Chase A. Howard

Temple Law Community

While at Temple, I was a Note/Comment Editor on the Temple Law Review and Vice-President of OutLaw. Both of these experiences helped make my time at Temple what it was. On Law Review, I had the opportunity to develop my skills as a reader and writer. I did this while working closely with an esteemed team of people all dedicated to producing consequential legal scholarship. Through OutLaw, I found a community of diverse and meaningful colleagues who quickly became my friends. The people you meet in law school and the relationships you develop uniquely shape who you become at the end of law school. The community I found in both organizations certainly gave me the skills and people I needed to make law school meaningful. I hope I was able to have a similar impact on my classmates.

Experiential Opportunities

I participated in the Federal Judicial Clerkship Program and a practicum with a Philadelphia Common Pleas judge.  Working with a judge is an invaluable experience.  I performed legal research, worked on legal opinions, wrote memos, and attended various hearings and trials.  Nearly every day in chambers was different, one day I could be researching a complex federal jurisdiction question and the next I could be in an evidentiary hearing.  The wide variety of matters made it interesting enough, having the chance to work with a judge and hear their thoughts made the opportunity to serve in judicial chambers one of the most rewarding experiences I had at Temple.

Faculty Influence

Professor Ellie Margolis taught my 1L Legal Research and Writing class and made me the writer I am today. Effective communication, primarily through writing, is an invaluable skill as a lawyer. Professor Margolis worked tirelessly with me for a year to make me the best communicator I could be. The first time I encountered Professor Margolis was during orientation week. She briefly discussed research that showed students who were in the mindset that they were intelligent, just as intelligent as their counterparts, tended to perform better. When I heard Professor Margolis discuss this, I was instantly interested in learning from her because I believe the best professors are those who instill confidence in their students. As her student, Teaching Assistant, and student again in my last semester of law school, I saw she lived up to what she discussed that first week of orientation; she gave 100% to every student and instilled confidence in us.

Additionally, Professor Salil Mehra with whom I took Contracts and Antitrust, and Professor Jonathan Lipson with whom I took Bankruptcy, opened my eyes to new areas of the law in which I never thought I would be interested. It was their passion for both teaching and the courses they taught that made the classes so rewarding.

Temple Law Lessons

My favorite memory is one involving a conversation with the late Professor James Strazzella.  Professor Strazzella taught my first-year Criminal Law course and I went to his office to discuss some material.  However, after we discussed the material, the conversation then went off-topic.  We spent over an hour talking about why I came to law school, what I thought about Temple, and what I thought the future held.  He then shared stories of his time in law school and teaching.  Toward the end of our conversation, Professor Strazella offered me a final piece of advice in which he told me to enjoy the next three years no matter how challenging they may be.  He stressed that the years in law school would be the most stimulating and formative years I would experience and, despite all the challenges, I would look back fondly on those years.  He was right.