Future Attorneys of America Scholarship Winner: Irene Hong!

Starting the Answering Legal Foundation and establishing its scholarship’s presence in esteemed law schools would seem to most as the hardest part of creating a scholarship, but that was the easy part. The hardest part was sifting through hundreds of applications from qualified candidates. That was, until the application from Irene Hong of University of Pennsylvania law school emerged from the tower of paper where Director of Marketing and Answering Legal Foundation Chair, Michael Garcia, would find this application to prove more than was expected.

“Not only did her application impress us, she really exemplified how much heart she put into her volunteer work and community outreach. Her accolades and accomplishments were none other than astounding at such a young age, and even though the pool of applicants was also impressive, it was an easy choice picking Irene,” said Michael.

“We were all excited to have such an exemplary candidate as our inaugural recipient of the scholarship because of its importance to our company’s mission and because of the hard work we had all put into establishing the Answering Legal Foundation,” says CEO of Answering Legal, Brooke Shatles. After about a month of emails back and forth between Irene and Brooke, we all finally got to make the trip from our headquarters in Long Island to Penn Law, where we were not at all surprised to meet the bubbly and modest Irene, who welcomed us with hugs and ushered us into the main building of the law school.

Immediately, people were rushing up to Irene to give her updates on things she was working on - an upcoming panel she was spearheading, a project, or even a simple hello. “It was clear to us that we made the right choice with Irene when we saw her in her element. She had a humble way of just being in charge - a natural leader,” said Nick Werker, the Marketing Strategist and Chair of Answering Legal Foundation. We took tons of pictures presenting Irene with her Award, and it was a very proud moment for all of us.

Impressively, Irene finished her entire undergraduate coursework in just two years. She is an outstanding student outside of her welcoming personality, and utterly deserving of the reward and praise she received. Irene told us she has an interest in pursuing International Tax Law, and she will be joining the law firm of DLA Piper in Palo Alto, California as a summer associate this May, upon her graduation from Law School.

We would like to not only congratulate Irene, but deeply thank her for being such an outstanding candidate. Irene, you deserve this award and scholarship, and we are gladdened to know that the legal field will receive such an outstanding woman.

Special thanks to Hollander and Hanuka, Attorneys At Law for their additional donation to the Answering Legal Foundation.