Exploring the Landscape of the Legal Profession with Lawyer Madison Griffin

Lucy Sheldon ’27

News Editor

On Wednesday, April 9, public interest lawyer Madison Griffin visited the Trinity College campus as a guest lecturer. She discussed her experience applying to law school and her process for deciding which area of law to practice. At a time when Trinity students are gearing up for graduation and preparing for their next venture, this talk shed light on the legal profession for any senior or undergraduate student who might be interested in pursuing a career in law. 

As a former student of Trinity College Public Policy and Law professor Shane Gleason, Griffin was invited and hosted by the Public Policy and Law and Political Science departments. A small group of faculty and students convened in Dangremond Family Commons for Griffin’s “Law after Law School” talk. The intimate group created a comfortable setting for Griffin to share her undergraduate and law school journey. It also allowed audience members to ask questions and steer the conversation toward their areas of interest. 

Griffin was a first-generation college student. She shared that when she applied to law school, she had “never met a lawyer. I don’t have anybody in my family who is a lawyer. I was the first person going through college in my family, so it was a lot of new stuff to me.” She instead availed herself of the resources and mentors available to her at Indiana University, like Professor Gleason, attorneys she interned for, and Reddit. She said, “I like to make myself available to students on that front” for these reasons. She has been practicing law for three years, specializing in housing law. Griffin works on eviction prevention in the Bronx, serving the poorest borough in New York City and the second poorest county in the United States. Thirty percent of Bronx residents are under the federal poverty line, which is one requirement for free legal counsel. 

For those seriously considering attending law school, Griffin has a recommendation: think about your passions and why you want to be a lawyer, and hold on to that as it will be your leading motivator. In addition, she said it is important to remind yourself that the law field is dominated by white men; it was only recently that 51% of students entering law school were female. So, for Griffin, she constantly told herself that “what I am doing is hard. And what I am doing: breaking into something that maybe a first-generation student wouldn’t be invited to. Or because I didn’t have someone paying my rent as I went to school, it wasn’t made to be easy for me.” So, for students who will have to financially support themselves through law school, Griffing urges them to consider and plan for the various barriers, like the LSAT, that they will need to endure in order to enter and succeed in law school.

Griffin paid approximately $1,500 for a commercial LSAT-prep course to prepare for the LSAT. She recognized that these exams are not indicative of how much she loved the law or her intellect, but instead entirely about reading comprehension and learning the language of the law. Moreover, as she began thinking about which law school to apply to, she considered what area of law she wanted to practice, the location of the law school and most importantly, the cost of the school. After narrowing down her list of law schools to 10, she weighed the pros and cons of each school and then only submitted five applications. Ultimately, Griffin decided to attend CUNY School of Law because of her desire to practice public interest law.

To survey how Trinity’s senior class is preparing for their future careers in law, Trinity Tripod interviewed Jake Loor ’25, a student accepted to several T14 law schools. Loor has been actively involved at Trinity since his freshman year: he co-founded the Students Against Mass Incarceration organization (SAMI); served as the vice president of Trinity’s national political science honor society, Pi Sigma Alpha; participated in Trinity’s Legislative Internship Program at the Connecticut General Assembly and played for Trinity’s Division III soccer team. When asked what factors mattered to him most as he thought about which law schools he would apply for, he said the size of the school and the opportunities available to him there were of the utmost importance. He attributed his success in this recent law school application cycle to Trinity College. He said Trinity’s small student body and professor-to-student ratio ensured he was able to participate and found various clubs while also pursuing internships and programs of interest. It was also because of his flexible class schedule that he was able to study for the LSAT and take it in his junior year. Hence, he wants a law school that will provide him with similar opportunities.

When asked whether he considered taking time off before applying and starting law school, Jake answered: “It’s intimidating to go to these admitted student days and be one of the youngest in a sea of accepted law students who have written and published books or had entire careers.” However, he finds comfort in knowing he will be able to become a lawyer sooner by proceeding straight into law school and thus be able to have a lengthy law career. During the “Law after Law School” talk, Gleason shared a conversation he had with Griffin in which he told her, “If you’re interested in becoming a lawyer, you need to distinguish whether you just want to be a lawyer or need to become a lawyer.” Loor’s decision to pursue law school echoed Gleason’s sentiment, as Loor shared that by his first year at Trinity, he was absolutely set on becoming a lawyer.