2024 CLEA Awards for Outstanding Clinical and Externship Students: Kentucky's Sydney Larue and Alyssa Wiggins

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 the University of Kentucky Rosenberg College of Law: 

Outstanding Clinic Team Award: Sydney Larue and Alyssa Wiggins

The University of Kentucky J. David Rosenberg College of Law is thrilled to announce Sydney LaRue ‘24 and Alyssa Wiggins ‘24 as the recipients of the Clinical Legal Education Association (CLEA) Outstanding Clinic Team Award. Both students were part of the inaugural cohort of the Civil Rights and Restorative Justice-Kentucky (CRRJ-KY) legal clinic at UK Law and stood out among their classmates as outstanding researchers, legal thinkers, and ambassadors for the program. Sydney and Alyssa, through their outstanding commitment to truth and reconciliation within cases of historical racial violence, were each instrumental towards CRRJ-KY’s success as it navigated from pilot program to an official part of UK Law’s curriculum.

Sydney and Alyssa excelled in both their initial semester with the clinic, as well as a second semester of work within the CRRJ-KY Advanced Clinic. Both students were responsible for four cases of historical civil rights violations where the initial facts were not fully developed, and they surpassed their peers and initial course expectations with detailed case research and creative thinking to uncover truths and historical injustices. Sydney and Alyssa consistently demonstrated careful reading of required course materials and produced outstanding seminar papers, filled with additional secondary research that enhanced their digital and archival case research. Working together, they developed their work into a draft intended to become a law review article. Within the CRRJ-KY Advanced Clinic, Sydney and Alyssa continued to develop their cases by communicating with living descendants of their historical clients and worked together to organize a fact-finding field trip to Harlan County, KY to canvas the area related to their case work. Additionally, Sydney and Alyssa completed a historical and legal research project related to racial violence in Lexington, KY that will become a digital exhibit housed at the Lexington History Museum and contributed to a planned historical marker in downtown Lexington.

After graduation, Alyssa will be returning to her hometown of Paducah, Kentucky to join the local office of the Department of Public Advocacy.  Sydney will be joining the Lexington office of Landrum & Shouse LLP.  We are so proud of their work and look forward to following the next steps in their legal journey!