As part of DePaul Law’s Health Law Program of Excellence, the Mary & Michael Jaharis Health Law Institute (JHLI) provides students with early exposure to health law practice alongside their coursework. For more than 40 years, the law school has combined classroom instruction with real world experience to support students interested in practicing health law and shaping health care policy. Faculty experts are complemented by dedicated staff leadership, along with programming and professional opportunities that further enhance the student experience. 

That early exposure is shaped in large part by JHLI's leadership. JHLI Executive Director Julian Caruso respects the dedication of students who embark on this career path, recognizing that “health law touches so many parts of people’s lives, and our students really feel that responsibility as they step into this work.” She highlights JHLI's Summer Scholars Program, which places law students into paid positions at local institutions such as hospitals, nonprofits and compliance departments, as a particularly unique and important offering because it allows students to “contribute directly to the [health care] community while building skills they may not have had the chance to explore yet. Being able to work alongside a hospital’s general counsel or inside a health system so early in one’s career is a transformative experience.” 

For students, that support becomes tangible early in their law school experience. Emma Wallace (’27) cites the Health Law Program as a key reason why she matriculated at DePaul Law. She became a JHLI Student Fellow during her second month in law school, and being active with the Institute provided her with “early exposure to health care-related legal work and enabled me to kickstart my foray into health law.” One notable experience was when JHLI brought a small group of students to the Health Care Service Corporation’s office, where they lunched with its executive vice president and chief ethics and compliance officer and other attorneys, who “shared insights about litigating, doing transactional work and working in-house from a health law perspective.” 

Those early opportunities often lead directly to hands-on legal work in health care settings. Through JHLI, Grace Symington (’27) interned with the general counsel team at Sinai Health System. She received real-world experience in health law and hospital operations by assisting with compliance matters, drafting policies, reviewing contracts and conducting legal research. The experience “allowed me to deepen my knowledge of this field and apply skills learned throughout my 1L year to real issues that directly impact hospital operations.” She adds that “Julian Caruso’s genuine investment in each student fellow’s development and her unwavering support have greatly contributed to my professional growth.” 

DePaul Law's health law faculty, including Professor Wendy Epstein and JHLI faculty director, Professor Valerie Koch, along with other full- and part-time faculty, play a central role in connecting classroom learning to these experiences and are a major factor behind the program’s success. Caruso considers how they are “lucky to have faculty who care deeply about mentoring students.” 

Symington was impressed by Koch’s health policy course for “connecting course material to broader health law topics, which helped us better understand and contextualize the challenges we may encounter in practice.” Wallace praised Professor Epstein’s health law colloquium, where students reviewed empirical studies and manuscripts of law review articles and the authors came in to present and discuss their work. “We covered the full range of health law,” she recalls. “Drug patents, genetic testing, structural sex discrimination in Medicare payments and the climate’s effects on population health” were just some of the topics they examined. She calls this “some of the most authentic learning I’ve encountered in law school; it has strengthened my confidence in my ability to critically analyze real world issues and engage in professional discourse with fellow health law experts.” 

Caruso sees the combination of these elements—early experiential opportunities, faculty teaching and mentorship, and engaged law students—as central to the strength of DePaul's Health Law Program. She finds being part of JHLI personally meaningful, noting that creating spaces where students feel welcomed, encouraged and supported is one of the most important aspects of her role. From internships and site visits to mentoring relationships and classroom conversations, students gain a clearer understanding of the real-life complexities of health law and enter the field with confidence.