During their first semester at Capital University Law School, Sarina Samra and Madelyn Murphy walked into a networking event and spotted a huge table of food. They sat down to eat at the same table.
“We look around, and no one [else] is eating,” said Samra.
It was a small moment, but it captured a bigger feeling that Samra and Murphy were both experiencing.
The two realized that they had something important in common; they are both first-generation law students. Unlike some of their peers around them, they didn’t know what to expect from events like this. They didn’t have any attorneys in their families to mentor them.
Now, as second-year law students, Murphy and Samra have been able to reflect on their first-year experience.
“I hated the feeling of being out of place. I didn’t know how to be in a room on the fourteenth floor of a building in Columbus,” Murphy said.
“Our first semester of law school, it was like everyone else around us knew what was going on,” said Samra.
After getting through a year of law school and gaining more confidence, Samra and Murphy wondered if there was a way to help incoming first-generation students.
Samra said law school is “really just a whole new world compared to undergrad.”
“There’s all these nuances to it that you don’t know until someone tells you, and we want to be those people for the incoming class,” she said. “So, they’re not in our shoes, where we were like ‘We’re alone, we don’t know what’s going on, we missed the boat on this because we had no idea.’”
After recognizing that they could have used more guidance during their first year of law school, Samra and Murphy started talking about what they could do to help new students.
Murphy remembers the conversation that followed. “How can we help people that are in a similar situation?” she said. “Incoming first-years next year, how can we help them avoid that feeling?”
The pair decided to talk to Capital Law faculty and administrative staff about their desire to help other first-generation students. In those conversations, they learned that the First-Generation Law Student Society had existed at Capital in years past but was no longer active.
Samra and Murphy began the process of restarting the Society last spring. Nearly one hundred students attended their first meeting in August.
“Seeing how many people were there and wanted to hear what we had to say... I was really, really excited,” said Murphy. “I felt like I blacked out because I was blown away by the turnout.”
“We were super excited, but it’s so nerve-wracking talking to a massive group like that. I don’t think either of us had ever done that before,” Samra said.
Since then, the group has been meeting every other week and frequently collaborates with other student organizations.
For Murphy, the work ties directly to what Capital stands for.
“Capital prides itself on being a welcoming, inclusive community for people of all backgrounds. If we can do anything to make professional networking and academic support more accessible to all students, no matter who you are, I feel like that would further advance of Capital’s mission,” Murphy said.
Both Murphy and Samra hope that the First-Generation Law Student Society will be around for a long time to come.
“I really want it to be something that outlasts us. I want it to be very much cemented in the Capital Law culture,” said Murphy. “I hope it becomes something that people know is for them.”
To learn more about Capital University Law School, visit https://www.law.capital.edu/.