Each year, The National Jurist recognizes a new group of Law Students of the Year from nominations sent by law schools nominating their top students. These students leave their mark on their law schools and surrounding communities.
Erin Varley, a Law Student of the Year in 2018, told us about being a former college athlete and having the desire to help people in her early years of school. After earning an MBA and a stint with the NCAA, she realized that in order to do the things she wanted to do to help people, she would need a law degree. When she got into law, she had a specific interest in addressing gender-based violence.
“For me, it’s a combination of helping people recover from something that may have happened to them already and help them to move on and improve their quality of life, and it may also be more policy-driven and preventative in nature,” she said in 2018.
While in law school, she made quite an impact through her work with multiple organizations, including the Pennsylvania Immigration Resource Center, the Pennsylvania Coalition Against Rape and the Pennsylvania Innocence Project.
“The most important lesson I learned was the breadth of opportunities a law degree can afford someone,” Varley said. “I entered law school wanting to serve vulnerable populations and sexual assault survivors, but I was unsure how I wanted to achieve that goal. Law school exposed me to the many ways that the law can touch people’s lives and help me live my passion.”
Varley is a deputy district attorney in Dauphin County, Penn. She works on a trial team that works on various crimes and in the child abuse/sexual assault unit in her office. She is also in charge of developing the county’s Human Trafficking Task Force and working to revamp the Elder Abuse Task Force.
Her focus right now is to have the Human Trafficking Task Force fully functional within the next year, and for it to serve as a resource for other counties looking to build their operations. Since graduating she has worked on three major programs for her county.
“These programs have resulted in better identification of individuals’ root causes for criminal behavior,” Varley said. “Once those causes are recognized, these programs better treat the underlying causes and help the individual achieve a better, safer quality of life that does not encompass criminal activity. The ripple effect of those changes has been palpable. It is my hope to continue to have the ability to improve people’s lives.”
Varley’s goals as a student seem to have fallen into place as she has continued her passion for advocacy. She advises students to form connections with students and gain real-world experience to enhance their law studies and future careers.
“Those experiences will help you develop your skills, allow you to meet professionals in the field, demonstrate your capabilities, and discover areas of the law you like and do not like,” Varley said. “They will also help you during interviews because you will be able to discuss your work and how it applies to the position you are seeking.”
