrast to its deceitful simplicity in the classroom.”
—Eric Popp ’18 writing about the impact of his pro bono experience in Louisiana, where he and eleven fellow 1Ls volunteered with the New Orleans Innocence Project, Southeast Louisiana Legal Services, and the New Orleans City Attorney’s Office