Kara Angeletti ’18 receives the 2018 Marc Grinker Student Commitment Award
Kara Angeletti, a May 2018 graduate of Chicago-Kent College of Law at Illinois Tech, is the recipient of the 2018 Marc Grinker Student Commitment Award.
The award was created in memory of Professor Marc A. Grinker, a member of the Chicago-Kent faculty from 1990 until his death in 1996, who served as the first director of the law school's appellate advocacy program. The Grinker Award honors students who embody Professor Grinker’s dedication to the program and to the law school.
At Chicago-Kent, Angeletti is a 2017–18 vice president of the Moot Court Honor Society and is a 2017–18 executive articles editor for the Chicago-Kent Law Review. In November 2016, she placed second in the 25th annual Ilana Diamond Rovner Appellate Advocacy Competition and earned the competition’s Fay Clayton Award for Outstanding Oral Advocate. In March 2018, she received the law school's Edmund Burke Award in Forensic Oratory, which honors students for sustained superior performance as oral advocates while members of the Moot Court Honor Society.
Through Chicago-Kent’s Externship Program, she clerked for Illinois Appellate Court Justice Bertina Lampkin and clerked in the Intellectual Property Department at Seyfarth Shaw in Chicago. Since May 2017, she has worked at the law firm of Lewis Brisbois Bisgaard & Smith in Chicago. After graduation, she will join Lewis Brisbois as an associate in their insurance coverage and defense litigation group.
"Kara has had a wonderful competitive career in moot court at Chicago-Kent, but that's not why she's winning the Grinker Award," said Professor Kent Streseman, current director of the appellate advocacy program. "As several members who nominated her stated, she embodies everything that is good about our program. We strive to be excellent advocates who leave no stone unturned; Kara inspires by example. We thrive because our members become mentors; Kara has made all of us better with her attention to our growth as a coach, practice judge, and advisor to new members and 1Ls. We ask that our leaders work behind the scenes to make the Moot Court Honor Society a better organization; Kara and her colleagues on the Executive Board did phenomenal, creative work this year to improve our practices and procedures and to keep the trains running on time."
Before law school, Angeletti earned a bachelor's degree in media studies with high distinction from Pennsylvania State University. She grew up in Mars, Pennsylvania.
Chicago-Kent's Ilana Diamond Rovner Program in Appellate Advocacy, the umbrella program for many of the law school’s moot court activities, was established in 1992. Since then, Chicago-Kent students have won numerous individual honors and regional and national competitions, including consecutive titles in the New York City Bar Association’s National Moot Court Competition. The program is currently ranked second in the nation by the University of Houston Law Center's Blakely Advocacy Institute.
