Recent Cooley Law School graduate Morgan Prybys is turning a longtime dream of becoming a lawyer into a career focused on helping others. Prybys, who began her professional journey working in security before becoming a paralegal, was recently recognized with the Cooley Alumni Association Distinguished Student Award at the law school’s Honors Convocation. The award recognized her academic journey, involvement and commitment to supporting those around her. During her time at Cooley, Prybys was involved with several student organizations and served as a teaching assistant. She also gained hands-on experience through Cooley’s SixtyPlus ElderLaw Clinic, building on her interest in estate planning and elder law. Her legal interests also include compliance, an area in which she earned a Certificate of Merit. Her journey from doubting whether law school was possible to earning her J.D. and receiving recognition for her accomplishments reflects the persistence and growth that shaped her legal education. Read more about Morgan Prybys and her journey in the Legal News.
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Professor Emeritus Kimberly O'Leary is spending her retirement traveling around the world with her husband, Paul. While traveling, Professor O'Leary has launched an oral history project called The Gen Jones Chronicles.
Cooley Law School 2005 graduate Janelle Benjamin is the founder and CEO of the company All Things Equitable. Benjamin, located in Toronto, Ontario, works with organizations and companies all over the world. Her consulting work focuses on diversity and inclusion in the workplace. She helps employees from historically marginalized groups feel safer at work, and she helps employers figure out how to create diverse and safe workplaces that are fair and equitable. She does her work by speaking, interviewing, conducting focus groups, surveys, and training sessions. Benjamin started the company in 2020, pulling together more than 15 years of skills acquired through her work on the staff of high level policy makers in Human Rights and Fairness government commissions. She earned her J.D. with a focus on International Law, ADR, and Litigation. She believes she is the only firm in Toronto that focuses on all historically marginalized groups – there are consultants on racial equity, or accessibility equity, or LGBTQI equity, for example. She helps companies create fairness for all its employees by examining such issues as implicit bias and micro-aggressions, but also explicit bias and dismantling sexist, racist, ableist and other practices that are a barrier to fairness. She credits some of her own experiences of discrimination and micro-aggressions in the workplace with helping her recognize and validate the experiences shared by marginalized employees. She credits her policy experience with helping her problem-solve with employers. After the events of the summer of 2020, including the shooting of George Floyd, Ms. Benjamin realized she wanted to do more. She also realized her own race and gender posed challenges to being promoted within corporate culture. With the support of many people with whom she had worked, who advised her that she had the perfect skill set to take action to improve employment settings, she launched her own business and has been busy ever since.
If you are an American lawyer in the 21st century, you need to understand how to work with clients, judges, and other professionals from diverse backgrounds. The ABA has focused on guiding lawyers to learn these tools.
