Ashley Coppola
Ashley Coppola’s work on behalf of the disadvantaged won her the 2011 Women’s Bar Foundation Scholarship.
Coppola, a third-year student, received the $10,000 award at a Women’s Bar Foundation luncheon in October 2011. “I was extremely honored to receive this award and become part of the Women’s Bar Foundation community. I plan to demonstrate action and integrity in keeping with the award’s purpose to promote public interest advocacy in the legal profession.”
“Ashley has a passion for public service that is rare and memorable,” said Associate Dean William Powers. “I have come across few students who have the same energy and excitement for helping others as Ashley.”
Coppola said her family has long been involved in the needs of the disabled. During the summer before her senior year at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Coppola worked in the congressional office of then Rep. Melissa Bean (D-Ill.) helping constituents gain access to public benefits, including social security and veterans’ benefits and financial aid.
After graduating from U of I, she worked as a special education teacher assistant at Maine West High School. She worked with students who had academic, physical and emotional challenges and worked with the classroom teachers to advocate for the best quality education and support possible.
“I come from a family of teachers, so working in the classroom was something I was comfortable doing, but I realized that I wouldn’t make it my career. I knew I was headed to law school,” Coppola said. During her law school career, she has worked as a law clerk for the Child Protection Division of the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office, spent two semesters in the Adult Guardianship Division at the Cook County Office of the Public Guardian, and spent last summer as a 711 law clerk in the Juvenile Division at the Cook County Office of the Public Guardian.
She has volunteered at the Domestic Violence Legal Clinic as part of her class practicum, and been a member of the Woman’s Law Caucus. Coppola’s been a clerk for the Veterans Legal Support Center & Clinic, and now is a student in their clinical program, and is the candidacy editor for The John Marshall Journal of Computer and Information Law, in addition to working as a law clerk at Delaney Law Offices in Chicago.
“Entering John Marshall as a 1L student, I knew that my goal was to advocate for others,” Coppola said. “I expressed this future objective with faculty members and was encouraged by each of them to network and become involved with the different public interest opportunities John Marshall had to offer.
“I’ve been blessed to have a handful of professors at John Marshall who have mentored and guided me throughout law school in both academic and professional pursuits,” she added.