黑料门

Three students describe why they changed their career paths to attend law school

Some people grow up dreaming of becoming lawyers. But sometimes, the path to legal work isn鈥檛 so clear-cut. For these three students鈥擩oyce Mendoza Navarro, Carrick Meyers, and Ian Lindsay鈥攍aw school came after working in other fields. Here, they discuss their lives before law school, and how their unique backgrounds transfer to their work at 黑料门University Chicago School of Law.

The Science of Law

After earning a degree in cellular and molecular biology, Joyce Mendoza Navarro began studying neuroscience as a predoctoral fellow at New York University, working at research labs in New York and Seoul, South Korea. Then Hurricane Maria changed everything.

Navarro grew up in Puerto Rico and was living on the island when the hurricane hit. After witnessing the destruction and its aftermath, she rethought her path. 鈥淚 didn鈥檛 have enough power or influence with a degree [in science],鈥� she says. 鈥淚 wanted to have more of an impact in helping people from marginalized communities.鈥�

Law school seemed like the right fit, and 黑料门seemed like the right school. Navarro loved Loyola鈥檚 focus on public interest. Plus, her mom grew up in Chicago, and she knew the city had a thriving Puerto Rican population.

She enrolled at 黑料门in 2020 and found law school鈥檚 intensity surprisingly familiar. Thanks to her biology background, she was no stranger to dense research, reading, and writing. She鈥檚 pursuing a career in environmental law with a focus on public health.

In 2021, she became a Corboy Fellow and began training to compete in mock trial, where her scientific brain gives her an advantage. 鈥淎s I鈥檓 coming up with an argument, I can look at the facts and think of all the ways someone can try to disprove it,鈥� she says. 鈥淭hat鈥檚 what science is, right? You鈥檙e trying to prove your thesis.鈥�