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Minnesota Law Review's Volume 107 Symposium, Leaving Langdell Behind: Reimagining Legal Education for a New Era, is being held today.

The program, which is both in-person at Mondale Hall and online, highlights major themes in legal pedagogy, curriculum, and licensure, and engage law school students, faculty, and staff throughout the country in evaluating the shortcomings of the standard legal education and developing alternative methods.

Meet LL.M. student Anıl Can Çetinkaya of Istanbul, Turkey, who helped finance his legal education by performing translation/ subtitle work for a vendor that services large streaming companies, such as Netflix, Disney+, and Amazon Prime. For this reason, Çetinkaya says he says watching a movie or TV seems like work to him, and he prefers to be active in his free time. Perhaps not surprisingly given his background with streaming content, his primary legal area of interest is intellectual property. 

With an MBA and a Master’s in Public Health (MPH), David Lee, 1L, has already had a diverse and interesting background that includes medical research, business-process improvement, innovation and invention, and entrepreneurship. Notably, he started an industrial hemp farm and invented a machine that helps with mushroom cultivation (patent pending).

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Meet Christhy Le, 1L,  who obtained her B.S. in biochemistry and biology from Brown University and worked for nearly five years in digital marketing for Anheuser-Bush.  Her first-hand experience dealing with consumer data left her with a passion for privacy and a desire to improve data-protection practices.

"I hope to work in privacy regulation to bring about effective and nuanced legislation as technology continues to advance," Le says.

A first-generation student, Le is also the proud daughter of two Vietnamese immigrants.

Shaghek Manjikian came to Minnesota Law from Yerevan, Armenia, as a Fulbright scholar to obtain her LL.M. with a Business Law Concentration. Originally from Syria, she lived through the civil war there and has published stories on her experiences. Manjikian is hoping to use the knowledge and experience she gains in the LL.M. program to advance alternative dispute resolution in Armenia. 

After more than a decade in financial roles, most recently in the lumber and millworker industries in the Pacific Northwest, David Johnson decided to make a change. He enrolled in Minnesota Law, where he is interested in exploring environmental law. His spouse, Kelli Johnson, is also a member of the 1L class. (A former senior financial partner at a large healthcare organization, she is interested in specializing in health care law with a focus in reproductive justice.)

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) have awarded a team including Professor Susan Wolf a 5-year grant on “Minnesota Precision Medicine CKD & Resilient Diabetes Recruiting Site: Engagement, Enrollment & Ethics” (Minn-KPMP). The Principal Investigators are Profs. Patrick Nachman, MD, and Luiza Caramori, MD, PhD. Profs. Wolf and Jerica Berge, PhD, are leading work on community engagement and ethics.

Meet Sangho Seog, 1L, who was born in Seoul, South Korea and immigrated to the United States in 2015, living first in Florida and later California. Seog attended the University of California, Irvine (UCI), graduating magna cum laude in 2021 with a double major in Political Science and International Studies. Among his numerous activities and interests were working as a freelance YouTube editor and directing three independent films.

Meet Laddawan Loungard of Bangkok, Thailand, who serves as vice presiding judge of Lom Sak Provincial Court. She is seeking the added legal expertise of a Minnesota Law LL.M. Judge Loungard is particularly interested in deepening her exposure to human rights law and international law at the Law School.

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A graduate of Arizona State University, 1L Anthony Alas is a former preschool teacher. He also worked for the the Arizona Department of Child Safety, where he investigated reports of abuse. His experiences working to educate and protect children sparked his desire to one day work assisting the vulnerable and the marginalized as a lawyer.