Board of Trustees discuss law careers

By Francisco Omar Fernandez Rodriguez Arts & Features Editor The Board of Trustees hosted the “Careers in Law” panel discussion in the CIE on April 1. Thomas Severo, a professor in Political Science, Law, and Global Studies, began the event with the bang of his gavel. He introduced himself as the moderator of the panel. The panel was made up of members of the Board of Trustees and they were happy to share their experiences in law school and their careers, he said. “I wanted to say also, I’m very grateful for another opportunity to use my gavel,” Severo said. He introduced Ann McDonald as “our general counsel, chief of staff, and secretary to the Board of Trustees here at Framingham State.” She thanked everyone for coming, and Student Trustee Jeremy McDonald for helping coordinate the event with Akiko Takamori, secretary to the Board of Trustees. Ann McDonald introduced the rest of the panelists, starting with Anthony E. Hubbard, managing senior legal counsel for CVS Health and chair of the Board of Trustees. Next she introduced Susan Puryear, interim associate vice president for research administration at the Georgia Institute of Technology. Last, she introduced Antonia Soares-Thompson, director of racial justice initiatives at the Middlesex County District Attorney’s Office. “So I suspect we will all have very different perspectives, given that our work is very different in the law, and I look forward to the conversation,” Ann McDonald said. Severo said he, Takamori, and Jeremy McDonald developed questions that should highlight their different career paths and their day-to-day lives. Severo asked the first question, “If you could give one piece of advice to students who might be considering law school, what piece of advice might you give?” Hubbard said his peers had a competitive advantage because they were mainly English majors. With the course grade depending on the final exam, people who could write effectively and get their point across likely did very well, he said. Puryear said it’s OK to go to law school without an exact career path in mind. But it’s important to go into the process of attending law school “with a clear sense of your passions and your interests because those are going to be your guiding stars,” Puryear said. Soares-Thompson said she was never a good reader or writer, which made learning how to write the way law school required challenging. Despite that, the challenge is worth it because the degree opens up many opportunities, sometimes not even about law, she said. The biggest challenge is deciding to go, she said. A year ago, she would’ve said that taking a specific major might not matter, she said. But in the current climate, taking certain majors to get specific skill sets is more important. Ann McDonald said it’s important to follow passions and to think about what to do after law school. Also, don’t believe what T.V. shows about attorneys show because they’re not realistic, she said. “So if you’ve watched ‘Suits’ or some other show like that and you’re like ‘Yeah, that’s what I want,’ yeah, that’s not what it is, so be prepared,” Ann McDonald said. Severo added pop culture usually only shows one part of the law - litigation, and even litigators don’t do that much litigation. He asked the next question, “If there’s anything in particular, something that maybe you wish you had known before you started your law school journey, what might that be?” Ann McDonald said she was an “English major wannabe” because when she told her guidance counselor she wanted to be an English major in order to teach, she was told to be an education major. Law school involves volumes of reading and writing, so knowing how to write well would be helpful, she said. The LSAT - the exam students take before going to law school - is a standardized test with analytical and predictive components to it, she said. “I can remember being in law school a couple of times and going, ‘Oh, this is kind of like that LSAT question,” Ann McDonald said. Soares-Thompson said she wished she knew she didn’t have to be perfect. She grew up with immigrant parents and was first-generation, making undergraduate school already difficult, she said. But the people around her said she should go to law school if she was passionate about it. She didn’t do well on the LSAT, but she supported her law school application in other ways, she said. “You don’t have to be perfect, but you have to be willing to do the work,” Soares-Thompson said. There will be time to figure out where to practice, and that could be where perfection comes in, she added. She used to be a criminal defense attorney, but now she’s a prosecutor, she said. Puryear said she wished she knew picking the right school matters. “What I mean is you need to choose the right school for you,” Puryear added. She first went to Harvard Law School and stayed for two months, she said. But it didn’t feel like the right school for her at that point in her life, so she left. She returned to Harvard and got an MA in education, she said. Then she decided to return to law school, now with a new perspective. She ended up going to Stanford, Puryear said. She actually enjoyed her time at law school. “There are different schools that can support people in different ways,” Puryear said. Hubbard said when he went to law school he was younger than most of his peers because he was in a program where he did three years of high school and three years of college. He wasn’t old enough to drink when he went into law school, he said. He felt like his peers had life experience they could bring to the law that he didn’t. He found it was very theoretical for him, while the others were really applying what they learned, he added. He wished that he could have postponed going to law school, Hubbard said. Severo asked about their day-to-day experience in their current careers. Soares-Thompson said she works with assistant district attorneys who prosecute crimes in the community. “My specific focus is on hate crimes, so I oversee all of our civil rights violations and hate crimes,” Soares-Thompson said. They work in trials and they interact with witnesses, victims, and police officers, she said. They work with topics such as immigration and DEI in the courtroom frequently, she said. Ann McDonald said there was a period of time when she didn’t practice law, while serving as an administrator in higher education. She’d say the law informed her work, she added. She wasn’t practicing law until she came to FSU and served as general counsel, she said. Her typical day is too crazy to explain well, she added. “My best way of describing it is, I always tell people it’s mental gymnastics,” Ann McDonald said. She goes from meeting with executive staff to trustees to claims or cases, and writing procedures, she said. She decided to stay on campus in order to help avoid student crises, she added. Puryear said she oversees research support operations. She supports universities in applying for grants from the government, companies, and nonprofit organizations. People who work for her also help the faculty with managing the money and dealing with compliance issues, she said. Law school helped her analyze and process information, she added. “We refer to it as issue spotting. So you look at a situation or a fact pattern, or a conflict, or an opportunity, or a challenge, and how do you really look at it from a variety of perspectives?” Puryear said. Hubbard said he was passionate about capital formation in law school. He focuses on corporate law and avoids litigation. “It’s, to me, backward looking. It is cleaning up messes. It’s like, there’s a spill on aisle nine, and now here comes the litigators coming to clean it up, because it can go on forever,” Hubbard said. He focuses on mergers and acquisitions in his CVS job, he said. His brother was recently talking about the Celtics being sold for $6.1 billion, he added. Hubbard works on deals larger than that. After the food arrived, they decided to limit the responses to only one person per question. Jeremy McDonald asked, “How did you decide to pursue an alternative to the traditional legal practice?” Soares-Thompson said going to a firm right out of law school is traditional and high paying, but she didn’t choose that. She went into public interest as a public defender, she said. While growing up with immigrant parents, she had the perspective of the underdog. “My perspective was always to fight for those that were seen as different,” Soares-Thompson said. Going to law school was always about public interest, she added. Now, she’s a prosecutor who is changing how their communities are treated. Jeremy McDonald asked, “What skills outside of legal knowledge have become most important to you in your career?” Puryear said communication is a helpful skill both verbally and in writing. Writing in law school is a different type of writing, she added. It is the skills from law school that makes someone “an amazing prosecutor, or corporate attorney, or general counsel, or whatever it is that you’re going to do with your career,” Puryear said.