2024 CLEA Awards for Outstanding Clinical and Externship Students: UConn's Benjamin Kline, Stefanie McArdle, Rachel Sandor, and Olivia Kappel

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 Connecticut School of Law:

 

Outstanding Clinical Team: 

 

Benjamin Kline '24, Stefanie McArdle '24, and Rachel Sandor '24 were UConn Law School's recipients of the CLEA Outstanding Team Award. When our Asylum and Human Rights Clinic unexpectedly took on an extremely challenging case in a difficult posture—filing to reopen a Connecticut family’s in-absentia removal orders issued by an immigration court in Arizona—we assembled this team of students, who had already distinguished themselves in prior cases.  Their work together was guided by a collaborative spirit, thoughtful planning, and an intuitive ability to pivot and respond to unexpected developments. They produced a brilliantly argued brief and masterfully marshaled evidence package arguing for reopening due to exceptional circumstances. To prevail, they needed to demonstrate both satisfaction of the stringent standard for reopening and the underlying merits of the family's asylum claim. Between September and December 2024, they sprinted a marathon, conducting legal and empirical research, conceptualizing and refining case theory, engaging in client rapport-building and fact investigation, cultivating expert witness testimony, and drafting and redrafting their brief to achieve eloquent impact. Their work culminated in an order reopening the case and restoring the family’s ability to seek asylum.

 

Outstanding Externship Student: 

 

The UConn Law recipient of this year’s Outstanding Externship Student Award is Olivia Kappel (’25).  Olivia spent the full ’23-’24 academic year as an extern with the Connecticut Office of the Attorney General, Special Litigation Unit, Reproductive Rights.  Olivia’s site supervisor described her as “hard-working, self-motivated, and extremely pleasant to work with.”  She is a student who “went above and beyond,” and produced “extremely helpful” and “excellent work product” that will assist the office going forward.  As a seminar student, Olivia was engaged, well-prepared, and distinguished herself as a thoughtful contributor to class discussions, and as a reflective learner and law student.  Olivia’s excellence in both fieldwork and coursework makes her an ideal candidate for this award.