"I learned that a successful public interest
attorney must not only possess strong legal reasoning skills
but also the ability to form a close, personal relationship with
his or her clients, the sensitivity to understand and properly
respond to a client’s personal challenges or special needs, and
the tenacity to work within a legal system that often
disfavors
underprivileged
clients "
Before law school, Bill Chemnick spent two years with Teach for America in a low-performing South Bronx middle school. Through mediation workshops and mentoring, Chemnick helped teach his students that they were worthy of respect and could resolve conflicts nonviolently. “From my experience, I realized that I could improve a community,” he says, “by showing individuals how to constructively advocate
for change.”
Chemnick carried that ambition with him to GW Law, where he was awarded the 2007-08 Lehrman Foundation Clinical Scholarship and worked as the student director for the Law School’s Civil and Family Litigation Clinic. At the clinic, where law students serve economically disadvantaged clients, Chemnick says he discovered the most important lessons of his legal education. “I learned that a successful public interest attorney must not only possess strong legal reasoning skills but also the ability to form a close, personal relationship with his or her clients, the sensitivity to understand and properly respond to a client’s personal challenges or special needs, and the tenacity to work within a legal system that often disfavors underprivileged clients,” he says.
Chemnick, who received his undergraduate degree from Colorado College, also joined the International Human Rights Clinic as a GW Law student and volunteered at a juvenile detention center in Alexandria, Va., where he taught incarcerated youth about their constitutional rights. Today he works as a first-year litigation associate pending admission at Schulte Roth & Zabel in New York