Substituting My Childhood Bedroom for Washington, D.C

Student Section: Observations from Law Students

Substituting my Childhood Bedroom for Washington D.C.

by: isabel “izzy” marcelletti

A 1L’s Summer Reflection on Working from Home

From Ohio’s unprecedented stay-at-home order to switching to law school online, the 1L landscape changed rapidly. I temporarily moved back to the Metro-Detroit area and my roommates were my parents. Friends and colleagues, who I saw so often in the hallowed halls of The Ohio State University’s Moritz College of Law, were a mouse click away. The last month or so of spring classes

At first, it was hard to envision that an experienced attorney would feel the same way as a rising 2L in law school, but we all shared the disorienting experience of COVID-19 and the desire to be resilient against its isolating effects.

took place in a myriad of settings around my childhood home, all dependent on where the rest of the household was and where the WiFi was the strongest. Though it was a strange adjustment, I was very fortunate to have such a supportive and safe environment to finish out my academic year during a global pandemic.

While learning to navigate the unfamiliar territory of Zoom law school, another rite of passage for 1L students weighed heavily on my mind: securing a summer position. Previously that fall, I was ecstatic to be accepted into the Moritz Summer, Washington D.C. Program, which involved working a full-time position and taking classes alongside Moritz peers to learn from leading legal professionals in the District. As a former Social Relations and Policy student interested in environmental law and government service, I chose Moritz partly for its opportunities like the D.C. Program that emphasize the crucial overlap in the law and government. Meanwhile, during the peak of the pandemic, like many of my law school colleagues at Moritz and nationwide, I was biting my nails on what would become of the legal environment during the summer of a pandemic. I was thrilled to get a phone interview with the Department of Energy General Counsel’s Office of Legislation, Regulation and Energy Efficiency and I was offered an internship a few days later. Landing my dream summer placement was a bright moment during the unorthodox spring semester, and I was excited to return back to the DMV area.

In hindsight, I find it awfully

optimistic that I thought by May 2020 I would pack up my car to move out to Virginia for the summer. As someone who aspires to work in a government capacity on a state or federal government level, having the ‘real’ D.C. experience was essential to me, which includes in-person coffees, meeting alumni for happy hours, working alongside the attorneys at DOE and getting firsthand experience with the fastpaced D.C. legal market, among others. I was dismayed and thought my summer would lack

substance when my internship was set online. I am going to be honest; I did have a pity party for a day or two, but afterwards, I sat down and jotted down two goals for the summer: to define my work-from-home brand and to be comfortable with the inorganic nature of online interactions. Articulating what I wanted to get out of my summer was a big step to reclaiming accountability for my professional and academic career during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Something that I think sets apart the successful legal professionals is the individual brands they create and adhere to in professional settings. In my experience, a brand is a culmination of work ethic and personality traits which would compel a supervisor or staff attorneys to recall positivity who Izzy Marcelletti was as an office colleague and as a companion during a coffee break. Now as a 2L, I would say with confidence that I am well on my way to defining my brand, but it took some hard work and reflection this summer, provided the limited interactions I had ‘in the office.’ In person, there are more organic opportunities to define and test your brand by how you accept praise and criticism from supervisors and other attorneys; ask for advice from and interact with officemates; and navigate spaces with peer interns, for instance. In comparison, when working from home, interacting with those in and out of my office was more inorganic–almost forced at first–and I had to learn to be comfortable and confident in this situation. For instance, when I wanted to get to know the attorneys in my office, I had to cold email them and tell them my intentions; unlike in a traditional office setting where I could knock on a door and casually ask them to coffee after work. The addition of the intermediary steps of scheduling Zoom/phone calls made interactions feel less personal and made me uncertain that I would not have meaningful and honest conversations that I am used to having in person.

When I would start to get in my head about this, I tried to remember that the person on the other end was probably going through the same experience as me. At first, it was hard to envision that an experienced attorney would feel the same way as a rising 2L in law school, but we all shared the disorienting experience of COVID-19 and the

desire to be resilient against its isolating effects. It took practice and a few deep breaths to remember this was a coffee chat to get to know someone and not an interrogation where folks are looking to point out any blunders. Extending courtesy to myself to adjust to these modified interactions made the networking and brand-establishing process a lot more enjoyable and the inorganic became organic. I went from having a set list of questions for calls to jotting down one or two openers and letting conversations flow. As a result, I gathered insight on how to navigate these new professional spaces, and also gained perspective from leading attorneys on the personal triumphs and sacrifices inherent to the legal profession.

In person, I know I am someone who works hard and efficiently; who is learning how to formulate more questions during the rough

draft process; who stays behind after a crowd dissipates to ask follow up questions; and who is willing to stay extra hours later to understand new material thrown her way. By also appreciating the fact that everyone was particularly vulnerable this summer, from intern to supervising counsel, I further distinguished myself as someone who is fearless to jump feet first into unfamiliar legal questions; who follows up and is invested in their legal research outcomes; and who is both personable and varied in skill enough to share teaching tips and tricks to supervisors to aid in their role as homeschool teachers.

In conclusion, I worked my dream Washington, D.C. legal internship this summer. I became a proficient Zoomer and improved my academic GPA. I expanded both my Washington, D.C. and Columbus, Ohio professional networks and fell in love with administrative law, a new practice area to explore. I also polished up my process for writing high-quality legal memos, all the while my trusty paw-ralegal, Lucy, was at my side. This summer certainly was 1L of a ride.

Isabel “Izzy” Marcelletti

The Ohio State University Moritz College of Law