And she's not kidding. She's taken courses in everything from Property to International Dispute Resolution to Empirical Law & Economics.
"I don’t have any strategic reasoning for taking classes," she says. "I just look at the list and see what looks interesting." However, Peresie can pick a favorite course out of the crowd: Employment Discrimination Law, taught by Professor Vicki Schultz. "She was amazing because she really went beyond the case law. And I think that one of the things that Yale does really well is--yes, we learn the law, but we also learn how it’s changing and how we can affect that and how we can work with that."
Peresie also did the Lawyering Ethics Clinic, where she prepared a case, presented arguments, and cross-examined a witness in a hearing in the Connecticut disciplinary process for lawyers charged with violating ethical obligations. "It seemed like that was the best way to get courtroom experience and actual litigation experience," she says.
Peresie says she gets restless only being in the classroom, and so on top of her courses, she worked on three different student journals, helped domestic violence victims as part of the Temporary Restraining Order Project, and argued a case in the Morris Tyler Moot Court competition. "I find that I need something to do all the time," she says.
When left to her own devices, she says, "I like to count things and then think based on that." For instance, in one of her independent writing projects she looked at a huge number of sexual harassment and discrimination cases and calculated the likelihood that a male judge would vote for the plaintiff when a female judge was on the bench, as compared to when a male judge was on the bench with two other male judges. Says Peresie, "I found that when a female judge was on the bench, the male judges were twice as likely in sexual harassment cases and three times as likely in sex discrimination cases to vote for the generally female plaintiff." That paper was published as a Note in The Yale Law Journal and received the Israel H. Peres Prize for the best student Note or Comment appearing in The Yale Law Journal.
Peresie planned to clerk for a federal judge in her first year after graduation, and then she thinks that practicing appellate litigation will suit her. "You find out a subject, you read about it, you make new, innovative legal arguments, and then you teach the court that your view is correct. But then when that case is over you learn about a new case and make new, innovative arguments, et cetera."
Peresie adds that she might choose to teach law someday. However, she adds, "Since my scholarship is focused on having the data and the foundation to back a theory, I think I need to go out in the world and get some real-world experience to back up the law I might be teaching."