Career Spotlight: Chris Ross ’10

Class of 2012 student Chris Ross speaks about his experience in law school post-King's.

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Home State: Hudson, OH

Current Residence: New York, NY

Current Employer: Law School Student

Please tell us about your graduate studies and current employment:  I currently go to law school as an evening student at Fordham University, and I work during the day for two attorneys at a law firm in Times Square.

Brief description of your responsibilities:  As a student, I take my regular courses, am on the staff of the Fordham Law Review, and worked as a Teaching Assistant to a writing course.  At the law firm, I do everything from keep track of billing and expenses to legal research and writing to assisting on our numerous cases.

Relevant past employer/position:  I did an internship last summer with a local prosecutor in Europe.

Brief description of your responsibilities:  In addition to learning generally about a legal system — and more specifically, a criminal justice system — different than the American one, I had the opportunity to do an international study of human sexual trafficking and draft a report with policy recommendations for confronting it in the future.

Where did you go to graduate school?

Name:  Fordham University School of Law

Degree:  J.D.

Completion Date: May 2015

Accolades/Honors: Dean’s List, Fordham Law Review, Mary Daly Scholar (top 10% of class), Legal Writing Award

How did King’s education help and prepare you to succeed?  

The King’s education has its foundation in the liberal arts tradition, which sharpens one’s critical thinking and writing abilities.  Both the Common Core and the PP&E major gave me a great basis for taking these skills and translating them to legal education.  Law school is very much about reading dense documents, distilling principles, and applying these principles to new situations.

In particular, I found that my upper-level classes really helped to solidify these skills. Statesmanship, Civil Rights, Constitutional Law, Political Economy, and Theories of Human Nature were such excellent courses and forced me to grapple with numerous viewpoints.  I have found that analyzing an argument from various perspectives is a crucial skill in law school.

I also appreciated how much the King’s education forced me to write and how much it improved my skills.  Because much of legal practice is being able to distill ideas and present them clearly in writing, I am grateful that King’s helped me establish these skills.  Writing my senior thesis with Professor Tubbs was also foundational for preparing me for legal writing.

What recommendations do you have for current King’s students?  

Be aware that the King’s experience is far more than classroom engagement, even though that is the most important part.  Get involved in your House and other student organizations and try to be involved in some sort of leadership position.  You learn crucial organizational and management skills by doing that.

You should also do your best to get plugged into the broader networks in New York.  Be it your church, a meet-up with like-minded people, an artistic endeavor, or whatever, you’ll meet a lot of people who can help you in a lot of ways.

Favorite Books: Lord of the Rings and Virtue Reborn, by N.T. Wright

Favorite Music: Noah & the Whale, Mumford & Sons, and James Vincent McMorrow

Surprising fact about yourself: I share a birthday with Barack Obama and the Queen Mother of England. We are all left-handed, too.


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