9/13/2022 Zack Fishman
ISE graduates are well equipped to study and practice law
Written by Zack Fishman
The Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering prepares its students for more than engineering careers — so say a number of alumni who earned law degrees and hold various leadership positions across public and private sectors.
Today, Carrie Zalewski (BSGE 2001) leads Illinois’ public utility regulator as the chairman of the Illinois Commerce Commission. But when she was a prospective University of Illinois student, Zalewski, who said she has “always wanted to go into law,” wanted to study engineering as an undergraduate and sought advice from then-Associate Dean of the Department of General Engineering Michael Pleck. (The general engineering program is now named Systems Engineering and Design.)
“I said, ‘I wanted to go to law school.’ And he said, ‘Well, then the obvious choice, really, is general engineering,’” Zalewski said. “And the reason is because you have a core curriculum, but then you have the ability to take an engineering and law class, and you also have the ability to take some more writing classes, knowing that I have to write a lot in law school.”
After graduating in 2001, Zalewski went on to earn her law degree at the Illinois Institute of Technology’s Chicago-Kent College of Law. In 2019, lllinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker appointed her to her current chairman position, a role that oversees electricity, natural gas, other utilities in the state as well as some types of transportation. Her addition to the Illinois Commerce Commission came as Pritzker was focusing on efforts to transition Illinois’ electric grid to renewable energy through the Climate and Equitable Jobs Act, which passed in 2021.
Zalewski promoted engineering as a useful undergraduate degree that has granted her strong analytical skills that helped her stand out during interviews.
“When I go into interviews for various positions in my legal career, I often spend more time talking about the fact that I went to school for engineering, because that’s different,” she said, noting that an undergraduate engineering degree demonstrates an ability to work hard and study technical issues.
The Department of Engineering continues to offer classes and other resources for students considering a future in law. The Engineering Law class (SE 400) Zalewski took is taught today by College of Law Adjunct Professor Joseph Barich, a licensed intellectual property attorney. The class, which receives high ratings from students, covers subjects ranging from contracts to labor law, environmental law, and intellectual property. And since 2014, Barich has also collaborated with the Technology Entrepreneur Center to develop and teach the class Startups: Incorporation, Funding, Contracts, and Intellectual Property (TE 450), which teaches students how legal tools can be used when starting and operating a business.
ISE in particular provides students with flexible curricula and robust experience with business systems, which allows those pursuing law school to take more coursework relevant to their chosen career path.
One person who took advantage of ISE’s offerings was Divya Mehta (BSGE 1999), who leads the legal department at the North American division of Finnish elevator and escalator company KONE. Mehta, who said she knew she wouldn’t become an engineer but still saw value in an engineering degree, majored in general engineering and added a concentration in business administration. After working in marketing, Mehta attended law school at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, held jobs at and joined KONE in 2013.
“Prior to being in this role, I worked in various roles in technology and product and codes, and so it was a good combination of my technical skills and legal skills,” said Mehta, who was promoted to senior vice president and legal counsel in 2020. “I found that in every single legal role that I've had is that I've used my engineering degree in some way, shape, or form by being able to understand things and how they work, and then be able to translate that into — for lack of a better word — layman's terms for people that don't have that technical degree.”
Her work before KONE included product liability defense in the construction industry and medical malpractice defense, fields that Mehta said also required technical know-how and understanding the right questions to ask witnesses.
Mehta advised college students that it’s okay to not immediately know their career path, something that took her more time to figure out. She also recommended law school as a viable next step for some ISE students, where they can stand out among other law students with their technical background.
“No matter what you do [in law school], having an engineering degree and having that technical background helps you think differently than the masses of other students that are going to law school, which then sets you apart,” Mehta said.
Another ISE alumnus, Ryan Schermerhorn (BSGE 2007), took his engineering experience and a law degree from DePaul University into the field of intellectual property (IP) law. As a partner at the IP law firm Marshall, Gerstein & Borun, Schermerhorn primarily works in patent prosecution, in which he engages with patent offices to obtain patent rights for mechanical, medical, electrical and other kinds of inventions. Among his past clients is LuminAID, a solar-powered inflatable lantern featured on the television show Shark Tank and backed by billionaire businessman Mark Cuban.
“What I enjoy most about what I do is just seeing new things, new technologies all the time,” Schermerhorn said. “It is very intellectually stimulating, just a lot of thinking about ‘Why is this new? Why is this different? How does this work?’”
Schermerhorn said he entered general engineering because of the broad education and the many career options it provided, and he called engineering degrees “a great stepping stone to whatever you want to do next.”
“I think that an engineering degree is just a phenomenal starting point for anyone, regardless of really what you ultimately want to do, because it opens so many doors,” Schermerhorn said. “Particularly the ISE program, because it has such a broad-based curriculum. … The secondary field options allow you to take classes in really anything that you’re interested in.”