By the time I decided to pursue a Masters of Law, LLM, in Criminal Law, I had already earned my JD, passed the Bar Exam, and started gaining practical experience in the field of criminal justice. After the grind of law school, most attorneys never want to engage in any type of schooling again. I had already completed the education required to practice law, and I was learning every day through the work itself. Yet the longer I worked in criminal justice, the more I realized that practicing it created new avenues of inquiry. Law School was good at teaching theory and learning how to memorize. Actually practising was completely different.
That realization was a large part of what led me to the State University of New York at Buffalo Law School in 1995. I did not return because I wanted to change careers or start over. I returned because my experience as both a prosecutor and criminal defense attorney had changed the way I thought about the criminal justice system, and I wanted the opportunity to study Criminal Law in depth with that new perspective.
Practicing Law Changed How I Perceived the Subject
I earned my JD from Thomas M. Cooley Law School in 1989. My legal education gave me the foundation I needed to get a job as an attorney. I learned how to read cases, identify legal issues, analyze facts, and understand the principles behind different areas of law. Like most law students, I spent a great deal of time learning how the attorneys argued their respective positions and why certain decisions had been reached by the Court.
The experience was different once I began working as an Assistant Ocean County Prosecutor. Criminal law was no longer contained within cases that had been selected because they illustrated a particular principle. The facts did not arrive neatly organized, and nobody identified the unique legal issues before I opened the file. I had to think critically and work through the facts and circumstances. At that point I then determined how I was going to prove the case to a jury beyond a reasonable doubt. Equally important was to anticipate what the defense attorney was going to do in order to poke holes in my case. Preparation was the key to success. A prosecutor’s job is to seek justice, not secure a conviction. But, every trial attorney is competitive and wants to win.
That may sound obvious, but I do not think I fully understood it until I was in the trenches in front of a jury. In law school, a professor can choose a case because it raises an interesting question about a search, a statement, or a piece of evidence. In practice, you first have to recognize what issue(s) exist. You also must understand the law, rules of evidence, and the human factor.
The preparation for trial and courtroom experience made criminal procedure real.I lived it every day.. Rules that were once technical and learned from a book suddenly had become extremely important with new case law emerging daily. Staying current on the law and understanding its effect on the facts of the case and the people involved had me hooked.
Experience Gave Me Better Questions
One thing I noticed was that the more experience I gained, the more I needed to learn. The beauty of criminal trial practice and criminal procedure is that every case is different with its own unique issues which must be approached from two sides; prosecution and defense. And one must never forget the importance of how a jury acts and reacts to a trial attorney’s every move.
Is there evidence? Where did it come from? Will it be admissible? Did anyone make a statement? What happened before, during, and after it was made? What does a particular fact actually establish, and what are we assuming because it seems like the most obvious explanation? If scientific or forensic evidence is involved, was it collected legally? Is the chain of evidence intact? Is there an expert that can testify to a reasonable degree of scientific certainty that it is what we believe it to be and explain in plain language that a jury will understand?
These questions never have a universal answer. They depend on the unique set of facts and circumstances, and that was part that was so interesting to me. I began to see a difference between knowing the legal rules and understanding how those rules get applied when they encounter every factual scenario.
During this time, I had to consider whether I wanted to go back to school. Practical experience is an education in itself, particularly in law. I wondered whether another degree would justify the time, effort, and financial obligations involved. Would going back to law school for advanced classes and training in criminal law help me succeed ?
Ultimately, I decided that I did not have to choose between practical experience and academic study. I understood that each could make the other more useful as a criminal justice practitioner.
Returning to Law School Felt Different the Second Time
When I began the Masters of Law program at SUNY Buffalo Law School, I approached legal education much differently than I had while earning my JD. The difference was not simply that I was older. I now had unique professional experience that gave the material context.
When you first study criminal law, much of your attention naturally goes toward understanding what rules, statutes, and case law. Once you have practiced in the courtroom, you bring a different mindset into the classroom. You become more involved in why a particular standard developed, how far it extends, and what happens when the facts do not fit comfortably within the examples you have studied.
I found myself less interested in simply reaching the correct conclusion and more interested in understanding the reasoning that led there. Practical experience showed me that legal problems often become difficult at the edges, where the facts are unique and competing considerations must be weighed.
I completed my LLM in Criminal Law with Honors in 1996. I remain proud of that accomplishment, but what stays with me most is the opportunity I had to step away from the immediate demands of practice and think more deeply about a field in which I had already been working. The work matters, but I also discovered value in stepping away long enough to examine how education intersects with real life.
Legal Education Never Ends
Over time, I became increasingly convinced that becoming an attorney cannot mark the end of my legal education. Laws change, courts continue to interpret them in relation to unique facts, scientific methods develop, and new forms of evidence create questions that earlier generations of attorneys never have encountered. Anyone who wishes to succeed in the field of criminal law must remain willing to keep an open mind, think critically, and never stop asking questions.
Experience also changes the person doing the analysis. A question I might have approached one way early in my career could look considerably more complicated after years of working with criminal law and criminal procedure. I do not view that as a weakness. In many cases, it simply means you have learned enough to recognize considerations you did not see before.
Experience can also make someone too comfortable with their own conclusions. The longer we work in a field, the easier it can become to assume that we have seen everything before. I think criminal law requires the opposite mindset. Experience should help us identify patterns, but it should not stop us from examining the facts in front of us.
My Experience as an Attorney Eventually Influenced My Teaching
I did not return for my LLM because I knew I would eventually become a professor. My career developed in ways I could not have predicted. Later, however, I moved into criminal justice education and served as an Assistant Professor at California University of Pennsylvania. In January 2027, I am scheduled to begin another chapter as an Associate Professor of Criminal Justice at Quincy University.
Teaching has helped me appreciate my decision to pursue advanced study from a different perspective. When I work with students, I do not want them to leave a criminal justice course believing that success means memorizing the greatest number of rules or definitions. They need that foundation, but they also need to think critically, learn problem solving skills, and communicate effectively both written and verbal. Students must learn to embrace uncertainty, examine evidence, recognize assumptions, and consider how criminal procedure affects the larger justice system. They need to become comfortable asking why something happened and what information might still be missing. Those skills are impossible to develop through memorization alone.
My years as an attorney help me provide practical context, while my academic background helps me step back and examine the principles behind those experiences. I have come to value both sides of that equation.
Practice Was What Made Me Want to Learn More
Looking back, becoming an attorney did not make me feel like I had finished studying criminal law. It had almost the opposite effect. Once I began seeing how legal principles operated in real situations, I became more interested in understanding what lay beneath them.
That was why I went back to school. I had learned enough through trial practice to recognize how much more there was to learn. Returning for a Masters of Law gave me the time and structure to explore criminal law with questions I could not have brought to the subject when I was first starting out.
I recognize that experience matters. For me, education and professional practice do not exist as separate stages of a career, with education ending as soon as the work begins. Sometimes the work itself reveals what you need to study more deeply.
For me, practicing criminal law did exactly that.