Education Law Paralegal at Legal Aid Chicago

Chicago, Illinois

For Hannah Gonzalez ’23, graduating from Connecticut College didn’t mean she was done with education. Quite the opposite, in fact. Her degree immediately set her on the path to becoming an education law paralegal at Legal Aid Chicago.

“I didn't really expect to go into education law, but it very much fits with my interests,” Hannah says. “It's such meaningful work.”

The legal organization provides free civil legal services to people living in poverty. “On my team, in particular, I help manage a project for youth living in foster care who are facing legal issues in their K-12 education. I'm responsible for conducting intake and bringing all new cases related to foster youth to my team. That is about 90% of the work we do. For these clients and others, we represent students in a variety of legal issues, anything from Title IX to special education law to disciplinary actions students are facing in school,” Hannah explains.

“I think my favorite aspect of the job is the opportunity for public speaking. Every week, I present all of our new cases. I love standing in front of this crowd of attorneys and paralegals and making a case as to why we should address the issue and talking through the strategy of how.”

Taking the position was a homecoming for Hannah, who grew up in a neighborhood on Chicago’s Lower West Side, where she attended a series of Catholic schools and was active in Girl Scouts.

“I loved my upbringing. I love being a city kid,” she says. “I think a pretty important piece of my educational story coming into Conn was learning centered around studying theology. That influenced my interests in philosophy and in government and politics. And I really loved the Girl Scouts’ model of empowering young girls to be leaders and bold learners.”

With those influences, Hannah arrived at Conn as a Posse Scholar. She majored in government with a minor in philosophy and was a scholar in the Holleran Center for Community Action and Public Policy.

“The Connections curriculum allowed me to explore interdisciplinary interests within the law and public policy to complement my government studies,” she says. “It was all very helpful in opening me up to the kind of role I hold now.”

On campus, Hannah was a member of the Student Government Association for all four years, serving as president her senior year, and held many other leadership positions, including chair of the Department of Government and International Relations Student Advisory Board and as a big sib for the Genesis Mentorship Program. She was also deeply involved in the recently renamed Office of Retention and Success, where she worked as the inaugural lead communications and programming fellow in her senior year and as the leadership development ambassador of race and ethnicity programs in her sophomore and junior years. As a senior, she was elected by her peers to serve a three-year term as a young alumni trustee on Conn’s Board of Trustees.

“Those roles helped me gain confidence in my work, my strength as a leader, and my writing skills,” she says. “I think one of the most important things that’s made me successful in postgraduate life is looking at college as not just about academics, but as an opportunity for personal growth. The leadership skills that I gained at Conn are incredibly important to my success.”

During the summers, Hannah interned in a law office in Chicago and worked as an undergraduate clerk in the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office and a summer policy and advocacy fellow for the International Rescue Committee. Those experiences—and the mentors she met along the way—helped inspire her career path.

“I worked with a lot of law students in the summer. They gave me the advice to use college as a time to pursue subjects that interest me, and not to worry too much about going straight into law school. They suggested being open to the possibility of trying different roles in the legal field before becoming an attorney,” she says. “So throughout my time at Conn, I took that opportunity while also taking classes about the law, the justice system, social justice and more. By the time I was a senior, I was ready to jump into my first postgraduate role.”

Now, she brings that confidence and those skills to her work as a paralegal in a challenging political and economic environment.

“It makes this work more critical than ever before,” she says.