On Thursday, July 8, UCLI’s interns met Dr. Brigham Daniels, “Brig,” environmental lawyer and professor at BYU’s J. Reuben Clark Law School. According to his BYU bio, “Professor Brigham Daniels has expertise in environmental law, property law, and natural resources law. He has received several teaching awards. Prior to joining the J. Reuben Clark Law School he taught as an assistant professor at the University of Houston Law Center and as a lecturing fellow at Duke Law School.”
All of the questions Dr. Daniels answered were submitted by our interns: we do this because our interns are most proximate to and concerned about their law school application process, and they know best what they are worried about most. Their questions spanned a diverse gamut between environmental law, academic success as a student and academia as a career: What made you decide to pursue environmental law compared to another field of law? How did you navigate choosing where to go to school? What is a common misconception of environmental law? Does environmental activism play a role in your work?
Does being an environmental lawyer make you more hopeful or cynical? In your experience, what makes for a law student to have a successful law school experience? How has teaching law changed your perception of the legal field?
We sent Dr. Daniels these and other questions in advance so that he had time to consider them. He started off with this insightful piece of advice:
“For students who don’t know what to do, I ask two things: 1) “what sorts of problems speak to you? What are you trying to solve?” and 2) “What kinds of work do you want to do? How do you want to engage with work and the world?”
Watch Dr. Daniels’ entire discussion with the UCLI team here and subscribe to our Youtube channel for more discussions like this.
