Lucy Sprague Public Service Scholar Seeks to Bring “Humanist Approach” to the Legal Field through Public Interest Work
Public Interest Law
Adryanna Salas has built her entire law school career centered around learning how to use the law as a tool to improve the lives of others. As the recipient of the 2026 Lucy Sprague Scholarship, an endowed gift given to students with a heavy focus in public interest, Adryanna believes that the path towards her dream job in the judiciary includes fulfilling the roles of a career-long public civil servant.
After experiencing the limitations that existed from attending a private school in undergrad and escaping the political and legal landscape of her hometown in Texas, Adryanna gravitated towards UIC Law as the only public law school in Chicago, along with its heavy focus on public interest and giving back to the community through the different legal clinics. Though she came to law school knowing she wanted to do public interest work, the goal became more intentional with each class and experiential learning opportunity she participated in.
“All of my experiences have really shown me that legal issues don’t necessarily exist in a vacuum,” she said. “All of these issues are interconnected, whether it is housing instability or other forms of systemic inequality, and it’s really about the realities people are facing every day that has shaped how I approach legal problems.”
The vast array of experiences Adryanna has accumulated in public interest has taught her to bring a humanist approach to how she goes about advocacy, stating, “It’s not just thinking about what law I can use to build an argument, but really thinking about the person behind the case.”
Building on her skillset, Adryanna was a participant in the Fair Housing Legal Clinic and also worked in the juvenile justice division of the Cook County Public Defender’s Office. She has served for Impact for Equity doing police accountability research and currently conducts immigration asylum work for the Greater Chicago Legal Clinic.
Adryanna has been passionate about using what she learned in law school to not just be a lawyer, but to be one who is going to advocate for clients and represent them in a meaningful way that actually ensures their voices are heard.
“Right now, it doesn’t really feel like the law is on people’s side, especially as it relates to immigration, so it’s really advocating about their humanity is what I found to be really important right now,” she said.
Adryanna credits courses from her Critical Race and Gender Studies concentration and the law school’s Writing Resource Center (WRC) for preparing her for a career in law. A course in critical race feminism taught her to explore how theories work in the real world and how interlocking systems of oppression add to the depth of inequality in society. It deepened her understanding of how systemic inequalities and harms really interact with people’s everyday lives and how as a lawyer, she can disrupt that harm and make meaningful changes.
Keen skills acquired from the WRC, coupled with learning how to challenge those theories strengthened how she wrote as a lawyer, allowing her to draft a response brief to the Department of Human Services (DHS) to defend a client against deportation.
Adryanna also credits the diverse group of professors and the services offered by the Career Services Office (CSO) for solidifying her success in law school.
“I really appreciate that there is someone in the CSO who is geared towards public interest and knows how to speak the language of public interest employers,” she said.
Post-commencement, Adryanna hopes to secure a role in the public defender’s office with a long-term goal of becoming a judge, acknowledging that they are the decision makers that can make changes for good.
“Doctors have an oath to do no harm. Same rules apply for lawyers, but in addition to ‘do no harm’, public interest is about taking it a step further: how do we stop harm that has already happened and how do we make sure it doesn’t happen again,” she concluded.