February 2004

Claudine Chen-Young is an associate attorney at Sidley Austin Brown & Wood LLP in Chicago. She works for the firm's Insurance and Financial Service practice group as a transactional attorney representing insurance companies, investment banks, and brokerage houses. Claudine's practice group is one of the few at the Firm that has an industry-specific focus, rather than being categorized by a specific area of law. As a result, her practice group provides both litigation and transactional services to its clients. The transactional side, for which Claudine works, counsels clients on a broad array of corporate matters, including securitizations, mergers & acquisitions involving insurance and financial services companies, securities offerings by insurance companies, and insurance regulatory counseling. In only five months, she has already been substantially involved with closing fourteen deals - a fact for which she is very proud, given the general perception that first-year associates at large law firms do nothing but "push paper" and get stuck with due diligence.

Sidley Austin Brown & Wood LLP was ranked second in The National Law Journal's "Who Represents Corporate America" in 2003, and with over 1500 attorneys it is one of the largest law firms in the world. Claudine obtained her summer associate position with the firm in 2002 through Miami Law's on-campus interviewing program.

Originally from Kingston, Jamaica, Claudine graduated from American University in 1998 with a BA in Economics. During her undergraduate years, she was the president of her sorority and she interned for the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Before entering law school, Claudine worked for the Population Council in Washington, DC, for two years. "I applied to the University of Miami because I was drawn to the large Jamaican community in South Florida; however, while my decision was initially influenced by this nonacademic factor, Miami Law turned out to be the best decision of my life. My professors at UM were tough, but they were brilliant. I truly believe that my academic, social and outreach experiences at the law school were integral to positioning myself as a strong candidate for recruitment by such an esteemed firm as Sidley."

During law school, Claudine was the president of the Association of Caribbean Law Students and the treasurer for the Society of Bar and Gavel. She was involved with H.O.P.E. (Helping Others through Pro Bono Efforts) and was an actress in the School of Law's 2001 performance of The Comedy of Errors. The fall semester of her third year, she did a clinical placement with the Office of the Public Defender's Juvenile Division in Fort Lauderdale. She graduated cum laude from the School of Law in May 2003.