Washington Lawyer March/April 2026
By David Edgerton III
The pathway to becoming an attorney looks different for everyone. In fact, the pathway to any profession is rarely ever linear. I think of it as a river, twisting through neighborhoods, shaped by spaces and experiences that quietly redirect the soul.
My river starts in Cottage Grove, a suburb of St. Paul, Minnesota. Yet, the soil that formed me was Washington, D.C. — not the postcard version, but the lived, layered city: mambo sauce, go-go music, a life you come to understand only by moving through its communities and witnessing the culture that makes our nation’s capital home to so many.
When I arrived in the District nearly a decade ago, entering Howard University, I seldom stayed on campus. I explored. I learned the city not just from lectures or internships, but also by walking its blocks, serving in schools, organizing with students, volunteering in churches, and listening to elders. This city taught me the responsibilities of proximity, insisting that service is always relational, never abstract.
Theory Meets Real Life
Howard University was the gravitational center of my emerging adulthood, pulling me into its orbit and refusing to let me remain small. First as a political science major, then as a law student, I felt Howard shaping and sharpening me, reminding me that I was walking in the footsteps of giants like Houston, Murray, and Marshall.
On campus, many of my professors were not only scholars but also attorneys who combined legal acumen with lived experience. They taught constitutional law alongside community context, civil procedure alongside civil rights traditions. They made the law feel alive, urgent, and consequential, reminding us that jurisprudence is not as neutral as it is often presented and that lawyers are not merely technicians but architects. At Howard, I learned that every legal argument sits within a larger moral and historical frame.
Before I ever opened a casebook, speech and debate taught me to speak with fire. High school and collegiate debate sharpened my voice, teaching me about research, rhetoric, improvisation, and courage. It taught me to stand before strangers and articulate a vision of the world as it could be — not just as it was. Debate became the framework for how I think, write, and advocate. It was also how I met my future wife at 16 in Birmingham, Alabama, at the National Speech & Debate Association tournament in the semi-final round (yes, she beat me).
By the time I arrived at Howard University School of Law, I carried a decade of preparation: a city that raised me, a debate community that forged me, and a Black institution that called me to purpose.
Life then added new roles: student leader, organizer, nonprofit founder, husband, and father. Now theory meets practice. These roles made me rethink the concept of justice. It isn’t just delivered in courtrooms; it comes up at home, in day care lines, and at community meetings.
Questions of justice collided with the task of raising a child. Balancing casebooks and milk bottles, fitting in case briefings and the Federal Rules of Evidence between nap times, and keeping my child alive in this economy required new discipline. I developed an internal system for structuring my time, values, and ambition because survival depended on it.
Now, settling into Nelson Mullins Riley & Scarborough LLP as a first-year associate, I carry all of these experiences with me.
A New Lawyer in a New Era
The ink is still drying on my law school diploma, but as a new attorney, I see the landscape changing. This era feels like the beginning of something bigger: a generational shift in how young lawyers see their place in the legal ecosystem.
Born in 2000, I am part of a generation that questions old professional norms, such as equating success with sacrificing family or community. In my humble opinion, the profession excels when it acknowledges that lawyers have lives and commitments beyond billable hours. If law is democracy’s circulation, lawyers need to be whole, rested, and thoughtful, not depleted. The next decade is our chance to model a healthier legal culture.
The future of law must be defined by justice as practice, not branding. This means ensuring that law schools are not only more accessible but also more humane. It means designing apprenticeship systems that don’t push students to burn out before their careers can even begin. The profession must move from gatekeeping to cultivating talent by dismantling barriers to entry or success. This change demands that our profession double down on its core purpose: promoting justice, expanding access, and strengthening the foundations of our democracy.
The legal profession must commit to intentionally cultivating the next generation of practitioners. That work often begins with young associates who remember being the only one, the first one, or the one expected to carry the weight of representation. As a young Black lawyer, that weight is both an honor and a burden. I succeed not only for myself, but to keep the door open for others.
As a digital native entering law in the age of AI, I see emerging technology as neither a simple upgrade nor a threat; it is a tool for restructuring. My generation is coming of age as the profession’s old guarantees dissolve and new possibilities appear. It is both exhilarating and disorienting.
AI is already automating tasks once central to early legal training —document review, legal research, initial drafting — all at a fraction of the cost. This forces a necessary reckoning. If being a budding lawyer no longer means information retrieval or procedural repetition, the profession must clarify its actual purpose. In this sense, the moment is as philosophical as it is technological.
New lawyers can’t match machines for speed or volume — we’ve lost that race. Our advantage is ethical reasoning, cultural fluency, and trust. AI can generate arguments, but it can’t judge which argument matters, how power functions in a community, or when restraint is best.
Against this backdrop of technological change, my generation of lawyers is also inheriting enduring challenges: polarization, voter suppression, civil rights retrenchment, economic inequality, and declining public trust. These are not new problems. What is new is the terrain on which they unfold and the posture with which Gen Z lawyers are meeting them.
From Principle to Practice
In this climate, I decided to dedicate my scholarship to education policy. At Howard, education was never treated as ancillary to democracy. It was understood as its foundation.
A guiding idea for me is the “right to learn,” blending educational equity, workforce development, and legal reform. It holds that every child deserves full opportunities: quality education, mentorship, exposure to careers, and removal of systemic barriers that keep low-income and marginalized students from law, policy, STEM, health care, and more.
Education policy is upstream work. Long before inequality appears in hiring data or court dockets, it shows up in classrooms — through funding formulas, disciplinary practices, broadband access, and expectations that calcify into life trajectories.
My role as founder and executive chair of Brothers in Law Inc. — a nonprofit fostering legal pathways beginning in kindergarten — continues to show me that talent is universal, but opportunity is not. We start early because the world does. As a new lawyer, I carry a clear mission: to ensure the next generation can dream even bigger, walk with lighter burdens, and find their calling within a profession renewed by purpose and justice.
This is not simply a moral argument; it is a legislative frontier. The right to learn requires statutory teeth, budgetary alignment, and enforceable accountability. Over the next decade, education policy will shape how this country responds to automation, economic transition, and democratic participation. I hope to support and help shape policy that advances:
- Educational equity frameworks grounded in measurable outcomes
- Federal and state workforce development pipelines
- Early exposure programs that begin in kindergarten and continue through law school
- Structural incentives for private sector partnerships in mentorship and apprenticeship
- Legal standards that hold institutions accountable for opportunity gaps
My nonprofit is only one arm of that work, but the legal profession must be a central architect of that ecosystem. A nation cannot call itself democratic if its children do not have equitable access to learn, grow, and lead.
The Pursuit of Purpose
I chose this profession because the law remains one of the most potent tools we have to transform society for the better. It is not perfect, and it is not always just. But when wielded with integrity, imagination, and courage, it is capable of bending toward justice.
The practice of law is not just a career but a calling. It is a covenant between what is and what could be. As lawyers, we do not just interpret the rules; we help shape the civic imagination. We have the ability — and responsibility — to build a more inclusive and equitable society, case by case, client by client, policy by policy. As a first-year associate, husband and father, son of Howard, and servant of the community, I step into this role with conviction.
As I begin my career at Nelson Mullins, I am filled with gratitude and a clear sense of responsibility. But more than anything, I am excited to meet the challenge to become the kind of lawyer our community deserves.
David Edgerton III is an associate at Nelson Mullins Riley & Scarborough LLP focusing on complex business and commercial disputes, education policy, and corporate governance. Prior to joining the firm, he was a judicial extern for Judge Reggie B. Walton of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.
Photos courtesy of David Edgerton III
