Alumni Spotlight: Maggie Cleary (COL '14)
Updated: 4 hours ago
About Maggie
Name, school, year, degrees
Maggie Cleary, Georgetown College (C'14). B.A. in Philosophy, with a concentration in bioethics, and American Studies. J.D., University of Virginia School of Law, 2017.
Where in the world are you?
Madison, Virginia.
What are you up to now?
I'm an associate at Clare Locke, a boutique firm in Alexandria, Virginia, that represents plaintiffs in defamation cases. It's a move into private practice after nearly a decade in public service.
What are you doing now and what is the path that led you there?
After law school, I knew I wanted to be a trial attorney. So I turned down an offer from a law firm and took a job in a state prosecutor's office in Central Virginia instead. It was the right call for me.
I've spent most of the nine years since in courtrooms as a prosecutor, in both state and federal court. Along the way, I spent a little more than a year in Richmond as Deputy Secretary of Public Safety in Governor Youngkin's administration, which gave me a look at criminal justice from the policy side. This year, I took everything I learned in the courtroom to Clare Locke.
What have you been up to/what are some career highlights you've had?
I've spent most of the last nine years as a state and federal prosecutor in Virginia, including a stint as Acting U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia.
I've tried more than a dozen jury trials as first chair and hundreds of bench trials. Most of my work focused on special victims’ cases, which meant standing alongside victims and their families through some of the hardest moments of their lives. My highlights are the unwinnable cases I’ve brought to trial and gotten a guilty verdict from a jury.
What's something that you've become passionate about since graduating Georgetown that's not related to your career?
I chair the board of an anti-domestic violence nonprofit that serves five counties in Central Virginia. I'll admit it's connected to my career, but it matters to me well beyond it.
Outside of that, I'm a big reader, especially of literature, and I'm always working on my French.
Georgetown
What was your favorite class that you took at Georgetown?
Probably American Musical: Stage and Screen with Professor DelDonna. It was a joy of a class and a welcome change of pace from my philosophy reading. I'd recommend him, and any of his courses, to every Hoya.
The Philodemic
What does the Philodemic mean to you?
The Philodemic gave me some of my longest-lasting friendships, and it did more than almost anything else to inspire and develop my skills as a trial attorney. Looking back, it's hard to separate the lawyer I became from the student who first learned to stand up and argue in the Philodemic room (before it was defaced).
What was your favorite debate or memory from your time in the Philodemic Society?
Two debates stand out. The first was my keynote debate, on the Healy Hall Pub. The second is the one I come back to most. I was assigned to argue a position on gun control that I didn't agree with (at a time when I was president of the College Republicans). Making the strongest possible case for a side I didn't hold was hard, and it was supposed to be. It forced me to understand the other side's best arguments, and that's a lesson I've carried into every courtroom since.
Whom was the Philodemician you most admired and what did you learn from them?
My mentor, now Allison Huntley, was a senior and President of the Society when I was a freshman. She went on to marry the man who served as President the year before her, which is about as Philodemic a love story as it gets. She became a state prosecutor in Illinois, and over the years we've traded notes on our cases and the work. She was incredibly good to me when I was just starting out, and she showed me what it looks like to be generous with your time to someone coming up behind you. I still look up to her.
Career and mentorship
How did your time in Philodemic influence your career path?
I really do think the Philodemic is what inspired me to become a courtroom attorney. I loved it, and there's a LOT of overlap with being a state court prosecutor. You prepare, you stand up, you make your argument, and you respond in real time to whatever comes back at you. It shaped my legal career and every step I took after Georgetown, starting with turning down a firm offer to go straight into a prosecutor's office.
Is there something you learned from the Philodemic Society that you still regularly use in your life or career?
What I love most about the Philodemic is how much it resembles legal training. In academia, you usually get to argue what you believe. In the real legal world, you're assigned a position and you have to make the most of it. The Philodemic worked the same way, and it prepared me for that long before law school. It was also incredible training in two things I relied on throughout my career: working as part of a team, and thinking and speaking on my feet. That second skill carried me through more than a dozen jury trials, and it's still one of my best assets as a trial attorney.
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