To be honest, I’m not one of those lawyers who spent their whole life knowing they wanted to be a lawyer. My parents weren’t lawyers. I didn’t get into arguments a lot as a little kid. I didn’t do debate club or mock trial in high school, or at Hamilton. I still haven’t seen most of the tv shows or movies people most associate with attorneys. No Law & Order. No Good Wife. Not even Legally Blonde!
But yet here I am - two years into a legal career and feeling satisfied with my life choices. How did this happen? Well, in retrospect, three key moments stand out. I’ll talk about those now, and, at the end of my piece, I’ll briefly share what lessons I’ve drawn from my experience.
I. When I arrived in Clinton in August 2010, I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life. All I knew was this: I liked to think. I liked to write. I liked to learn. And I liked to serve others. Unsurprisingly, these vague principles led me all over the place during my first few years at Hamilton. I took a wide range of classes, from Professor Rob Hopkins’s delightful survey of classical music history to Professor Peter Rabinowitz’s enigmatically titled “Detective Story.” I considered a bunch of different careers -- among them, history professor, policy analyst, and newspaper reporter. I even studied abroad in India during the fall of my junior year.
But the turning point came in spring 2013 when I traveled to Washington, D.C., with Hamilton’s “Semester in DC” program. The program required students to secure a full-time internship prior to attending, but, as the semester approached, I had no idea where I wanted to intern. Fortunately, though, I saw an email from a Hamilton alum named Tracee Plowell, offering students a chance to intern at the U.S. Department of Justice’s Public Integrity Section where Tracee worked as a prosecutor. That sounded interesting, I thought, so I signed up.
It was a good decision. I had a highly rewarding experience, which, in turn, led me to reach out to other Hamilton alumni working in the legal profession at places other than DOJ to talk about their careers. By the end of the semester, I was convinced I should give this “law school thing” a shot. I wasn’t sure exactly what kind of law I wanted to do—who is?—but I did know I liked the way lawyers tried to solve problems: one at a time, with a focus on helping a specific client based on the specific facts of a specific dispute. I also liked that lawyers could actually solve problems, in a real-world sense, whether through the enforcement of rights, or the negotiation of a fair compromise. It all seemed to strike a nice balance between thinking in a measured and analytical manner, on the one hand, and assisting people through concrete struggles and disagreements, on the other.
II. Still, I knew I didn’t want to decamp for law school immediately after graduation; too much, too fast, it seemed. So I decided to take a detour for a year, and do something completely different: I applied for a Fulbright grant to teach English at a university in southeastern Turkey. There was no great logic to this decision; I thought Turkey would be a fascinating place to spend a year, and Hamilton alumni who worked there in prior years spoke highly of their experience. But, thanks to the assistance of Ginny Dosch and a few of my professors (shout out to Professors Lisa Trivedi and Doug Ambrose), I received the grant, and ultimately had a transformative experience. Every day presented a new challenge; even the simplest of tasks didn’t come easy. I was humbled, regularly. And, through it all, I learned a tremendous amount about navigating differences and finding similarities.
Now, I still ended up applying to law schools while I was in Turkey, per my initial plans. But, when I started law school the following fall (I had received, and accepted, an offer to attend Yale Law School around halfway through the year), I’d like to think I was a humbler and more understanding person than I would have been had I gone straight from Hamilton. This, in turn, meant I was a better law student and classmate than I would have otherwise been. (Spending a year in southeastern Turkey during the height of the Syrian Civil War also gave me better stories to start conversations with than I otherwise would have had - which is not a benefit to be scoffed at!)
III. Fast-forward to halfway through law school. I’ve taken a lot of great courses, I’ve met a bunch of brilliant people, and I’m beginning to nurture a nascent interest in complex civil litigation (think, class actions). But I didn’t particularly want to start my career after law school at a law firm or government agency, and especially not in New York City or Washington, D.C., where, seemingly, 90% of my classmates were going. So I decided to apply for a “judicial clerkship” in the Midwest. I had grown up near Chicago and harbored a faint interest in maybe returning to “the area,” broadly defined, after law school.
Now, what is a “clerkship,” you might ask? Well, clerks are (most often) recent law students graduates who spend one to two years serving as a research assistant/ghostwriter/sounding board for a judge, in either the state or federal court system. And why do judges need people to do that? Well, because judges are responsible for an enormous number of cases, and yet are expected to reach decisions in a timely manner and then explain those decisions in written--sometimes quite lengthy--documents called “opinions.” So, clerkships are great because the judge gets a few eager young assistants, the clerk gets a lifelong mentor (and a great deal of substantive work experience), and litigants get to have their disputes decided in a faster, and more reasoned, manner than would otherwise be possible. If you can get the gig, in other words, it’s a win-win-win.
Fortunately, with the help of my law school professors and a few Yale alumni who had clerked for judges I applied to, I did get the gig. Two gigs, in fact: a clerkship with a judge on the U.S. District Court of Minnesota (in St. Paul) for 2018-2019, and a clerkship with a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit (in Cleveland) for 2019-2020. I didn’t have connections to either city; actually, I knew barely anything about either city. But I had heard wonderful things about the judges, and these kinds of clerkships are once-in-a-lifetime opportunities. So I accepted both offers. Worst comes to worst, I figured, I could always go back to New York or DC at the end of my clerkships, where good legal jobs seemed to grow on trees.
Yet, just like my experiences with the Hamilton DC Program and the Fulbright program, my first clerkship year in Minnesota, when I worked for a federal district court judge, turned out to be (unexpectedly) transformative. Yes, I learned a ton of law, gained a lot of writing experience, and got to watch some really good lawyers at work, both during trials in front of juries and during hearings in front of my judge. (I got to watch some really bad lawyers, too, which is an education in its own right.) But, more importantly, I gained a true mentor and ally in my boss and got to know the ins and outs of a local legal community. And, by the end of the year, I had all but decided I wanted to return to Minneapolis to start my legal career (once I finish my second clerkship in Cleveland, where I am now). This was not what I expected to happen when I accepted the position.
So, what lessons do I draw from my (admittedly very limited) experiences? A few things. First, it’s ok to have a career plan, but don’t set things in stone too early. In other words, don’t just do what’s “expected” of you, or what’s “typical” of the average person in your profession. The liberal arts ideal isn’t simply about trying out different courses while you’re in college; it’s about living life with an open mind. Second, and relatedly, if you’re considering going to graduate school, try to do something completely different before you go, if only for a year. Higher education can be an esoteric, alienating endeavor, and it’s important to stay grounded. Third, every job I’ve ever gotten has been, in some way or another, thanks to the advice or assistance of alumni or teacher. Hamilton is not a collection of buildings - it’s a vibrant, diverse human community. Take advantage of that.
And, on that last note, if you’re a student reading this, please feel free to contact me if you have any questions about law-related topics. I’m always happy to talk. You can reach me at anderson.tuggle@gmail.com.
