Leading with distinction

Katharine Roberts, policy advisor and mother of 4, thrives in the Weekend JD program

Books and movies about law school often depict it as a cutthroat place. But Weekend JD student Katharine Roberts knew Loyola was different from day one.

“At orientation, [former] School of Law Dean Michael Kaufman explained that kindness is really a professional virtue, not just a personal one,” she recalls. “That you can go a long way in life and in the legal profession by practicing the habit of empathy towards others.”

An atmosphere of mutual support is “what makes Loyola distinctive,” she adds.

Fresh out of college, Roberts got married and went directly to law school at Georgetown. She completed just one semester after learning she was pregnant with her first child.

Back then, “I honestly didn’t know it was possible to have children and go to law school at the same time,” she says. “So I dropped out.”

Roberts was a stay-at-home mom for a few years, had three more children, and went on to pursue a career in public policy and government.

In the back of her mind, she always thought: Maybe someday I’ll go back to law school.

“I figured that would be when my kids were grown,” she says.

But then, when she was a communications staffer for the Illinois State Senate Democratic Caucus, Roberts worked with State Senator Jacqueline Collins (JD ‘20), who graduated from Loyola’s Weekend JD program while she was in office. Collins encouraged her to consider the program—and to not wait until her children left the nest.

“I’ve found at Loyola a family feeling. No matter what else is going on in my life, I’m supported in my legal education.”

As it turned out, Loyola wasn’t just a viable option, it was the best one. The program blends online learning with face-to-face classes every other weekend. That allows Roberts to work full time, raise her kids, and commute to campus from her home in Springfield.

Today, she is a policy advisor at the Illinois Attorney General’s Office and is completing her 4L year, all while serving as editor-in-chief of the Loyola University Chicago Law Journal. She is the first Weekend JD student to hold the post.

In summer 2020, in the wake of George Floyd’s killing and the nationwide uprisings in support of racial justice, the School of Law rewrote its mission statement to be explicitly anti-racist. Roberts, who also serves as a School of Law inclusion, diversity, and equity ambassador, thinks it was an important step. “We need to work harder to ensure everything we do reflects that mission and the great strength we have in diversity,” she says.

Her predecessor as editor, Becky Bavlsik, convened a working group to study how the journal could improve diversity, equity, and inclusion in everything from the authors it publishes to the editorial staff.

“I definitely wanted to continue that work,” says Roberts, who adds that the initiative is in the research and listening phase. “The work of publishing a journal is just tremendous,” she says. “We want this to be a mission we don’t lose sight of.”

Roberts says that Weekend JD students are a tight-knit bunch. Because many of them, like her, are nontraditional, older students with families and/or full-time careers, they understand the importance of family, and they provide ongoing support—little nudges (like reminders about upcoming quizzes) and big celebrations of achievements alike.

“I’ve found at Loyola a family feeling,” she says. “No matter what else is going on in my life, I’m supported in my legal education.” —Audrey Michelle Mast (February 2022)