Laura Hendrickson

February 2011

by Jenna Hoefler

The VLP is proud to announce that the

Outstanding Law Student Volunteer for

February 2011 is Laura Hendrickson. 

Laura is a second year student

at the University of Arizona James E.

Rogers College of Law, and has been a

volunteer with the Volunteer Lawyers

Program since May 2010.  She has been

assisting in the VLP’s Domestic Relations Clinic, and her language skills have

been an incredible asset to the Clinic’s Spanish-speaking clients. She has

become incredibly knowledgeable in the domestic relations area and she is now

able to tackle a wide range of family law issues.  Laura’s dedication, sincerity,

and attention to detail make her the ideal student volunteer for the VLP and its

clients. 

Laura is originally from Palo Alto, California. Her undergraduate studies were

completed at Stanford University and she received her Bachelor of Arts in

International Relations and Spanish. She has been involved in several programs

that help the underprivileged in her community as well as people seeking

political asylum in America.  She is very interested in immigration issues,

and her Spanish and Portuguese language skills are helping her make a

difference. Her dream job would allow her to utilize her language skills while

allowing her to travel.    

Laura chose to go to the University of Arizona for her legal education because

she wanted to be in an area where immigration issues are pertinent in daily

life as well as a focus of the law school.  She states that she has had some

excellent professors thus far, her favorite being Professor Henderson.  She

found his torts class to be very amusing.  A word he often used, “sclabog”,

seemed to sum it all up.  Aside from volunteering with the VLP, Laura is the

ACLU-UA Law Chapter Co-President, Law Student Representative for the

Southern Arizona Chapter of ACLU Board, a member of the Immigration Law

Students Association, and a legal intern/document translator at the Asylum

Program of Arizona.  While she keeps very busy with these activities, she

really enjoys seeing the real-life application of what she has learned in law

school. 

Even though Laura is a very busy student, volunteer, and intern, she still finds

time for her hobbies.  She loves to run, read, and bake.  She is one of the rare

people who do not own a television even though it means that she is really out

of the loop when it comes to pop culture.  This doesn’t bother her, and as a

self-proclaimed “dork”, she admits that her guilty pleasure in law school is

reading anything that isn’t a casebook.  Laura fell in love with the city of

New Orleans after she went there for a National Lawyer’s Guild Conference. 

She feels fortunate to have an internship there this summer and says “I can

pretend I’m on vacation while I work for free…”  When asked what the most

important thing she has learned during her time with the VLP, she jokingly

replies, “Never get married!”  This new cynical view of marriage may not be

a surprise given the amount of family law petitions she has assisted clients

with.  Despite the fact that we may have altered Laura’s views on marriage,

the VLP is so happy to have her as one of our outstanding volunteers and

hopes to work with her for many years to come!

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Past Outstanding Volunteer Student Awards