Though their paths took them to very different places, each returned to O’Brian Hall with new skills, fresh perspectives, and a clearer sense of the kind of advocate they hope to become.

This past July, Hannah Kilburn ’27, along with Olivia Sheldon ’27 and Leah Perry ’27, represented UB Law at the IBA-VIAC CDRC Mediation and Negotiation Competition in Vienna, Austria. Kilburn competed individually in the mediation category, while Sheldon and Perry competed as a team on the negotiation track.

Kilburn, president of the Alternative Dispute Resolution Society at the law school, earned her place in the competition through on-campus qualifying rounds. Professor Steve Sugarman ’85, who directs and teaches in the mediation program at the law school, was Kilburn’s coach.

The case that Kilburn mediated involved a dispute over ownership of a rare vanilla orchid. Case files were sent out months in advance, giving Kilburn time to game-plan with Sugarman.

The negotiating teams – but not the mediators – received confidential information 60 minutes before each session, requiring Kilburn to respond in real time to issues she could not anticipate.

Coaching was not allowed during the mediation sessions, each round of which lasted three to four hours. Kilburn competed through four different rounds.

“It was a little draining,” she says.

At the end of each day, the judges gave detailed feedback to each competitor. Kilburn shared the notes in evening phone calls to Sugarman, whose Eastern time zone was six hours behind Vienna.

At the competition’s end, Kilburn finished 10th in a field of 21 mediators from around the world. Sheldon and Perry placed 24 out of 42 negotiating teams.

Kilburn says the experience filled her with confidence.

“I feel like I could go in and mediate any sort of dispute,” she says.

Kilburn is a Pro Bono Scholar who will take the bar exam in February, then spend her last semester working with Attorneys for Children of Western New York.

She thinks mediation will be an important part of her toolkit as a lawyer.

“It’s about facilitating a conversation between two people or two parties,” she says. “It's such a great way to resolve disputes and keep things out of the court system … and help people reach better outcomes.”

In the winter of his first year of law school, Geffrey Alpers ’27 met a recruiter for the U.S. Marine Corps at a career fair. That was the first time he considered a military career.

“The Marine Corps focuses on self-improvement, and I think that's something that's really valuable,” says Alpers. “Making yourself a more capable person, pushing yourself, leaving your comfort zone, doing things that are challenging.”

This past summer, Alpers embraced a new challenge, completing the 10-week Marine Corps Officer Candidates School (OCS) in Quantico, Va.

What was OCS like?

“It was pretty intense,” he says. “If you've ever seen any Marine Corps training in a movie or a TV show, they're not exaggerating. But that's an important part of it, instilling discipline, simulating a stressful environment to see how you respond.”

The day would begin at 5 a.m., with physical training sessions starting before sunrise.

“You're out walking the entire day,” he says. “So you end up getting at least 23,000 steps in each day.”

The most intense part of the training is a multi-day event called the Forge. It tests the candidates’ resilience and leadership under pressure, including day and night hikes, sleep deprivation and team-based exercises.

“You're tired and you're hungry,” he explains. “You're getting towards the end of OCS, and you see the light at the end of the tunnel, but you're not quite there yet.

“You're wearing your boots all day, every day, and walking with full packs of 65 to 80 pounds. The blisters were pretty crazy.”

Alpers says the Forge “is the last thing you do before you receive your Eagle, Globe and Anchor Pin, and you finally earn the title of Marine.”

Alpers is now a second lieutenant in the Corps. He hopes to serve as a Marine Corps judge advocate, a role that would expose him to multiple areas of law and give him courtroom experience early in his career.

Alpers feels the academic rigor of law school helped prepare him for some of the mental challenges of OCS.

“Law school is known for its massive amounts of reading, memorizing cases, and memorizing rules. It's all important and it gets you where you need to be, but it's not necessarily enjoyable in the moment. I think just going through law school, you gain some baseline level of perseverance that serves you well.”

Resilience and leading by example are two leadership traits that Alpers will carry from his training into his life as a Marine and a lawyer.

“My platoon commander told us, ‘Look, you're going be tired, you're going be in pain. That's OK, that's expected. That's the point. But what's not OK is to quit on yourself. What's not OK is to quit on the team around you.’ I think that's really what gets you through it.”

Through the New York State Catalyst Public Service Fellowship Program, Analia Santana ’28 spent her summer at the Urban Justice Center, Free to Be Youth Project in New York City.

The project, which provides free legal services to at-risk, homeless LGBTQ youth in New York City, gave Santana a firsthand look at public-interest law in action.

Among the projects she tackled, Santana helped organize a work permit clinic for asylum seekers. She, along with several interns and lawyers working pro bono, served 7 clients at the clinic, most of whom spoke different languages.

“I worked with multiple clients seeking asylum because they faced persecution in their home countries on the basis of their sexual orientation or gender identity,” she says. “For many of them, safety meant leaving behind everything familiar and navigating an unfamiliar legal system with no guarantee of the outcome. Sitting across from clients whose survival depended on protections I had never had to fight for reshaped how I experienced the importance of the work I did this summer.”

The issues at the heart of her work are ones Santana had been passionate about for years.

At Manhattan College, she led an LGBTQ student group and received a citation of merit for youth leadership from Bronx Borough President Vanessa L. Gibson.

Recently, during Pride Month, Santana found herself moving between celebrating with friends and listening to a bisexual client from Morocco describe being abused and assaulted because of his sexuality.

The contrast, she says, “really recontextualized the fact that we have problems in this country, but we still do have a lot of protections we need to continue to fight to keep.”

Working alongside other LGBTQ law students committed to public-interest work, Santana says, “recharged my social justice battery.”

“There are many different paths a J.D. can take you on,” she says. “I can stay true to myself by being a voice for people who don’t have one.”