Laying a foundation for a career in law

Damian Wilmot ’97 is learning the ropes of the legal profession in the heady atmosphere of Connecticut’s highest court. A 2000 graduate of the Suffolk University Law School in Boston, Wilmot has spent the last year as a law clerk for Connecticut Supreme Court Justice Christine S. Vertefeuille ’73. With each new case, Wilmot begins by reading everything on the record, including motions, briefs, and other documents in stacks that can be a foot high or taller. Some weeks when the court is in session, Wilmot spends hours in the courtroom listening to oral arguments that pertain to cases on which he may work. He also researches Connecticut case law and statutes and explores how courts in other states handled similar legal situations. Wilmot has extensive discussions with Vertefeuille, whom he considers both a great mentor and an excellent boss. Finally, Wilmot assists with the drafting of opinions in which each word and sentence must be carefully chosen, with an understanding of how they may affect legal interpretations of the law in the future.

The demanding work has given Wilmot insight into such matters as the style of arguments judges find persuasive and the exact information courts want to see in legal briefs. The experience also has been professionally exhilarating. “We’re the last court of resort in this state,” he says. “I’m in awe sometimes when I think about how many people will be affected by these opinions.”

A student activist
A Boston native, Wilmot believes that his “reading- and writing-intensive” work as an American studies major at Trinity prepared him well for law school and for his career as an attorney. At Suffolk, he was production editor of the Transnational Law Review and received the Book Award for Outstanding Scholarship and Leadership Ability from the Massachusetts Black Judges Conference in 1999. Wilmot passed the Massachusetts bar exam last year and is waiting to hear the results from Connecticut’s test this year.

In addition to cultivating his critical thinking, reading, and writing skills, Wilmot credits Trinity with sparking “an activist spirit” in him. “I became very active on campus and in the Hartford community,” he says. While his instructors—including former American Studies Department Chair James Miller, G. Keith Funston Professor Jan K. Cohn, and Assistant Professor of English Margo Perkins—taught him how to look at society analytically, Wilmot involved himself in student organizations that promoted social change. A member of the black student association (then called the Pan-African Alliance) and president of the Black and Latino Men’s Collective, Wilmot sat on the Minority Affairs Council as a junior and worked on the Black History Month Committee as a senior.

His activism continued in law school. Wilmot considers himself “an entrepreneurial-type person,” and as a Suffolk student and member of its black law student association, he founded a mock interviewing program for minority students. Through the program, partners and general counsels from more than a dozen prestigious law firms and companies interview the students. In collaboration with the president of the Massachusetts Black Lawyers Association and the director of Suffolk University Law School’s Career Services, Wilmot also started Boston’s first mentoring program that pairs minority law students with practicing attorneys from the association. The initiative is being replicated at all the other law schools in the city.

Wilmot’s activism has remained centrally important to his life. Residing in the Hartford area this year, Wilmot has maintained ties with Trinity, particularly through the Black Alumni Association, for which he serves as vice president for student support. In a recent presentation to students at the Umoja House, the home base for Trinity’s black student organization, Wilmot spoke about the value of being an American studies major. He says he tries to make himself particularly available to students who are interested in law careers, offering to serve as a mentor and helping students prepare personal statements for law school applications. Wilmot knows from his own experiences how important such relationships can be. “I don’t think that my success comes from being a special person or from being a more intellectual person than someone else,” he says. “I think my success really comes from the mentor relationships that I’ve been blessed with since college—folks I met at Trinity and in the legal community in Boston. I think that’s very important, so I try to give some of that mentorship back.”

Future options
In the fall, after concluding his year-long stint at the Connecticut Supreme Court, Wilmot will join the Boston law firm of Seyfarth Shaw, where he will focus on labor employment litigation, an area of law that interests him. He is looking forward to relocating because it will mean reuniting with his wife, Yndia Lorick-Wilmot ’99, who is in a Ph.D. program in sociology at Northeastern University. The two were married last fall, and the biggest challenge of his current work, Wilmot notes, has been living in a Bloomfield apartment during the week and going back to Boston only on the weekends.

However Wilmot believes that his year of clerking will be worthwhile in the long term. “A lot of first-year attorneys don’t get this type of training,” he notes. Law firms recognize the value of litigators who have extensive experience with the appellate system from the other side of the bench, he says. In addition, because clerking inspires an understanding of law “at a very intellectual level,” it can pave the way to a future judgeship or a career as a law professor. “Clerking for a judge opens so many more doors for you,” Wilmot says. “I’m not sure where my career will take me, but I try to do things that will give me a lot of options.”

—Leslie Virostek