Educating the Next Generation of Legal Practitioners and Scholars
Three alumni of BU Law’s graduate programs discuss their drive to teach and the impact of BU Law on their lives and careers.
Graduates of BU Law are called to serve the greater legal community in a number of ways: through non-profit work, public service, and, often, mentoring young lawyers. With more than 23,000 graduates working in all areas of the law, our alumni are active in encouraging future practitioners to achieve and exceed the goals they set for themselves. Beyond mentoring, many of our graduates see the passion and dedication of their professors and are inspired to educate the next generation of legal practitioners and scholars.
We have more than 150 alumni serving as deans and professors of law at elite colleges and universities both in the United States and abroad. Recently, we caught up with three graduates of our LLM programs who are working as professors of law around the world to discuss what called them to teach the law as well as to practice.
Hyung Won Lee (LLM in American Law ’11, JD ’13)
After completing his Bachelor of Law degree with Seoul National University in 1997, Hyung Won Lee began practicing law as a partner with his family’s firm, Lee & Lee Law Office. Rather than specializing in one area of law, Lee chose a more general approach, as it was common for Korean lawyers to take cases in a variety of fields at that time. But since Lee found himself particularly drawn to international transactions and international arbitration, he decided to augment his knowledge in those areas by pursuing and advanced law degree at BU.
Lee came to BU Law to join the America Law LLM program, from which he graduated in 2011; he then stayed on to complete his JD in 2013. He currently teaches international arbitration and international business law at Hallym University of Graduate Studies and American Law at Thompson Reuters LAWnB, a legal education center, in Seoul, South Korea.
Lee credits the excellence of BU faculty, in particular Professor William Park, with preparing him to teach. “Professor Park’s work on the international stage, combining practicing law with scholarship and teaching, inspired me to do the same.”
While Lee still practices as a partner with Lee & Lee Law Offices, he so valued his exposure to the American legal-teaching style that he brought the practice back with him. He now combines the critical and creative thinking and the style of teaching that stresses legal education through case study he learned at BU Law with the traditional South Korean style of legal education that teaches rules first, then applies them to cases. He feels the strength of his teaching philosophy is in the combination of the two styles, and wanted to bring the legal discussions and debates he so enjoyed at BU Law to his students in South Korea.
“Interacting with the students is a constant source of intellectual stimulation,” Lee says. “I love hearing points of view or questions from students that I have never thought of before. I feel recharged after I finish a class.”
Andrew Croxford (LLM in American Law ’13)
Andrew Croxford practiced corporate and finance law in the United Kingdom for 17 years before he moved to the United States in 2012 to be near his wife’s family in Connecticut. His transactional experience encompasses mergers and acquisitions, equity capital markets, joint ventures and venture capital investments in the UK and around the world, with a particular emphasis on transactions in emerging economies. In order to continue practicing in the United States, he needed to sit for the Massachusetts bar exam, and in order to do that, he needed an advanced legal degree. He chose the LLM in American Law Program at BU Law on the strong recommendation of his wife, also a BU Law alum. He currently combines his practice as Of Counsel with Mirick O’Connell in Worcester with teaching in both the Executive LLM and American Law programs at BU Law.
The years Mr. Croxford spent practicing law before returning to the classroom made him more than a little nervous to go back. However, the care and professionalism of the LLM staff in preparing international students (of whatever age and background) to study at an American law school made the transition easier. “Once classes began,” he says, “the enthusiasm of the faculty and the dedication of the other students was infectious and it felt completely natural to throw myself wholeheartedly into my studies.”
Croxford had always enjoyed mentoring younger lawyers and developing and delivering training programs within the law firm environment. Returning to school at BU Law and spending the year back in an academic environment only reinforced his love of learning and teaching. He notes that “spending a year in the classroom with JD and LLM students and experiencing the teaching skills of the BU Law faculty from the students’ perspective gave me a tremendous sense not only of what top quality teaching is like, but also what motivates and inspires the students.”
“Coming from a country that requires a significant period of ‘on-the-job’ training before being licensed to practice law, I really appreciate the benefit of experiential courses taught by seasoned practitioners,” Croxford says. “Those courses complement the more doctrinal studies in preparing students for life in the real world of the practicing lawyer. I aim to bring my experience to students here.”
Andrea Parra (LLM in American Law ’01)
Andrea Parra noted the invaluable support of BU Law’s Graduate & International Programs’ staff, and the resources available to international students as contributing to her decision to attend BU Law. “They were amazing in supporting me through the transition from Colombia to the United States,” Parra says. “It wasn’t easy to work in a different language and to go from a civil law system to a common law one, but BU Law made it a very exciting experience.”
Following her graduation from BU Law, Parra headed the domestic violence unit for the Northwest Immigrant Rights Project (NWIRP) in Seattle, WA, for six years, providing advice and representation to immigrant survivors of domestic violence, sexual assault, trafficking and other violent crimes. After NWIRP, she worked for Women’s Link Worldwide, an international women’s rights organization based in Bogotá, Colombia, where she headed the Gender Justice Observatory and worked on international and comparative human rights law related to gender and sexual and reproductive rights.
In 2011, she accepted a full-time position with the Universidad de los Andes in Bogotá as director of the human rights clinic, Action Program for Equality and Social Inclusion (PAIIS), where she is today. She and her clinic students work on advocacy projects that include litigation at the national and international level, providing representation to people with disabilities, the elderly, and people discriminated against because of their sexual orientation and gender identity.
“I love working with the students,” Parra says. “They are so creative, and each semester the clinic is renewed with energy. Clinical education has this multiplying effect; I see students go on to their professional careers with a perspective of social justice that will influence they way they practice the law, no matter what they specialize in.”
For Parra, teaching social justice issues in a law school allows her to question the very structure and tradition of legal education. “You cannot teach public interest law without reflecting on the power dynamics that take place within the legal profession and academia,” she says. “Teaching has meant to me not only the possibility of addressing substantive issues of rights and access to justice, but the opportunity to critically examine my own position of power and privilege in society, both as a lawyer and as a professor.”
BU Law’s impact on Parra’s teaching style is clear, “I witnessed extraordinary teaching styles from professors at BU Law,” she says. “The faculty were always very accessible, willing to engage in conversations, and eager to support my learning process, and I still work on the topics I studied at BU Law. My education built a strong foundation of legal knowledge that I can now offer to my own students.”