Anabella Lojpur ’19 Wins the 2019 Mary Rose Strubbe Employment Writing Prize

Anabella Lojpur ’19 has won Chicago-Kent College of Law’s inaugural Mary Rose Strubbe Employment Writing Prize for her paper Streamlining Work Authorization or Endangering Privacy Rights? The Ramifications of a National E-Verify Mandate. 

The prize was established to honor the legacy of Professor of Legal Research and Writing Mary Rose Strubbe ’81, who taught at Chicago-Kent for more than 20 years.  As the prizewinner, Lojpur will receive $5,000, and her paper has been published on the Chicago-Kent Institute for Law and the Workplace’s website. 

In her paper, Lojpur discusses the ramifications of a national E-Verify mandate on personally identifiable information and the system’s increased threats to employees’ overall privacy rights. Lojpur wrote the paper for her Privacy Rights in Employment class, taught by Adjunct Professor Meagan LeGear ’06.

“I would like to thank Professor Meagan LeGear for her feedback and encouragement throughout the writing process,” says Lojpur. 

Lojpur earned a bachelor’s degree in political science from Loyola University Chicago and graduated from Chicago-Kent in May 2019 with a J.D. degree and a J.D. certificate in Labor and Employment Law. At Chicago-Kent, she was vice president of the Immigration Law Society and a student editor of the Employee Rights and Employment Policy Journal. In spring 2019, Lojpur received a CALI Award for earning the highest grade in her Legal Writing IV: Immigration Law course.

“I am grateful to have had the opportunity to participate in Chicago-Kent’s Labor and Employment Program,” says Lojpur. “The knowledge I have gained from dedicated professors has allowed me to address critical issues in complementary areas of law, such as immigration. I am hopeful that my paper highlights intersections between the two practice areas.”

Currently, Lojpur is an associate at the law firm of Young Ah Ri, P.C., where she works on a variety of employment-based and family-based immigration matters.

The Strubbe Prize is awarded annually for the best piece of legal writing in labor and employment law by a Chicago-Kent student. Entries are blind-judged by a group of Chicago-Kent faculty, adjunct faculty, and alumni.

Strubbe graduated with honors from Chicago-Kent in 1981 and then spent several years in private practice, focusing on plaintiff-side employment law matters.  In 1994, she joined the Chicago-Kent faculty. During her tenure at Chicago-Kent, she served as the director of the Legal Research and Writing Program (2001 to 2014) and as assistant director of the Institute for Law and the Workplace (1996 to 2017).

Following Strubbe’s retirement in 2017, the Chicago Federation of Labor, faculty, and alumni joined together to establish the Mary Rose Strubbe Employment Writing Prize to honor her impact on the legal education of thousands of Chicago-Kent students.