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“������̳ has made pretty much all of my dreams possible,” says Joseph Strom (LAW 3rd Year). “I had some idea of what I may want to do in the future, but was unsure how I would get there, what path that would take. The professors, the faculty, the alumni, and the other students have been with me every single step of the way. Now, I have my dream job.”

Joseph is a recipient of the , a prestigious program that will allow him to establish a program with statewide nonprofit Equip for Equality upon graduation that will provide assistance to job seekers with disabilities who face discrimination from artificial intelligence, other technological hiring assistance software, the denial of remote work, and website inaccessibility in the application process.

Joseph initially connected with Equip for Equality through opportunities offered by Chicago-Kent College of Law’s , just one of the support systems that he found at ������̳.

“Law school can be difficult, but the community of support here doesn’t just make it possible to survive—I feel like I have thrived,” Joseph says. “The support from administrators, professors, and peers has been wonderful. I always heard the law school environment could be cutthroat or isolating, but that has not been my experience.”

His interest in Chicago-Kent came from a desire to find a career path through the fields of employment and public interest law.

“Chicago-Kent was the natural choice because of the Malin Institute for Law and the Workplace,” he says. “I learned that we had a public interest center and that there was a career adviser who was dedicated specifically to helping us get jobs in the public interest.”

Joseph has seized upon his law school experience. He’s assisted real clients at the Plaintiffs Employment Clinic at Chicago-Kent, as a Justice John Paul Stevens Public Interest Fellow at the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, at Legal Aid Chicago, and at Equip for Equality. He’s currently completing an externship with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission after spending the fall semester in the Illinois Attorney General’s Office Workplace Rights Bureau.

Those experiences are in addition to his involvement in student organizations, including with Chicago-Kent’s Moot Court Honor Society, the Employment Rights and Employment Policy Journal, and as president of the Kent Justice Foundation, a student group that fundraises throughout the year to provide financial assistance to students taking unpaid public interest jobs in the summer.

“To have a community that supports each other, that raises money for each other, and that really helps the dreams of public interest students to pursue that career path has been really cool, really gratifying, and something which I didn’t know was going to exist,” he says.

His experience was even better because he did all this as a student in Chicago.

“Going to school in Chicago allows me to make connections and build relationships with peers, attorneys, and organizations across the city while I am a student,” he says. “This sets me up wonderfully for a career, whether in my knowledge of future employers, the courthouses, local ordinances, or just helpful connections.”

He adds, “If I were to talk to a prospective student who is looking at Chicago-Kent, I would tell them that whatever they see and whatever they know about it, it’s somehow better.”