Drexel Kline’s Undergraduate Law program believes that the best way for students to start figuring out what type of law they are interested in is to start seeing the law in action. In Law Lab (also known as LAW 102), our first year Law majors participate in field trips around the city of Philadelphia to discover the spaces, places, and people who make law work.

Law Lab provides opportunities for students to see how law operates in a variety of settings, from Philadelphia’s criminal courtrooms to legal aid organizations to boutique law firms. We hear from legal professionals whose passions include child and youth protection, intellectual property, real estate, civil rights enforcement, criminal defense, housing and public benefits, and many other topics.

Diego Perez, a first-year Law major, said that several of his Law Lab trips have been some of the most inspiring, even transformative, experiences of his brief time in college.

“Seeing the diversity of the legal field in person really opened my eyes. The image of what a lawyer is in real life is definitely not like what you see on TV, which I knew already, but I didn’t understand it in a concrete way until I saw it for myself,” he said.

Diego’s most memorable trips for the Law Lab included visits to high end law firm Ballard Spahr and to a housing clinic run by Drexel Kline Law geared to low-income clients. These contrasting trips, among others, helped Perez realize what he didn’t want his law career to be.

“I discovered, thanks to Law Lab, that corporate law is not what I want to do! I want to work with people who might otherwise have limited access to legal help, working as a public defender or maybe in immigration law. Law Lab was the highlight of my week, and the following day my head was usually swimming with ideas, new perspectives. Law Lab didn’t just offer ‘food for thought,’ but a weekly banquet.”

Adrianna Kalinich, also a first-year Law major, said the Law Lab gave her opportunities to see the law in practice for the first time, which she found “extremely valuable,” not least because it vastly expanded her perspective on the particular areas of law in which she was considering specializing.

“We visited the Philadelphia Courthouse and sat in on a sexual assault case, which was very interesting… Seeing it live made me focus on the human element of the proceeding—the whole process really. It wasn’t just legal maneuvers, case citations and the rest in a vacuum, it was ultimately about human beings and their relationship with the system—seeking justice or just trying to get a fair trial, and everyone else associated with that struggle.”

Adrianna, who is planning a double major in Law and Philosophy, Politics, Economics, said that her interest in a legal career grew out of the events of 2020, when she became politically active after the murder of George Floyd and the ensuing nationwide protests.

She went on to say that the Law Lab experiences “made me question my own relative privilege, and thanks to another visit we made to Philadelphia’s Human Rights Commission, it moved me closer to embracing the type of law that’s focused on social justice.”