Lauren Rad did not know she would be a teacher after going to Harvard Law School but when former classmate Ryan Bolland reached out to her about advising the Mock Trial team, little did she know, she was staring down the road that would lead to leaving her full-time job as a lawyer to enter the teaching profession. Today, Rad teaches CTE Criminal Law and Civil Law and is the adviser for the Mock Trial Team on campus. 

Rad initially went to college to be a history professor, taking multiple classes of history, then realizing half way through that the job market for history professors was not great.

“History departments are shrinking. Every year, universities are not hiring as many history professors as they used to. There’s no job security,” Rad said. “I wasn’t sure that I wanted to spend seven, eight, 10 years working on a PhD, and then come out of that and not have any guarantee that I’d be able to support myself at the end of it.”

Looking into what else she could do with the skills, she took a chance at law school, wishing she had researched her decision a little more. Rad went to the University of California Los Angeles for her undergraduate degree knowing that she would go to graduate school with a good program. 

“When I first started my law school journey, I did not think I would be able to get into a program like Harvard. My SAT scores were solid, but they were not that good, and it’s hard to get into good programs,” Rad said. “I was looking at schools lower down the rankings, and I had my target schools, and I went and visited them.”

Rad soon realized that she had a good test day and had overshot her expectations by about 10% and her score made her eligible for programs that she never dreamed of, like Harvard, calling it a “nice surprise”.

Working at her law firm Rad found a former classmate of hers reaching out about Mock Trial. Bolland, then a College, Career and Health teacher reached out to her asking if she would be interested in helping history teacher Matthew Colton advise the Mock Trial team.

“If I remember right, I just knew that Mr. Colton was the mock trial advisor at the time,” Bolland said. “I knew that Mrs. Rad was in town and was a lawyer, and might be interested in helping out and so I just told Mr. Colton about it and suggested that he reach out to her and see if she wanted to come help.”

Rad, a then full time lawyer with a toddler at home, did not  have “a ton” of extra time to give. Asking how much time Bolland wanted her to give, he told her “a few nights a month would be great.” After being put in touch with Colton they started working together and the rest is history.

“I realized how much fun working with teenagers is. I always enjoyed working with teenagers and had other jobs working with high schoolers,” Rad said “But this was my first opportunity in a long time to come back to this environment and realize what a neat stage of life this is, and how much I enjoy working with you all. So here I am.”