Growing up in a small Jewish neighborhood in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Jesse Rabner attended an inner-city public high school and spent his free time helping children and young adults with special needs. He graduated as valedictorian from high school and then headed out to the University of Colorado Boulder to study English literature with minors in Hebrew, business, and space studies.
“As an undergraduate, I was the president of Alpha Epsilon Pi, the Jewish fraternity, and led several trips to Israel for the Jewish students there,” Rabner says. “I also spent one summer in Tel Aviv working for a small immigration law firm, Gungras Consultants, which assisted Syrian refugees seeking asylum.”
Rabner took a gap year following his graduation from CU Boulder to do more volunteer work, but this time he focused on conservation projects.
“I volunteered through the American Conservation Experience and joined a backcountry trail crew preserving trail systems and ecosystems all across the state of California, including Tahoe, Humboldt, and Big Sur,” Rabner says. “I then spent a summer on a communal organic vegetable farm on the Olympic Peninsula in Washington State.”
In fact, he describes a “hike out west” as one of those significant moments in life that led him to the conservation work.
“The first time I ever hiked out west, in Aspen, Colorado, I knew I wanted to protect our environment. It was a transcendental experience for me. It is what motivated me to volunteer in conservation. Actually, I wrote a lot of my law school essays from a tent at night!” Rabner says.
Needless to say, he’s passionate about consumer and environmental protection.
“I chose to go to law school to develop a litigation skillset so that I could advocate on behalf of consumers with minimal power as well as the environment. I hope to be involved in some high-stakes lawsuits aiming to achieve corporate accountability to society and our planet,” he says.
Now in his 2L year at Utah Law, Rabner is most impressed by the faculty for being “incredibly personable,” and he appreciates that his law school experience hasn’t been an overly competitive one.
Rabner has taken advantage of the experiential learning opportunities available by interning with Justice David Wecht at the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, Justice Jill Pohlman at the Utah Supreme Court, and Judge David Williams at the Second District Court. Moreover, he is helping Professor Paul Cassell on a hornbook chapter discussing victims’ rights throughout the voir dire process.
“All of these experiences have been immersive and have enabled me to get an accurate lens into how the legal world really operates outside of the classroom. Further, I feel like I have gained some meaningful mentors in my life,” he says.
Among his many accomplishments, Rabner is vice-president of the Jewish Law Students Association (JLSA) at Utah Law and shares how he, and a few others, helped found the organization.
“As a 1L, I knew there were a few other Jewish students, but there was no formal organization for us. We realized that this would prevent future Jewish students from coming to such an amazing school. So we started the organization to create a safe place and home for these students at Utah Law,” Rabner says.
In addition to providing support for the Jewish student demographic, JLSA hosts speaker and networking events for its members.
“There is a home for Jewish students here. We want to strengthen our presence, friendships, and positive contributions to Utah Law!” he says.
Rabner will graduate next year with the class of 2027, but he’s already looking ahead.
“My goal is to pursue a federal trial clerkship and successfully litigate high-profile class actions from the plaintiffs’ side. Ideally, I would like to be involved in lawsuits that specifically target companies manufacturing and distributing highly processed foods,” he says.