Andy Cowan grew up in Iowa, where he passed the time between his high school classes by leafing through the bound volumes of the Iowa Code in the back of one classroom.  He attended the University of Iowa, where he was President of the University of Iowa Amateur Radio Club and the University of Iowa Civil Liberties Union, as well as driving a 40-foot transit bus for four years.  He was graduated Bachelor of Science in Physics and Astronomy in May of 2005, and left Iowa for snowier places.  Andy attended the Cornell Law School, where he was president of the National Lawyers Guild, Law School Representative to the Graduate and Professional Student Assembly, and served as an Articles Editor on the Cornell Journal of Law and Public Policy.  As Vice Chair of the University’s Codes and Judicial Committee in his third year, Andy played an active role in ensuring that a major rewrite to the Campus Code of Conduct maintained the rights of the accused.  After receiving the degree of Juris Doctor cum laude in 2008, Andy joined the Lowell District Court Unit of the Committee for Public Counsel Services.

When neither defending nor blogging, Andy is an avid–albeit mediocre–rock climber, meadmaker, and traveler.  He hikes and climbs with the Free Outing Club for the Cornell/Ithaca Area. He maintains another blog called Mostly Plants at which he chronicles his adventures and kitchen experiments.

Alejandro Ramos is tied for the position of “new guy” in the Springfield District Court office of the CPCS Public Defender Division.  Born and raised in sunny Puerto Rico, he has proceeded a strange, non-evolutionarily based climb towards colder and snowier climes, first spending four years in Indiana, then moving to Massachusetts.  At Indiana, Alejandro studied Computer Science and Journalism at Indiana University Bloomington, where he was also a member of the Latin Dance Club – mostly to get the girls.  (And, yes, that actually worked.)

Alejandro then studied at Northeastern University School of Law, where he studied his juris doctorate and thought long and hard as to whether or not to append “Esq.” to the end of his name.  When not spending time on such matters of vital importance, he did internships with CPCS’s Boston Superior Court Trial Unit, the Boston Federal Defender’s Office, Masferrer & Associates, and Magistrate Judge Leo T. Sorokin, in reverse chronological order.  It was this path that brought him to love criminal defense work, and thus he finds himself where he is today.

His interests lie in the realms of literature, movies, dancing, and gaming (both video and tabletop).  He maintains his own blog called the Aberrant Manifest (because he likes odd names for things), where he chronicles the day to day affairs of his life.

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Posted by admin on October 19th, 2008 :: Filed under A Day in the Life

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