Min K. Kam ’22: Engage the Law in an Empowering Way
Min shares that she was inspired to pursue a legal education after her experience advocating for her family to stay in the United States and realizing the consequences of the law.
Hometown: New York metro area and Seoul, South Korea
Why Columbia: "I was interested in attending law school since high school, but I almost gave up that ambition after discovering I lacked legal status to be in the United States due to fraud committed by my family’s immigration lawyer." However, after becoming a Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) recipient, Min revisited those ambitions: “Having already gone through the process of litigation, I understood the importance of the law and how it could be used for different purposes. I ultimately chose to walk through the doors of Columbia because I wanted to know what it was like to be on the other side—to be the one to wield the tool of law, rather than letting it wield me.”
Favorite Law School Moment: "One moment that really stands out is receiving the news that my note had been selected for publication for the Columbia Law Review. The topic was immigration-related, so the issue was quite personal to me. Drafting a note of that magnitude was an overall very exhaustive experience, but I'm grateful because it challenged me to write comprehensively about a complex legal issue that had real-time consequences, so in many ways I felt validated to have my work chosen by the law review.”
Columbia Law Activities: Diversity and development editor, Columbia Law Review; teaching fellow, Bert Huang, Michael I. Sovern Professor of Law; James S. Liebman, Simon H. Rifkind Professor of Law; and Avery W. Katz, Milton Handler Professor of Law and Reuben Mark Professor of Organizational Character.
After Columbia: After graduation, Min will join Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen, and Katz.
“Columbia has provided me the curriculum and the institution, the student body and the professors for me to engage in law—which has always kind of been . . . a very onerous weight on my life—and to engage it actually in a very empowering way. And I think that I feel incredibly fortunate and privileged to be able to say that the law, which had closed many doors for me in the past, has all of a sudden opened many more.”
