Amber Damiani
Amber Damiani ’15, ’16M is a second year law student at Capital University Law School in Columbus, Ohio. Currently, she is a Teaching Assistant for a Legal Analysis, Research & Writing course for first year law students, which she really enjoys!
Before entering law school in 2016, Damiani graduated from the College of Arts and Sciences at Ohio University with a B.A. in Political Science-Pre-Law and Sociology-Criminology with a minor in Psychology and M.A. in Sociology.
“The thing I love the most about school is that you are always learning,” she says. “There is nothing like this experience, because it truly does change how you think, and how you view problem-solving. My least favorite part about it is that there is no downtime, and you are constantly go-go-going.”
Law Clerk
“I LOVE my job!”
Apart from school, she has a job as a Law Clerk at Ross, Midian & Breitmayer, LLC, a firm in German Village that handles Criminal Defense and Personal Injury cases.
She works primarily on the criminal defense side, but has also done some research projects for personal injury cases. She works full-time during the summer and part-time during the academic year.
A typical work day consists of going to court in the morning, where she talks with clients, interacts with a client’s family members, participates in negotiations with prosecutors, and talks with judges, bailiffs, etc. After court, it’s back to the office to go through discovery, research legal issues that arise, or make trips to jail to talk with clients.
The Best Part
“My favorite part of my job is probably the amount of interacting I get to do with clients and other court actors. If I had to pick a part of the job that was my least favorite, it would probably be having to deliver bad news, or talk with extremely upset family members. But even that, I still appreciate the experience and how it has helped me grow as a communicator.”
Her OHIO Experience
Damiani says the time she spent at Ohio University has helped her tremendously with law school and in her job because it gave her a well-rounded perspective of the world.
Having a background in Political Science, Psychology and Sociology has given her a great foundation for reading about, analyzing, and understanding things like policy considerations, interpersonal relations, and government structure, which are all extremely important to learning law – eventually practicing law.
“I believe this has helped me in terms of communicating with clients at work, anticipating opposing legal arguments, and helped develop my ability to understand competing interests,” she says.
Going through the MA program in Sociology gave her higher level research abilities, as well as training to problem solve and think quick on her feet, which has helped her both in law school and in her job. Also, taking the Teaching Sociology Seminar as an MA candidate helped her develop confidence with public speaking abilities and coming up with creative teaching tools to use with students, which has helped her as a Teaching Assistant.
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