Portillo to Suit Up This Summer
Portillo to Suit Up This summer
St. Charles Catholic High School junior Alyssa Portillo has been accepted and will be participating in the 2018 Louisiana State Bar Association’s Suit Up Program for the Future High School Summer Legal Institute and Intern Program. This prestigious three-week program gives high school students exposure to law school courses taught by law school professors, legal writing experience, and the opportunity to present an oral argument before a panel of judges. Additionally, Alyssa will have the opportunity to shadow an attorney and/or judge at work.
St. Charles Catholic High School offers two law classes, Law Studies, an Academic level class, and Law and Morality, an Honors course. Both courses are taught by Mr. Ron Courtade, a retired attorney who has been teaching at SCC for 8 eight years. His classes are two of SCC’s most highly requested electives. Mr. Courtade says, “My goal is to challenge students to go beyond the letter of the law, and learn how to apply the law to real-life situations to make a better world."
The Law Studies course is a survey course of U.S. and Louisiana law. This course is designed to give students an understanding of the practical application of legal principles by studying precedent-setting U. S. Supreme Court cases, federal laws, state statutes, parish ordinances, and city codes. This course gives students a greater appreciation of the U.S. and Louisiana legal systems and their roles within our law-saturated society. The Law and Morality course is an honors course and is the only one of its kind in our region. This course introduces students to many real-world legal/moral issues in American society, and in the process of doing so, this course develops students’ analytical and critical thinking skills, logical reasoning abilities, reading and writing proficiency, and public speaking and presentation skills. It is designed to prepare students to be tomorrow’s faithful leaders in law, ethics, politics, public policy, business, medicine, engineering, education, and so on.
Portillo is scheduled for both law classes for the upcoming academic school year at St. Charles Catholic High School. When asked about her upcoming law opportunity, Portillo stated, “I am extremely thankful for Mr. Courtade for finding this program for me because without him I would not have known about the program. Also, I would like to thank Mrs. Bordelon for guiding me with the writing aspect and believing in me. Both of these teachers, along with all of my other teachers, have given me tremendous support throughout my junior year. I am extremely excited to start this program, and I hope to learn many new things regarding law. I am honored to be selected, and I will pay very close attention to every detail that I am being introduced to throughout the summer. The support of my family, friends, and the SCC faculty has encouraged me to be better and do better, and I could not be anymore thankful for the people God has placed in my life!”
The Louisiana Bar Association is offering the Summer Suit-Up program in collaboration with Just the Beginning, Louisiana Bar Foundation, Louisiana State University Paul M. Hebert Law School, Loyola University New Orleans College of Law, Southern University Law Center, and Tulane University Law School. Students will also receive a mock legal problem that will serve as the basis of their legal writing assignment for the oral argument to be presented to a panel of judges at the conclusion of the program.