Robert James

A short summary

Family

• Myself• My mother– Brandon (brother, here)– Jessica (Sister, in WV)

• My Father– Christopher (brother, in SC)

• My Stepdad (David, here)

Interests

• WVU football. We lost practically every recognizable starter to the NFL draft this year, leaving in the first round was Karl Joseph (top right) who had torn his ACL during the year.

• Politics highly interest me. Not just the policies and ideologies but the law in general and how it is not only practiced but created.

Hobbies• Video games. Useful to escape from reality and kill a few hours at a time. A lot of fun and

multiplayer is always exciting.• Politics is a hobby of mine as well as an interest. I spend a lot of free time researching and

learning about, as I said, not only the politicians, not only their ideologies or policies, but how exactly a bill is made, how exactly it becomes law, and what forces drive these processes.

Where I’m fromI am from West Virginia (hence why I like WVU athletics). WV is a mountainous state, with a small population. It has the most beautiful mountain ranges in the country, and a relatively mild climate. I am very proud but also rather disappointed in WV. Its beauty masks a terrible opioid epidemic, meth labs (a 5th grade teacher at my elementary school was arrested when a meth lab in her garage blew up) and overall the population (particularly in the southern counties) is extremely *clears throat* rural. The television mini-series “the wild and wonderful whites of West Virginia” unfortunately rather sums up (as well as exacerbates) the hick stereotype that is West Virginia and portrays it accurately. However of course not all of WV is like that.

Where I want to goI have a few different things I would like to do with my life. I would love to go into politics and someday be president, but of course, who wouldn’t. I do plan on attending law school, and that is the first step. It is also the first step to my other set of possibilities. Being a lawyer and then, eventually a judge. Since this is the more realistic goal, I will delve into it. I would like to work both sides of the courtroom, both prosecution and defense, for several years before I ventured into the area of deciding people’s fates. I once wondered how I might struggle morally with defending a guilty man, or prosecuting one who was innocent. My ex-paralegal professor (I changed majors to an arts degree so I could transfer to a school easier and sooner with more credits) said that you cant look at it in those terms though. As a defense lawyer all you are is a defense against government overreach. If the state can not meet its burden of evidence, it is not the defense attorneys fault, and as a prosecutor the number of false convictions is ridiculously low, and so, not something to worry about morally,.