Last May, after completing their first year of law school, Carolina Garcia and Lara O'Neill founded LegalArt Inc., a non-profit organization dedicated to providing legal services to local artists. Currently, LegalArt is concentrating on the visual arts, but eventually plans on branching into the other arts, with the performing arts scheduled to be next.

"LegalArt provides three services," says Carolina, "networking events, educational programming, and a legal referral service. We host unique networking events that cultivate relationships between the art and the legal community. All of our events also highlight the work of local artists and attempt to engage viewers with art in new and different ways. Our first networking event, Bikini, took place at the Bernice Steinbaum Gallery and featured local artists who used bikinis to create artistic expressions."

"LegalArt also runs a legal education series for artists called SeminArt. Our first SeminArt was on copyright law" explains Lara "and we are currently preparing others on contracts, freedom of expression, immigration, and grant writing."

The third service is a legal referral program that provides the contact information of attorneys to artists who are seeking legal counseling.

Both agree that their class in Copyright Law, which they are currently taking with Professor Levi, and Contracts from their first year, have been the most applicable to their work with LegalArt. One academic perk to their initiative to found LegalArt is that they are receiving independent study credit to continue working on LegalArt.

Neither Lara nor Carolina took the direct path into law school from undergraduate. After completing her undergraduate degree in international relations at Brown University, Lara worked as the coordinator for a YMCA child care site in Monterey, California and spent two summers with Community Law in Action, in Baltimore, where she helped to create a youth leadership program. Carolina majored in creative writing at the New School University in New York. Before coming to Miami Law, she worked as the Director of Reading Promotion Programs at PEN American Center for three years.

They both studied abroad for a year during their undergraduate studies. Lara studied at the University of Dar es Salaam in Tanzania and Carolina studied in India. Lara was on the varsity crew team in college, and in law school, her free time goes to marathon training and free diving with her husband. Most of Carolina's free time is spent at local art galleries and museums. This summer, Lara has a summer associate position with Greenberg Traurig in Fort Lauderdale and Carolina will be doing a clinical placement with the ACLU.