May 2010 graduate Grace C. Okorie is serving a one-year term as the Clinical Attorney Fellow with The John Marshall Law School Fair Housing Legal Clinic.
The fellowship provides an opportunity for a recent graduate of the law school to serve at the clinic handling cases and teaching clinical law students.
“I enjoy my work at the Clinic because, on a daily basis, I reap the satisfaction of knowing that I was able to make a positive difference in someone’s life,” Okorie said. “As a young attorney, working at the Clinic has provided me countless opportunities that I would not have received
elsewhere. In the short time I have worked, I have had the opportunity to file in administrative, state, and even federal court,” she added.
Okorie is a graduate of Delaware State University, where she received a Bachelor of Arts in sociology: criminal justice and a Student and Law School.
Before starting law school, Okorie was a specification editor for Abbott Laboratories in Lake County, Illinois. Okorie’s legal experience includes work as a law clerk with Coleman, Martin and Brown in Chicago and a summer associate position with Maisel & Associates and Holecek & Associates, which are staff counsel for Travelers Insurance. She also worked as a student representative for Westlaw during her second and third years of law school.
As a student at John Marshall, Okorie was a legal intern with the clinic from January 2010 until her graduation. She interviewed clients to determine the nature of their legal issues, as well as monitored and managed active case files. She also researched and drafted memoranda of law on federal-, state- and county-based fair housing law issues.
Okorie also was a research assistant for Professor F. Willis Caruso, reviewing and editing a published casebook on fair housing and fair lending laws for its revised edition.
Okorie was a law student member of the Phi Alpha Delta Law Fraternity, secretary of the Black Law Students Association, and student liaison to the Chicago Bar Association Young
Lawyers Section Corporate Committee and vice-chair of the Diversity Affairs Committee.
She also is a volunteer tax preparer with the Center for Economic Progress and teaches in an English as a Second Language program.