The Amherst Experience
It was a fluke that the College was even on Ebersole's list of college choices. Ebersole added it to his list because his parents went to tennis camp at the College when they were first married. When the acceptance letters came in, Amherst turned out to be the best college that he got into. Without even having visited the campus, Ebersole arrived in the fall of 1997.
Unfortunately, he got off to a rough start. A tennis player, he was already supposed to have had two practices by the time he arrived. But after practice was cancelled, he decided to play touch football. He slipped and fell, breaking two bones in one of his legs. Luckily, he only had to be on crutches for six weeks, and the small campus made it easy for Ebersole to get from place to place.
After returning to the courts for his first year, he soon decided that tennis wasn't for him and played squash for his remaining three years during both the fall and spring semesters. Although sports occupied much of his time, he didn't mind the commitment and enjoyed playing the game.
In the spring of his first-year, Ebersole pledged with the underground fraternity Psi Upsilon and was a member for the last three years of his college life. Ebersole said the company he found at the fraternity was a large part of what made his college experience enjoyable.
Along with sports, politics also dominated much of Ebersole's Amherst career. He arrived on campus planning to double major in political science and economics, and then get a business and law degree. But the economics major eluded Ebersole. Neglecting to take econometrics, he ended up with a single major in political science. It would be his political science background that steered him towards his interest in government and politics and their social impact.
Ebersole's love of political science also led him to write a few pieces for The Amherst Student and The Spectator, the conservative and libertarian political thought magazine at the time. Ebersole says that his political beliefs, which tend toward the conservative and libertarian side, were solidified while in high school: "It was probably more my growing affinity for national politics and editorial writing that drew me in. The authors with these viewpoints just made more sense." Immersed in an extremely liberal atmosphere, Ebersole sought to give more voice to the viewpoints that challenged the political majority at Amherst. One of his favorite professors, in fact, was Hadley Arkes, who is a unique figure in an overwhelming liberal faculty. Ebersole helped Arkes bring conservative and libertarian speakers to Amherst through what became "The Committee for the American Founding" to enrich debates on campus.
The relationship that developed between Ebersole and Arkes led to a host of amusing incidents. One took place at Ebersole's Commencement eve dinner, which his roommates and he had outside their dorm, Mayo-Smith. "Arkes asked if we had any martinis, and I told him that unfortunately we did not," he recalled. "I looked over a few minutes later, and he was flagging traffic down on Route 9, a paper cup in hand, returning from his house with a homemade martini. He seemed shocked when I informed him of the town's open container law." Ebersole is still good friends with Arkes today.
Ebersole believes that a lack of diverse viewpoints harms students by making them hostile to opposing positions. In fact, he wrote a letter to The Amherst Student in the spring of 2004 about how professors seemed to be limiting free speech at the College. He accused 16 professors of boycotting Supreme Court Justice Scalia's lecture in February of that year because he was conservative.
Ebersole has also written a couple pieces on the issue in the alumni magazine. He has talked to the previous president Tom Gerety, and President Tony Marx about the problem several times, but Marx said that there really wasn't much he could do about it. "Marx talks about the necessity of a broader socioeconomic base," he said.
"But what's the point of having that if you don't have broad viewpoints in classes." Still, Ebersole understands the position Marx is in and thinks that Arkes has the right idea of just talking to the alumni and asking them to donate money to his organization to create some political balance at the College.
Life after Graduation
After receiving his degree in political science, he moved to New York City to work as an investment banker at Citigroup. After a year, he moved to their Mexico City Office for seven months, which he found more relaxing than his work in New York. Afterwards, he returned to New York to finish his two years of work there. After taking a summer break on Long Island, he applied to law school for the fall of 2004 and also worked for the Bush campaign for two months.
Ebersole ended up at Vanderbilt University's law school, in large part because of its similarities to Amherst. The law school, much smaller than most others, had only 200 students per class. The atmosphere was comparable in the two schools. In his student profile on the Vanderbilt Web site, Ebersole says, "I thought I'd never find professors more accessible than those I had in undergrad." Although he had good relationships with most of his law school professors, he didn't connect as much with them as he did with those at Amherst, many of whom he is still in contact with. Continuing his love of writing, he became an editor for the student-run Journal of Transnational Law and ended up writing a few opinion pieces for The Tennessean, a national newspaper.
During his second year in law school, Ebersole managed to get a job serving as an associate for the firm Skadden Arps Slate Meagher & Flom during the summer of 2006; he also got an offer to join them after law school.
During his third year, however, Ebersole decided to apply for a clerkship and got the one he has now in the Eastern District of Virginia with Judge Kelley. Ebersole also recently applied for and got another clerkship for the 2008-09 year in the 6th circuit Court of Appeals in Ohio. He said of the clerkships, "[They are] just for a year. They are something you want to do and are unofficially a prerequisite for other government legal jobs."
The District Court and Court of Appeals have very different atmospheres. The District Court is where most cases are originally tried. A third of Ebersole's time is devoted to being in the actual court room and watching the cases as they progress. During the rest of the time, he looks at the issues brought up in the various hearings the previous day and then brief Judge Kelley on what the main issues are in the case and what questions to ask each side. Many of the cases are decided on paper alone, especially civil cases. As Ebersole explains his job, "You get a very experienced legal writer looking over your writings and giving you advice … It's a very collaborative process; I can just pop into a judge's room whenever something comes up."
Unlike at the District Court, Ebersole's clerkship with the Court of Appeals will be more of a solitary, academic existence with more office research and less hands-on experience. "You don't see a lot of the people whose cases you are hearing," Ebersole explained. "Unlike the trial court, where you are in the court and see the plaintiff, defendant and their lawyers, the Court of Appeals is basically almost all decided on paper." Both sides file 30-40 page appellate briefs, and sometimes the court will grant oral argument where the lawyers can argue for 15-20 minutes, but "it is really just an exercise for show because most judges know how they are going to come out on based on paper; it's tradition. But there is always the chance something a lawyer says or how he says it may change a judge's mind."
Ebersole chose the clerkships before starting at a law firm. He explained, "You have a sort of relaxed year right out of law school. It's hard work but not nearly at the same level as what happens at a firm, where you stay up all hours of the night. [Clerk jobs] don't pay enough for that. It's really good because you get to continue your education [with hands-on experience]. I ultimately want to try cases and as you are in a law firm first, you will not have a lot of exposure to that; you'll have a large behind the scenes role. They will say research x, and you'll do that." The newest members of the firm, however, do not get to try cases and often do not go to court. Right now, Ebersole is in a court house with five district judges, and they all have clerks, so "we get together and find out what's happening with each [of our cases] and trade stories."
Fighting the Government
After his Court of Appeals clerkship, Ebersole plans to return to Skadden Arps and become a trial lawyer. One of the reasons he joined the firm was because of their strong practice in government enforcement and defense and white collar criminal defense, an area where lawyers generally defend companies or high-profile people against government investigations. He decided on this particular branch of legal work, because he grew up in D.C. and, "a lot of high profile legal work in D.C. involves responding to government congressional investigations; that has always intrigued me. If you are going into an area, you might as well try the most challenging thing in it, and that is going against the government, and you basically get an unlimited amount of money and you can keep on investigating and investigating."
One of the main reasons Ebersole got out of investment banking and into law was because of the love for writing he has had since he was at Amherst: "I didn't like all my writing being confined to PowerPoint presentations as it was in investment banking." He also wants to become a trial lawyer to defend people who are in trouble for the widest variety of things. Every case is unique, and therefore requires different defense methods and strategies. There is always something new that can be learned. From all of this, one thing about J. Ashley Ebersole is assured: he will be doing some great things in law in the future.