For Austin Park, JD ‘23, the education he received at GW Law has been invaluable to his career so far.
Among the many experiences he was able to take advantage of while at GW is GW Law in New York (GWNY), a program in which business and finance law students spend a semester externing and learning from practitioners in New York City.
“GWNY served as the perfect bridging experience between law school and professional practice,” Park said.
He said the skills he learned from his business and finance law courses and the GWNY experience were central to his recent clerkship at the U.S. Bankruptcy Courts, and he’s bringing those skills into his new position at Clifford Chance.
Read the full conversation below.
Why did you originally want to go to law school?
Before law school, I worked for several years in the media/entertainment and fine arts sectors. I worked in a range of different jobs, including as a production assistant on commercial television production shoots, and as a gallery assistant for art exhibitions at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Over the course of these experiences, the idea of returning to school and increasing my specialized knowledge base began to highly appeal to me. I always knew I had strengths in critical reading and writing and wanted to put those skills back into use again. Law school became a clear pathway to combine these more academic skill sets with practical application to the world of business and commerce.
Why did you choose GW Law?
I chose GW Law for a combination of reasons. Its location in Washington, D.C., really appealed to me as an ideal place to study law where the bulk of it is essentially created. The large class sizes at GW Law also appealed to me as I felt this would maximize the social and intellectual diversity on campus. I also felt that this “big school” experience would provide me with a deep and varied upper-level curriculum that would allow me to really hone in on areas of particular, specialized interest. Additionally, every interaction I had with the school prior to accepting the offer to attend was very positive, and people seemed really friendly and cheerful.
What made you want to pursue business and finance law?
My initial interest in business and finance law came from my prior work experiences, where I was excited by the collaborative and team-oriented environments of film production and museum management. I wanted to learn more about how (both nonprofit and for profit) businesses work, grow, and excel, both from a corporate organizational standpoint and from a contractual standpoint. Law school in this sense provided me with an ideal avenue into engaging with these topics in a practical and rigorous manner.
Tell us about what it was like to participate in GWNY. How did that experience improve your skills as a lawyer?
GWNY served as the perfect bridging experience between law school and professional practice. In contrast to the academic and intellectual environment of traditional law school classes, GWNY put me in front of practicing lawyers at the top of their practice areas, and gave me a sense of what skills and areas of legal knowledge are most important to have to excel in private practice.
In hindsight, I particularly found the contract drafting course and the financial restructuring course directly applicable to my first few months in private practice. More generally, even courses like capital markets (an area I do not practice in) gave me insight into how capital markets lawyers think and how they approach issues, and that has informed and influenced my own legal practice in indirect but valuable ways.
What is the value of experiential learning opportunities like GWNY for the law school experience?
GWNY is a very unique program, especially for those particularly interested in practicing in transactional areas of legal practice like M&A, capital markets, or finance. The traditional law school curriculum tends to be heavily weighted towards trial and litigation practices. GWNY offers an alternative experience for students to learn more about these other practice areas in a focused and intimate way.
GWNY puts you in New York at the international center of transactional legal practice, and gives you a real sense of what practicing law in New York in these areas entails. Also, given the GWNY cohort is relatively small (usually 15-20 students per class), students get a lot of personalized attention that contrasts well with the “big school” experience of GW Law more generally. In this sense, GWNY gave me kind of the best of both worlds during my law school years: on the one hand, unrivaled variety and diversity at the general law school level, and on the other, a more focused and individualized experience afforded by a semester in GWNY.
Where are you currently working? How has your GW Law education prepared you for your legal career so far?
I just finished up a year-long judicial clerkship in the United States Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York for Judge Lisa G. Beckerman. I’ll be starting at Clifford Chance in their financial restructuring and insolvency group next month. I feel that my GW Law education has prepared me really well for my legal career so far. GW gave me a great blend of practical/experiential skill-building coupled with an incredible variety of courses within the curriculum to explore my particular interests.
What advice do you have for current law students?
Consider using law school as a time to explore, and keep an open mind as to where your future career may take you. I know I certainly did not expect to be practicing bankruptcy law when I started as a 1L at GW Law, but I could not be happier with how my legal career has turned out so far.
Also, try and develop a meaningful relationship with your professors. They often have a lot of wisdom to impart and can also help connect you to people and ideas that can accelerate you toward finding your dream job.
