Classes are in full swing for the 119 members of the incoming class at Wayne State University Law School.
They hail from 33 colleges and universities where they pursued undergraduate and graduate majors in 36 different fields of study, including business administration, chemistry, economics, electrical engineering, journalism and music.
They range in age from 21 to 72, and all but eight of the students are from Michigan.
Ninety-three of the 119 are day program students, 15 are in the law school’s evening program and 11 are in a combined program of day and evening classes. The median LSAT score of the class is 156, and the median grade point average is 3.29.
For the class of 2017’s oldest member, 72-year-old Thomas Roth of Northville, it was past experience with WSU that led him to choose the university’s law school for further studies.
“I taught in the Psychiatry Department at WSU Medical Center, and I was very impressed with the quality of scholarship,” Roth said. “My wife graduated from Wayne and remembers her days there as very positive. My family is committed to living in the Detroit metropolitan area.”
As he approached his 70th birthday, Roth said he “began seriously thinking about the future.”
“Several things became evident,” said Roth, who holds a doctorate in experinmental psychology from the University of Cincinnati and has spent his career doing well-recognized sleep research and sleep medicine.
“Expanding my curriculum vitae to 700 publications from the current 650 is not a worthy goal,” he said. “Secondly, the open scientific questions that I might successfully investigate in the foreseeable future would not require any new methods, nor would they present deep scientific challenges to me. Instead, I concluded that I could continue to be productive and make contributions to society while remaining intellectually stimulated through the study and practice of law.”
Roth said he plans to use his scientific background in some manner of legal practice.
He has served as an expert witness in several legal cases dealing with accidents where drivers fell asleep at the wheel and as an expert in patent cases dealing with sleep promoting. And he’s served as a consultant to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and to industry involving new medications. All of those experiences deepened his lifelong interest in law. For first-year student Amy Huang of Farmington Hills, studying law is a goal that synchs with her intense interest in promoting social justice.
“My parents immigrated to America so I would have the opportunity to pursue the American Dream, and education is the avenue through which I pursued it,” Huang said.
She grew up in Chicago, holds a master’s degree in secondary education from the University of Southern California and participated in Teach for America for two years helping students at Detroit’s Mumford High School learn math as well as life skills to help them succeed.
Huang’s father died when she was 10, leaving her mother struggling to support the small family working as a low-paid seamstress at a job where she wasn’t required to speak English.
Huang said she chose to stay in Detroit, close to Mumford students and to attend Wayne Law.
“I hope to continue my impact in Detroit,” Huang said. “The revitalization movement is an exciting moment in history for the city, yet there is so much more work to do. I carry with me the stories of growing up in Detroit that my students have so generously shared with me.”
By practicing business law after graduation, Huang hopes to help entrepreneurs in Detroit and bring about positive change in the city.
“I believe the best chance we have at revitalizing a city is through developing businesses, helping entrepreneurs succeed and bolstering job creation and growth,” she said. “The legal field has proven to be at the forefront of wrestling with the toughest social issues of our time and making the American Dream attainable by more and more Americans.
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