Rosa Leon was born to a military family in a small town in northern Guatemala, just south of the Mexican border.
Leon, a first-year law student, is a founding member of the Ole Miss chapter of the Latino Law Students Association. She and LLSA member Julio Cazares represent the University of Mississippi nationally through their involvement with the Latino Law Students Association.
“Julio is the director of national public relations so he is in charge of all of our publicity, not just for our chapter but for every chapter in the nation,” Leon said. “And, I am the director of membership, so I am in charge of all of the chapters in the nation to make sure that they’re following our constitution and being active in their community and basically doing what they need to be doing in order to stay in good standing with nationals.”
Photo courtesy: Sarah Heying
Leon founded the university’s chapter of the Latino Law Students Association this fall, and the chapter now has 20 members.
“We promote Latinos in law and just betterment of Latinos in general,” Leon said. “Our chapter is doing that and also trying to promote just the law students in general. We’re trying to get our law students to be as successful as possible.”
The two recently attended a Latino Law Students Association national conference in New York City. Leon said the Ole Miss Law School’s support gave them the ability to attend the conference.
“We are very lucky to have the support of our classmates because without them, I don’t think we’d be able to do much of anything,” Leon said.
Leon is currently working on a mentorship program to connect Latino Law Students Association members with local attorneys.
“Each of our members is going to be assigned to an attorney, a local attorney, so that they have that one-on-one availability with someone who’s already practicing just in case they have any type of questions, so they’re a little bit more prepared when they enter into the workforce,” she said.
The UM chapter of the Latino Law Students Association is also working on a program to prepare undergraduate students for law school.
“Each member will get an undergrad person who is interested in attending law school, and they will help them through the entire process,” Leon said.
The program will help undergraduate students as they start to look at law schools, study for the Law School Admission Test and write their personal statements for their law school applications.
Leon said she chose to attend law school at Ole Miss in part because of her family connections to the school. Her grandfather, grandmother and several aunts and uncles attended the University of Mississippi.
“When it came time to look into a law school I had a lot of influence from my family,” Leon said.
Again influenced by her family, Leon said she has wanted to be a lawyer since she was a child.
“I was talking to my mom about how I lost an argument with my friends, and my mom was like ‘Well you know how you can never lose an argument again, right?’ and I was like, ‘What?’ and she was like ‘Well, become a lawyer,’ and then it stuck in my brain forever, and now here I am because I don’t like losing arguments,” Leon said.
As a lawyer, Leon said she hopes to work for international soccer organization FIFA.
“I am a former athlete, so I want to get back into sports,” she said.
