I have been delighted to join Allevato, Quail & Worth as a law student for the summer of 2016. The opportunity to pursue a career as a lawyer is a great privilege that I hope to never take for granted. During my first month at AQW, two of my wonderful mentors (Carmela Allevato & Jim Quail) invited me to join them to attend a segment of the HEU Summer School at UBC. We went to hear a presentation by Shakil Choudhury, author of Deep Diversity. I was so impressed by the contents of his lecture that I set out to find a copy of Deep Diversity the very next day. His research and expertise have resonated intensely with me as I have begun to experience what working in the legal profession is like.

One of the most important insights which I took away from Shakil’s book is that privilege is a blind spot for those who are receiving preferential positive treatment. We often don’t feel our privilege when we have it, even though it may seem obvious from someone who got the shorter end of the stick.