How Chenchen Yu Combined The Best Of Law And Business With UNB Degree
Ever since she was a young girl, Chenchen Yu figured she would one day own her own business. Her friends did, too; she just seemed to have that entrepreneurial spirit and a mind for marketing.
So, it was a surprise to those friends when Yu ended up studying psychology and law, eventually becoming a lawyer.
But even as she plugged away working for a regional firm in P.E.I., Yu’s entrepreneurial brain never shut off. After a few years, she identified a niche in the market and struck out on her own.
Yu is one of the few practicing lawyers in Atlantic Canada who is completely fluent in Mandarin. There are always Chinese nationals looking to move to, buy property, or set up businesses in Atlantic Canada.
Yu, through her firm Radiant Legal, is their go-to lawyer.
Striking out on her own was a bold step for the young lawyer and Yu says it’s been stressful at times. But one thing that has helped her tremendously is her extra-unique law degree.
Yu graduated from UNB’s joint MBA-Juris Doctor degree program. The program combines a traditional law degree with the Faculty of Management’s MBA degree, giving grads the skills to practice law, as well as deep insights into the world of business.
Yu says the degree was an instrumental part of her ability to run her own law firm. She’s just filing her corporate taxes for the first time, for example, and says that process has been overwhelming.
She’s not sure she could have done it without the accounting classes she took through the MBA portion of her degree.
But beyond that, Yu says the program has given her a much deeper understanding of the business world that’s allowed her to communicate with her clients more effectively. Even presentations she had to do through her business courses helped her build confidence.
Matthew Orrell is another graduate of UNB’s joint MBA-Juris Doctor degree program. Although his career path looks wildly different from Yu’s, Orrell echoes much of what she says about the program.
He says the degree is directly responsible for several of the job offers he’s received over the course of his career.
Early on, Orrell took a clerkship with the Tax Court of Canada. He was competing for the job against applicants with sterling educational pedigrees and is convinced the MBA portion of his degree raised him above the rest.
“Having the MBA on my resume really augmented my chances of getting a job when I was a summer student. I articled with McInnes Cooper and then was lucky enough to have the firm wait a year while I completed my clerkship at the Tax Court before returning as an associate,” said Orrell.
“I really do think it separated me from all my other classmates and provided that extra boost.”
These days, Orrell works for McInnis Cooper as a tax lawyer. He credits the UNB program for helping him get that job, as well, and says the skills he picked up have helped him excel in the field.
He says he still draws on things he learned in the professional development class, which taught him a suite of business etiquette practices that Orrell says, “you’d never touch in a typical law program.”
He also remembers a class on entrepreneurship that embedded him with a local startup seeking funding. That, he says, gave him incredible insight into how businesses are run.
“Every client is unique, so having that background of all these unique experiences I got from my classes, it provided me just with a wide range of knowledge that I can connect with my clients now,” Orrell says.
Martha McClellan, the manager of academic affairs and student services at UNB’s faculty of law, says she’s seen first-hand how the joint degree can help grads once they’re in the working world.
“For students with business-oriented or entrepreneurial career goals, the JD/MBA joint degree can provide the opportunity to develop effective leadership and decision-making skills that are essential to the ever-changing business environment. she says.
“The joint degree also provides students with a foundation of business knowledge that, in a legal environment, can assist graduate’s understanding of their client’s business needs and allow them to view files from different perspectives.
More information on UNB’s joint MBA-Juris Doctor degree program is available here.