Jeffrey Chen ’16

I chose YLS for many different reasons but two stand out for me in particular. The first is that I was really drawn to the small class size and the small group arrangements for 1L fall semester simply because I thought those arrangements fit my learning style the best. The second reason is that I came in to law school with a primary interest in health law and policy, and I thought that Yale offered the best mix of opportunities both inside and outside of the classroom to allow me to explore that interest and position myself for a career in that direction.

I’ve been involved in health law here in many different ways. This past year I was one of the co-directors of the Medical Legal Partnership, which is a student organization that places student volunteers in different health clinics with the goal of connecting low-income patients to civil-legal aid services. I’ve also taken a really good health law seminar called Law and the American Health Care System, where I learned a lot about health law in general, but I did a lot of research and writing into Medicaid enforcement, specifically enforcing the Medicaid statute against states, and I thought that was really interesting. Finally, I’ve had the opportunity to do a lot of really interesting research in health law for a professor, and I’ve also engaged substantively with legal scholarship as a member of Yale Journal of Health, Policy, Law, and Ethics.