Division Delegates Gain Political Experience
If you think you aren't busy enough as a law student, consider becoming one of the Law Student Division's three representatives in the American Bar Association's House of Delegates, where you'll get a crash course in politics and contribute to important ABA policy decisions.
The current division delegates are Virginia Trost of Regent University College of Law in Virginia Beach, Virginia; Kenya J.H. Smith of the University of Wisconsin Law School in Madison; and Victoria Wu of Capital University Law School in Columbus, Ohio. All three are third-year students. They were elected by the Law Student Division's Assembly, which is made up of the nation's student bar association presidents and ABA/LSD school representatives, last August at the division's Annual Meeting.
In addition to membership in the ABA House of Delegates and the division's Board of Governors, each division delegate has duties within the division. Trost, for example, coordinates the division's liaison program; Smith is the law student member on the ABA's Council of the Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar, the ABA's accrediting arm; and Wu chairs the Resolutions Committee of the division's Board of Governors.
Smith, a New Orleans native with a political science degree from Southern University, says the Council is considering such matters as whether to relax the bar admission policy for foreign law students who enroll in a U.S. law school, improving the legal profession's credibility and image, and adapting new technologies for continuing legal education programs. Smith also serves as liaison to the Council on Legal Educational Opportunities.
Trost has a degree in chemistry and chemical engineering, and previously served as governor of the division's Fourth Circuit, which encompasses the law schools in Virginia (except George Mason), West Virginia, and the Carolinas. She says the division's liaisons "serve a channeling function for information." Trost is working to foster new relationships between the Law Student Division and other ABA sections and divisions. The ABA General Practice, Solo and Small Firm Section and the Administrative Law and Regulatory Practice Section-among others-have expressed interest in working with law students.
The Resolutions Committee reviews all resolutions before they go to the floors of the division's Board of Governors and Assembly. That entails a tremendous amount of work-lots of phone calls and e-mails-in the weeks leading up to a meeting. Wu says the committee is in the process of creating a procedure to allow resolutions to be submitted by e-mail.
All three division delegates sit in the House of Delegates, the ABA's policy-making body, which meets twice a year. Wu likens the experience to being a member of Congress-caucusing, lobbying for votes, and sitting with a state delegation. She says "it's kind of exciting-it's like politics at a national level."
Lee Farbman
