Law and the Military: A Rewarding Combination That Matters
Champion What Matters, a phrase that expresses the ethos of American University Washington College of Law, can project a kaleidoscope of interpretations depending on who says it. For students and alumni who are active duty, retired military, or veterans, ‘what matters’ might mean protecting the nation.
AUWCL is known for providing a supportive educational environment for students who are members of the military and veterans, according to several current students and alumni. It also is known for serving as a feeder school to JAG programs for all five branches of the U.S. military.
JAG (Judge Advocate Generals’ Corps) officers are attorneys who work on all legal matters involving the military. Officers who serve in the JAG Corps, informally known as JAGs, are legal advisors to the command to which they are assigned.
TIME MANAGEMENT IS KEY
Katelyn Davis ’21 accepted a commission from the U.S. Army JAG Corps and is awaiting her scrolling to become an officer (a presidential act), pending a fitness test and the results of her bar exam, which she sat for in July.
“AUWCL is very welcoming towards veterans and students who are active duty,” Davis said. “If a student is in the National Guard, the professors are very understanding and supportive.”
Davis, currently an Equal Employment Opportunity Specialist in the U.S. Department of Justice, attended AUWCL part time. Although working full time while attending law school was a tough road, Davis managed to participate in Clinic, and with others, research and write a legal analysis of military medical malpractice that found its way into the National Defense Authorization Act of 2020. Further, she assisted in leading the Civil-Military Society, a student group designed to help bridge military and civilian communities. Davis also had to stay healthy and physically fit to meet the future demands of the JAG Corps, she said.
“I was always working while riding the Metro, taking my lunch break with books open,” she said. “I had to rely on great time management.”
Davis had a lifelong interest in the law. Her plan to combine a legal and military career was sparked by the terrorist attacks on 9/11, when she was seven years old. She recalled that her school day was delayed and she was eating breakfast when her father called her to watch the horrifying events unfold on television.
A neighbor’s husband worked in the Pentagon, and frantically tried to reach her spouse that morning. Davis watched as her mother spent the morning, afternoon, and evening comforting the neighbor until her husband was located.
“It changed my goals,” Davis said. “I saw what this did to people I love and care about. I just wanted to help people.”
FIND MENTORS
Like Davis, Eugene Mok ’19, a lieutenant commander who joined the U.S. Navy in 2010, also found the atmosphere at AUWCL toward those in the service to be affirming. “A lot of people thank service members for their service,” he noted, “but few organizations actually demonstrate that they care.” AUWCL shows its support by having veterans on the staff and faculty, through comments by school leadership, and by encouraging the student-run veteran and military group that in 2018 became the Civil-Military Society.
LTC Mok, now an attorney advisor in the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, was raised in northern New Jersey and remembered as a middle school student seeing the smoke from where the twin towers once stood days after 9/11. “A lot of our parents worked in New York City,” he said of he and his classmates. “I knew I wanted to be a lawyer; I’ve always liked standing up for what is right.” This experience and his desire to serve led him to join the Navy through the Reserve Officer Training Corps program at Villanova University.
After graduating from Villanova he was commissioned as a naval officer, where he was given a lot of responsibility right away, he said. “But I knew I wanted to come to Washington, D.C., and go to law school to either become a military or government attorney.”
While attending AUWCL LTC Mok transitioned from full-time service in the Navy to the Navy Reserves. After law school and passing the bar exam, he was accepted to the Navy JAG Corps’ Reserve Law Program.
He encouraged students with an interest in military law to seek out mentors and serve as a mentor to others. He recalled finding an AUWCL alumnus who had gone through the Navy
JAG application process, and who helped LTC Mok through the process too. “Now I pass on the knowledge and try to help other students to get into the JAG Corps,” he said.
A SHORT WORK DAY
Captain Zachary Simons ’20, on a one-year assignment with the 13-country Multinational Force and Observers peacekeeping mission in Sinai, Egypt, was selected by the Army JAG Corps to attend law school through the Funded Legal Education Program while on active duty. He described those three years in school as the nicest of his Army service. “For me attending law school meant a short work day,” he said, adding, “the ability to step away from the operational tempo of the Army to focus purely on academics for three years is one of the most unique opportunities in the military.”
“I took everything that would be tested on the bar exam,” CPT Simons said of his academic selections. He took a sampling of other courses beyond the bar-focused classes, but was determined to pass the exam on his first attempt, which he did.
CPT Simons, a brigade judge advocate for the Army, found that the strong writing program at AUWCL serves him well.
“The writing program really stands out,” said CPT Simons, who credited legal rhetoric Professor David Spratt for strengthening his writing. “That is the skill I use every single day” as a judge advocate, whose position involves a lot of research and writing. “I took the Law of War and Human Rights and Terrorism classes, but you don’t apply that law in day-to-day business at the tactical level.”
He found AUWCL to be a congenial environment for a student on active duty. At the same time, CPT Simons said he didn’t “broadcast” his military status. He shared it with a few professors, one of whom advised CPT Simons in jest that he shouldn’t let fellow students know how enjoyable he found law school (compared with Army service).
CPT Simons feels “really lucky” to be on his current assignment, where as a junior attorney he feels he is learning a lot and having a unique experience. He appreciates the opportunity to go from working with soldiers to supporting them and their commanders. “It’s rewarding to be on the other side,” he said, noting that his prior service gave him a deep understanding of what those soldiers and commanders have to do and what they need.
LAW WITH A ‘SIDE OF ADVENTURE’
Lieutenant Colonel Cinnamon (CJ) Chielens ’04, currently assigned as deputy legal counsel to the Office of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the Pentagon, saw combining legal and military careers as a way to give back. When she was a young girl, her parents worked in Pakistan, among other remote locations outside the United States. But it was in Pakistan in 1988 that U.S. Marines came to the family’s rescue when a sudden evacuation became necessary. The rescue and ensuing feeling of safety and protection left a deep impression on her.
A self-described former “girly girl,” LTC Chielens worked as a legal secretary for a D.C. firm as she made her way through AUWCL’s part-time program. While a student at AUWCL, she interned at the Office of the General Counsel for the U.S. Department of Defense at the Pentagon where she met JAGs who “looked like they had so much fun,” she said. She joined the U.S. Army in 2005 and the following year deployed to Iraq, one of several deployments to the Middle East. She spent time in Afghanistan in 2009 and 2012-13, deploying out of New York and Germany.
It was in Kabul in the summer of 2009 that she met her husband-to-be, a Belgian Army soldier who later enlisted as a private in the U.S. Army to be with LTC Chielens. (Foreign nationals cannot join the U.S. military as an officer.) Cinnamon and Joachim have been married 11 years and have two small children. Joachim is now a contractor with the federal government.
She described her combined career as a chance to “practice law with a side of adventure,” adding, “I get to fly in helicopters, shoot guns, and see exotic places, all while helping people and impacting the security of our nation.”
In the Office of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, LTC Chielens practices national security law, an assignment for which “the world sits heavy on your shoulders,” she said. Often working 12 hours a day, she said it’s a “heavy lift” and “stressful” for the 14 JAG attorneys on staff. LTC Chielens described the team as “amazing,” followed by “brilliant, kind, caring, and hilarious.”
Her intention was to serve in the military for three years, but she has spent 16 years in the Army thus far. “This was not my plan,” she said. But she continues to be offered new assignments that pique her interest and offer her amazing opportunities, and that has kept her in the ranks.
For LTC Chielens and others, using their legal education to serve the nation is what matters.
“The writing program really stands out,” said CPT Simons, who credited legal rhetoric Professor David Spratt for strengthening his writing. “That is the skill I use every single day” as a judge advocate, whose position involves a lot of research and writing.