Why Give
Alumni and friends can provide meaningful support to a variety of areas at the College of Law.
In many instances, these contributions make possible programs and services that enhance the basic educational experience for Illinois Law students. Below is a list of areas you can support through your contribution to the College of Law Annual Fund.
Affordability
Ensuring that the Illinois Law experience is accessible to today’s and tomorrow’s best and brightest is absolutely crucial to our ability to attract top-notch students and offer them a first-rate legal education that will not saddle them with unsustainable debt. Scholarships not only provide critical support for our current students, they also impact the College’s ability to recruit and retain strong candidates, ultimately improving the value of the Illinois Law degree for all past and future graduates. Most importantly, students who graduate with less debt will be able to pursue careers based on their interests and passions, rather than on their ability to pay off their loans.
Academics
Illinois Law’s curriculum is both timely and robust, exposing students to a healthy blend of doctrinal law, theoretical perspectives, and real-world skills. The Annual Fund supports some of the more practical and innovative academic programs and courses that students can select to supplement their traditional course work, including the Chicago Program, the legal writing program, and other academic excellence programs.
Professional Training
The College of Law offers its students a wide variety of opportunities to develop their professional skills. The Annual Fund is critically important in making possible these experiences, which develop skills students will use throughout their careers and will help prepare them to be valuable new attorneys to their future employers. Examples of such opportunities are clinical programming, trial advocacy, trial team, moot court, and student organizations.
Career Services
Illinois Law offers its students absolute top notch career services. In addition to the basic counseling provided by the attorney-counselors on staff, the Office of Career Planning and Professional Development provides a number of other opportunities for students to learn about various legal careers, understand how the legal profession operates, network with practitioners, and gain experience that will help them land that first legal job. The Public Interest Fellowship Program, Alumni-Student Career Conference, Perspectives on Practice series, and Fundamentals of Legal Practice course are just a few of the many opportunities that benefit from the Annual Fund.
Scholarly Research & Public Engagement
The College of Law strives to make a significant and visible societal impact on the practice of law, the shaping of public policy, and the development of legal reform. Public engagement is an important tool to share the scholarly research of our faculty and to foster conversations that promote understanding and change. Conferences, lectures, faculty workshops, and more, are all supported by contributions to the Annual Fund.