David Levenson arrived at UMass Lowell intent on becoming a forensic psychologist.
For fun, he signed up for the UML Mock Trial team, because he’d enjoyed a mock trial class at Billerica Memorial High School.
It changed his career plans, but not his major. Now the Honors College student is president of the Dr. Francis T. Talty ’77 Pre-Law Society and the UML Mock Trial team.
“Mock Trial has taken over,” Levenson says cheerfully. “The opportunities I’m getting through Mock Trial are so exciting, and I can still go to law school with a psychology major.”
One of those opportunities was a paid summer internship at a Boston law firm, which he found with help from the Mock Trial team’s volunteer coach, Thomas Wood ’17, a graduate of Suffolk University Law School who is now an assistant city solicitor in Lowell.
As the only undergraduate intern at Diller Law, Levenson worked alongside second- and third-year law school students. He called clients to notify them about settlements and rounded up paperwork from insurers and doctors. He even did research on the finer points of dog-bite liability and other topics.
“I was getting thrown around everywhere, which was awesome, because I could get a look at so many different kinds of cases,” he says.
Levenson also got three credits for the internship, which counted as a legal studies practicum. It confirmed his desire to become a civil practice attorney.
“I want to be in the courtroom as much as I can,” he says.
Levenson plans to graduate in three years – he came in with a semester’s worth of AP credits – and then go on to law school.
He’s packing a lot into his short time here, including an Honors College study abroad trip to Cuba over winter intersession, paid for with an Immersive Scholarship. He has a minor in Italian, and he is also completing coursework toward a possible minor in legal studies.
He’s also working as an Honors Informational Peer, meeting with other honors students to talk about time management, how to meet their honors requirements – and anything else they want to discuss.
Levenson says he followed his older brother, Matt Levenson, to UMass Lowell because it was close to home, he received academic scholarships and he was excited about all of the programs, extracurricular and co-curricular offerings here.
“The opportunities at UMass Lowell matched up to every other university I wanted to go to,” he says.
“I see UMass Lowell as a place I can come and prosper, and really shine, and do everything I want to do.”