Karli Tellis knew that she wanted to become a lawyer from a young age, so she used her undergraduate education at Dickinson to prepare as much as possible. In college, she majored in Law & Policy and Political Science, in addition to becoming heavily involved in the undergraduate mock trial team and interning with a couple local judges. In taking a class on capital punishment, one of her professors spoke about the work she did while earning her Ph.D. at Vanderbilt, which put the school on Tellis’ radar.

Once Karli enrolled at Vanderbilt, she began taking public interest and criminal justice classes in addition to the required core classes. Some of the standout classes she’s taken so far include Civil Procedure with Francesca L. Procaccini, Constitutional Law with Professor Matthew Patrick Shaw, and Juvenile Justice with Professor Terry A. Maroney. In addition to taking Criminal Law with Professor Christopher Slobogin, she’s also working with him as a research assistant on a project related to genomic privacy laws.

During her time at Vanderbilt Law, Karli says she’s felt supported not only by her professors but her fellow students as well—and not just those who are part of her cohort or year. “When you come to Vanderbilt, the community is shared. It’s very strong academics, very strong professors, and very strong friendships,” she explained. “Anyone’s going to take time to talk and answer questions or just chat about your day.”

She’s also gotten involved in mock trial again, participating on the law school team as well as coaching the undergraduate team, in addition to signing up for moot court as well. “I think that mock trial and moot court give you so much practical experience. It’s also really fun to get a new problem and construct a case or construct a brief,” she said.

Beyond mock trial, Karli is also the president of both the Voting Rights Advocacy Society and the Criminal Law Association, on top of serving as the secretary of Law Students for Social Justice and the auction director for the Legal Aid Society, which raises money to fund bar preparation for public interest students.

Karli spent her 1L summer interning at the Tennessee Office of the Post-Conviction Offender. She learned about the opportunity at a campus networking event for public interest students, where she talked to an attorney from the office who also headed up recruiting.

“They’re a state-funded organization, so they don’t advocate or lobby directly for anything,” she explained. “I wanted to have an experience where I could work on capital cases but try to separate myself from the advocacy I so wanted to do, because I think that’s really important moving forward in your career, to be able to ultimately boil it down to just doing the work.”

She also participated in internship recruiting for her 2L summer. After she wraps up her second year of law school, she’ll head back to her hometown of Philadelphia to work as a Summer Associate at Ballard Spahr. “They emphasize work-life balance and pro bono work, but they also have very quality, top-of-the-line attorneys and very challenging work, which I think is really exciting, so I’m really looking forward to next summer,” she said.

Karli also hopes to complete an externship and a clinic before graduating, in addition to her coursework and extracurriculars. While this may seem like a lot of commitments to aspiring students, she says that she wants to take advantage of all the opportunities that Vanderbilt Law offers.

“I think getting actual firsthand experience is probably the most important part of law school, just preparing you for practicing. Summer experiences help with that too,” she said. “As much exposure as you can get of that during law school, that’s helpful.”