2024 CLEA Awards for Outstanding Clinical and Externship Students: Campbell's Madelyn Fogleman and Sarah Varela

Each year, the Clinical Legal Education Association invites law schools to nominate students as their Outstanding Clinic Student or Team and Outstanding Externship student. This series includes submissions from law schools celebrating their outstanding students. 

From Campbell University Norman Adrian Wiggins School of Law:

Outstanding Clinical Student: Madelyn Fogleman

 

Madelyn Fogleman served as a leader in the inaugural semester of operation for Campbell Law's Richardson Family Education Equity Clinic and set a high standard of exceptional service.  She billed a whopping 174.84 hours to clinic client matters.  This went well above and beyond what was required for the course.  She successfully mediated a particularly challenging case to an amicable resolution, fully restoring her client's educational rights and accomplishing for him even more than the law technically required!  She picked up the phone each time it rang and provided sound, strategic advice (after approval by a supervising attorney) to multiple callers in crisis.  And she offered mentorship to other clinic students when they needed guidance.  She was a true stand-out clinical student.  I am grateful she chose to participate in the service we offer.

 

Outstanding Externship Student: Sarah Varela

 

During her time with the Federal Public Defender’s Office for the Eastern District of North Carolina, Sarah made outstanding contributions to the representation of indigent clients charged with federal crimes. Sarah’s supervisor rated her lawyering skills, professionalism, and work habits as “excellent” in every applicable category and praised her attitude, her care for clients, and the quality of her performance. Sarah used this opportunity to hone her legal analysis skills and judgment, as she learned how to better identify and argue meritorious issues (even in the absence of precedent precisely on point). Her writing skills also improved, drafting an appellate brief described as “fantastic” and which left her supervisor “impress[ed.]” Sarah demonstrated excellence in the externship classroom too. In her reflective journals, Sarah was candid and thoughtful in connecting her experiences with her professional identity and understanding of what it means to be an attorney in this space. She described learning the importance of collaboration with others to confront tough questions, particularly as a new attorney. Sarah also bravely engaged with fundamental issues like well-being as a criminal attorney, bias in the legal system, and how to navigate relationships with attorneys, clients, and clients’ families. As Sarah aptly stated, through this externship, she not only learned what she wants her career to look like, but she also learned more about “how to make that happen,” the skills she “needs to succeed,” and her “identity as an attorney.” In her own words, “I really feel ready to call myself an attorney.”