Explorations in Black Leadership

Co-Directed by Phyllis Leffler & Julian Bond

Leadership Development: Choosing Law as Career

BOND: You spoke a moment ago about picking law as a career. Is there more to it than you told us?

SELLERS: I think law is really happenstance for me. I mean, it was — I remember the day that I decided that a legal career or law school may be something that I want to attempt to do, and that’s when I was interning for Congressman Clyburn. I was in D.C. and I was with Yebbie [Yelberton] Watkins, who is his Chief of Staff, who’s a very good friend of mine. We're like — he’s like my big brother now. I admire him so much for all the things he’s accomplished and he was a Georgetown Law student. Well, he completed his law degree at Georgetown, and we went in various offices, and everyone who worked on Capital Hill had a J.D. And I said, “Wow, this opens a lot of doors, so you don’t necessarily have to practice law. You can do a lot with this degree." And we talked about it and, like I said, it was either Teach for America or law school and to be completely honest, the LSAT doesn’t have any math on it so that also wooed me and I was not going to take a graduate school exam with math on it, so that’s how I ended up.