Featuring… soft smile extraordinaire and APALSA Treasurer, Sahil Solankee! (And he just accepted a spot on the Texas Law Review so make sure to congratulate him!!)

What did you do this summer?
I didn’t end up with a legal job this summer, so I took Family Law with Professor Fielder, who it turns out is a great professor even on zoom! I used the other half of my summer to read one book a week by a non-white author.

What is your favorite thing about Texas Law? The student community is really supportive of one another! The vibe from the beginning is very much when Vivienne and Elle become friends by the end of the movie, but you don’t have to go through the scary, cutthroat part.

Best memory from APALSA or why you got involved: It’s not a memory, but let’s be real our shirts are the best.

Spotlight on.. our other incoming VP, Sheela Ranganathan!

Growing up, I was taught a lot about Indian and Hindu traditions. I was classically trained in Carnatic music, my mom would braid my hair with coconut oil every day, and we ate South Indian food for every meal. I’m not sure why I felt so much pressure to reject that part of myself in order to make friends and “assimilate” to the world around me, but I am so thankful that my parents never let me.

As a result, I care a lot about creating environments where people do not have to hide parts of themselves to fit in. I joined APALSA because the board did a great job of that last year, and my goal now as VP is to extend that: with more outreach to 1Ls, more collaboration with the other affinity groups, and more creative ways to find a home at the law school. Law schools are, by nature, pre-professional—but especially at Texas Law, we are also here to make lifelong friendships and memories, and I hope I can contribute to a small part of that for our membership.

Spotlight on Monica Lin, one of our Vice Presidents!

Hi! I’m Monica. I grew up playing tennis and piano in the suburbs of Chicago. I continued playing tennis in college where I graduated with a degree in Chemistry. I was recently introduced to the books of David Foster Wallace and was so excited to find out that the Ransom Center has a lot of his manuscripts. If you have any bad rom-com recommendations, I’d love to hear them.

I’m looking forward to getting to know everyone better and eating good food!

Member feature on Nik Soni, a rising 2L from Houston, TX!

This summer, Nik worked at Akin Gump as a Pro Bono Scholar, splitting between the ABA Center for Human Rights and Akin Gump Houston’s litigation group. He is also the director of Law Students for Black Lives’s Working Group on Human Rights, focusing on strategizing race-related advocacy efforts through international human rights law.

His biggest hobby lately has been guitar, and he says that through quarantine he has managed to push his skill level from “aggressively mediocre” to “here’s Wonderwall.”