Not many law students can say they’ve premiered an original play the summer before their 3L year, but Rena Patel ’25 can – and it’s just one of half a dozen creative projects she has in the works.
Praise for her play “Pyar aur Coffee” – “a comedy about four quick-witted and coffee-addicted friends navigating espresso machines, relationships, and South Asian societal expectations all while figuring out what or who makes them happy” – was swift and effusive when Patel debuted the work at the Long Beach Shakespeare Company’s New Works Festival in June 2024. “Patel's light touch keeps the pace brisk, yet the play digs deep into issues of identity, tradition, and the difficulties of bridging cultural divides. Witty moments play with the tropes of rom-coms, both Bollywood and otherwise,” wrote one reviewer.
For this play, Patel drew inspiration from her own life and identity as a South Asian woman, but her body of work touches on everything from Greek mythology to Hinduism to the challenges of being a medical school dropout.
Though she spent most of her undergraduate career as a pre-med student, Patel decided to apply for law school after observing a few of her cousin’s classes at George Washington University Law School. She thought becoming an entertainment lawyer would be the perfect way to combine her interest in law with her lifelong passions for writing and storytelling – and her goal to be a showrunner, writer, and director.
“When you're running a TV show, you're essentially running a company of 200 or 300 people working on this project together. And I think having the technical knowledge, the business and legal and analytical knowledge that law school provides, is just going to be invaluable to that process,” she said.
Patel also hopes to be able to use her legal expertise to help her friends and collaborators in the industry. “My goal is to be able to not just make my own stuff but also be able to help other people make their projects and be able to have the skills and the qualifications to back them up on the business and legal side,” she said.
Patel currently juggles her life as a law student with her budding entertainment career. At LLS, Patel is president of the South Asian Law Students Association, pro bono chair of the Women in Entertainment Law Society, and an arts staffer on the Loyola Interdisciplinary Journal of Public Interest Law. Outside of class, she is an intern at Ramo Law, PC, an entertainment law firm. On the creative side, Patel is an executive assistant at producer Adi Shankar’s production company Bootleg Universe. She’s also co-writing her first film script and working on a young adult novel.
In law school, Patel has found a supportive, collaborative cohort and faculty who care about helping students understand the material on a deeper level rather than just focusing on grades. “The culture of toxic competition doesn't exist here. That's something that I really appreciate,” Patel said. And, especially important for fellow creatives: “The professors here nurture your curiosity.”