It was a federal income tax professor who taught Kyle Williams that the law is "sort of that fabric that weaves through everybody's life."
By Robert Batterson
May 18, 2001
Kyle Williams always wanted to be a lawyer. But having grown up in a "typical middle-class family" in Chino Hills, Calif., he seems surprised by his own accomplishments.
It was a federal income tax professor who taught Kyle Williams that the law is "sort of that fabric that weaves through everybody's life." |
Yet, Williams offers the following advice to future Washington University graduates: "Don't be afraid to define your own dreams. Don't be afraid to pick a road that nobody else has gone down before. Pick a road that your friends, or your peers, or your family members before you haven't gone down. Don't be afraid to put all that you are on the line in order to achieve something."
For the past year, Williams has served as editor in chief of the Journal of Law and Policy and is finishing a clerkship with Judge Theodore McMillian on the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals in St. Louis. He also served as a research assistant to law school Dean Joel Seligman. His next stop is New York City, where he will join the prestigious law firm Davis Polk & Wardwell.
Williams credits many people who have helped him define his dreams and aspirations along the way, but especially the advice of his father.
"It was never to do anything in particular," Williams said. "It was never to go get a professional degree, or to be captain of the team, or to be the student body president. It was always just to be the best in whatever capacity I was handed. His favorite expression, to quell my worries about making him proud, was, 'I don't care if you grow up to be a truck driver, just as long as you are a hard-working, happy truck driver, you'll be a success.'"
But in his last year at California State Polytechnic University, he did serve as student body president. After graduation, he joined T. Rowe Price in Los Angeles, where he supervised a team of securities traders.
"My plan had always been to go on to law school, and I lost my enthusiasm to do it," Williams said. "I made the decision to not go to (law) school not by what my dreams were. I made a decision based on what I thought my peers would think is the right decision."
Luckily, Williams had two cheerleaders as colleagues at T. Rowe Price --Robin Pellegrino and Jim Ko --who encouraged him to come to Washington University and pursue his dream.
"As soon as the two of them knew I wanted to go to law school, their enthusiasm for me to go back gave me the confidence to do it," he said.
Williams never looked back. He plunged into his studies at Washington tirelessly but found first year something of a drudge. It wasn't until second year that it all clicked. He found his muse in the joys of federal income tax law.
"My academic mentor was Professor Peter Wiedenbeck," Williams said. "In my first year, I always studied very, very hard. But he was the first person who actually taught me that the law was interesting --that there weren't just rules that you had to learn and rote formulas that you had to apply, but that there was actually logic and policy and reasoning and things that tied society together behind all those laws."
"It's bizarre," he continued, "but I really learned and grew to absolutely love learning about the law through the eyes of a federal income tax professor. It was the first time that I got to see that law was sort of that fabric that weaves through everybody's life. That was a big turning point for me."
Long term, Williams wants to get involved with small minority businesses and help change the securities laws that make it difficult for these firms to raise the capital they need for investment or expansion. He said securities laws are built on a model that protects investors by making companies give all sorts of disclosures and "jump through all kinds of hoops" that tend to have a disproportionate impact on minorities and lower-income neighborhoods.
"It's not that the laws overtly sort of discriminate or are overtly unjust," he said. "They're just not conducive to certain types of capital-raising and not especially friendly to certain types of businesses that are trying to raise that money under certain conditions. It's those conditions that I would like to infuse into current financial policy to be able to help those companies and those people as entrepreneurs to be able to realize their dreams as well."
Williams plans on a long career at a law firm in New York and also pursuing his interest in urban development and securities-law policy by either working for the Securities and Exchange Commission or the Small Business Administration, or even running for political office.
"I have an interest in what you can do with politics," he said. "I don't have so much an interest in being a politician. But I do have an interest in being in a position to suggest policy or to make policy changes. The politician part is sort of the bag of evil that comes with the bag of stars."
It seems that whatever Williams does, he most likely will find stars in his bag.
| Medical News |
Washington People |
Calendar | Campus Watch |
Email Us! |
| Sports | WU Home Page |
Record Staff |
Front Page |