Ranked among the top 25 law schools in the United States for International Law and Clinical programs by the 2023 U.S. News and World Report Specialty Rankings, with 18 different areas of study and 170 field placement opportunities for students, the University of Miami’s School of Law boasts vast opportunities for those looking to pursue the study of law. Texas alumnus and current Miami Law student, Landon Opel, talked about studying law in the Sunshine State and how his experiences at UT informed his law school journey.

“(Classes in UT’s Liberal Arts Honors course) were very formative and helped me really ground myself in a perspective on who I want to be, what kind of things I want to do moving forward and how that really affects the world around me,” Opel said.

Opel, who graduated from UT in 2019, said he had an unconventional path to law school as a philosophy major. However, he also said those courses helped him to be more open to different law practices.

“Stephen Phillips, a phenomenal professor (at UT), was really engaging and really helped me to broaden my perspective,” Opel said. “It helped me to really see more of a pluralistic world around me to help really broaden my horizons and understand a lot more about things that I had never really dipped my toe into.”

After graduating, Opel said Miami proved a clear choice for law school, with its community-oriented environment and hands-on learning opportunities as a main draw.

“Everything that I heard about the program is that it’s a very collaborative, communal environment, which is something I was very much looking for,” Opel said. “Having something that was really grounded in community, which is something I’ve definitely seen come true as I’ve been at Miami, was very valuable to me.”

Opel currently works with the Miami Marlins professional baseball team as a front office legal intern for the team’s general counsel, an opportunity that helps him explore various aspects of the law.

“There’s a lot of complexity that goes into working with the general counsel’s office because you’re not really focusing on a singular area of law like you would in a more corporate practice,” Opel said. “It’s a variety of settings or a variety of problems that you engage with. So, I found that a very enjoyable and impactful experience because I get to deal with everything from IP rights to commercial law to transactional law to litigation.”

Opel’s coursework at Miami helps him at work every day, he said, as a program that truly values giving their students real-world learning experiences.

“I think Miami is honestly one of the most practically based law schools in the country,” Opel said. “I took a negotiating and drafting sports venue agreements class right before I began my internship with the General Counsel at the Miami Marlins, and literally the exact terms, the exact things that we were drafting in that class, were things that I was working on a couple of weeks later.”