My grandfather was a highly respected attorney here in Connecticut. He used to tell his children, "You can be anything you want, as long as you're a lawyer." What he meant was that a legal education could help someone succeed in just about any line of work. To him, a lawyer's greatest asset was the ability to recognize what he or she didn't know, coupled with a willingness to do something about it. That's a useful trait in any field.

My father is an expert witness in civil and criminal cases, and I was raised on stories of both the wrongfully convicted and the excessively punished; people whose lives were ruined because of a system that didn't value their humanity highly enough to protect their rights. Some of them had lawyers who did their best to defend them, but too many were essentially left to drift alone in a complicated and scary sea.

In law school, I joined the board of the Georgetown Law Innocence Project to help recruit young lawyers like myself to the cause of criminal justice reform. Now that I'm here in Connecticut, I'm looking forward to the chance to help new clients navigate the legal system, to make sure that the fundamental promise of our courts - Equal Justice Under Law - is not just an ideal for them, but a reality.

I live in Manchester with my wife, Lauren, and our son, Jordan.