Aron Ketchel '06 says that taking a variety of clinics helped him understand the legal system as a whole. Ketchel took three very different clinics in his three years of law school: Legal Assistance Clinic, Balancing Civil Liberties & National Security Post 9/11, and the Prosecution Externship. "You get to see different aspects of what legal practice is like in each one," he says. "With Legal Assistance I was doing benefits work. I was helping people appeal denials of social security benefits, for example. And I had an opportunity to help argue a case in front of an administrative law judge. That’s on a very local level, on a one-on-one basis. You really get to work with clients closely and see the results. The 9/11 Clinic was appellate-type work where you’re less focused on the client and more on the bigger ideas, and you essentially have a bigger impact on case law in general. The Prosecution Externship was a great opportunity because I’m considering a career as an assistant US attorney."

At the same time, Ketchel took mostly black letter law classes (meaning classes that focus on a body of written law). "I’ve been most curious about international law and administrative law," he says. Studying statutes and judicial decisions informed his work in the clinics, but Ketchel emphasizes that the reverse was also true. He says, "In administrative law there’s such a focus on how much law is decided in front of administrative law judges as opposed to Article Three judges. And I think that it’s hard to understand that until you see firsthand the volume of social security decisions, and how important these decisions are, and how people’s lives are dependent upon these decisions. It puts a face to the texts we read in class."

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