News Archive
IU McKinney Evening Student is Indianapolis Bar Association Law Student Pro Bono Honoree for 2014
11/26/2014
Tyler Smith, a 2L evening student at IU McKinney, received the Indianapolis Bar Association’s Law Student Pro Bono Award for 2014. He contributed 375 hours of pro bono service through the Neighborhood Christian Legal Clinic’s “Project GRACE,” or “Guided Re-entry Assistance and Community Education.” Among the project’s services is an expungement help desk, which is where Smith’s volunteer efforts were directed.
“For the most part, we saw people who would be denied jobs based solely on the fact that they had an arrest record,” Smith said. Often it didn’t matter that charges were never filed; if the client had been arrested, that was enough for some employers to hire someone else. Smith worked for Project GRACE in this capacity from September 2013 through May 2014. In the span of just over a year, more than 2,000 people were helped with expunging their arrest records.
Since July 2014, Smith has worked in the legal department at the Indiana Bureau of Motor Vehicles. Prior to that, he worked for the Marion County Public Defender Agency for approximately one year.
Originally from Kalamazoo, Michigan, Smith is a sergeant in the National Guard and he has servedin the military for 10 years. He was an honor guard team leader for the Michigan Army National Guard from 2007-2010, where he performed military honors for deceased veterans.
A graduate of Western Michigan University, Smith studied aviation. His first job was with a community corrections department, however, and that sparked an interest that motivated him to earn an online criminal justice degree . Smith enjoyed his work so much that he studied online through Arizona State University.
He’s hoping to take on some cases as a certified legal intern for the Neighborhood Christian Legal Clinic, and will be the first evening program student to have a judicial externship in Spring 2015, when he will be an extern for Justice Steven David, ’82.
He’s unsure what his ideal job looks like at the moment, but when asked about the area of law he most hopes to pursue after his time at IU McKinney, Smith quickly responded “public interest. I feel strongly about that area of law. It comes from a desire to serve.”
