Name: Brian Haining

Year: Senior

Major: Organization Behavior

Minor: Economics

CFS Program: Field Studies in Social Justice

Employer: HBR Consulting

This summer I interned with HBR consulting, a legal operations consulting firm. This firm structures their internship in a way that grants exposure to a variety of their business units; I began in their Strategic Sourcing and Business Operations unit and rotated to their Law Department Consulting unit about halfway through. I chose HBR because I was interested in learning more about consulting in general, but HBR specifically is interesting due to the fact that they are a small to mid-sized consulting firm focused on a more narrow area of expertise. Through conversations with their employees and experience with the work they do every day, I’m getting to observe how this firm leverages that expertise to help law firms and law departments adjust their operations in response to shifting market realities.

Since I knew I was going to spend most of my days in the ci  ty learning about a business, I wanted to spend my evenings learning about the experiences of the people living there. That informed my decision to take the Field Studies in Social Justice course offered by Andrea Ritchie, and I could not have made a better decision. Professor Ritchie exposes her class to a diverse range of social realities experienced by many residents within the Chicagoland area and beyond, not just through lecture but by bringing in engaging guest speakers and encouraging her students to attend social justice events outside of the class. I would highly recommend this course to any student that would like to examine in-depth root causes and potential solutions to socio-economic inequality.