Bloom Where You’re Planted
Bloom Where You’re Planted
Clare Magee was a member of the Leadership and Character in the Law Scholars Cohort. Now, as an alumna, she’s using that experience to navigate life as an attorney.
There’s a small potted plant on Clare McGee’s desk. McGee, who’s now in her second year as a civil litigation associate with the Poyner Spruill law firm in Charlotte, loves to garden, but the little succulent isn’t there just as decoration. “I like thinking about how a potted plant flourishes,” she says. “It has to be in the right type of soil. The environment around it has to be good. It has to get sunlight. In order for it to thrive and grow, it needs water. It needs all of these things. When I think about myself as a lawyer, I think: How do I flourish?”
The plant idea came up from a reading assigned in Kenneth Townsend’s “Leadership and Character in the Law Course,” which was followed up by a discussion between McGee and others in the Leadership and Character in the Law Cohort. “I remember saying: When I’m a lawyer, I’m going to put a plant on my desk to remind me that I need to check in on what I’m doing in my environment to flourish as a person. And then, in turn, how that can help me flourish as a lawyer.”
McGee is a 2024 graduate of the Wake Forest School of Law, and one of the first members of the Cohort to participate for all three years of school. She was invited early on by Townsend, a professor of law and the Program’s Executive Director in the Professional Schools. “Not only is she super smart, hardworking, and motivated—like so many law students—but Clare also has a deep, abiding commitment to justice and to making the world a better place.” says Townsend.
When she joined, the cohort was new and only had six members. By the time she graduated, there were 15, and the Program’s Associate Director in the Law School, Ben Rigney, had taken the group under his wing. The group met more often, heard from speakers like Michael Lamb and law professors, and did more book studies, which was a favorite for McGee. “It was an opportunity to pull your head out of casebooks and out of conversations about the law, and to really think more deeply about foundational character matters that can inform how we practice,” she says.
Plus, it kept her grounded. “When you arrive at law school, it can feel like you’ve stepped on to a conveyor belt,” McGee says, one that constantly moves forward toward a degree, the bar exam, and a career as an attorney. But Wake Law in general and the cohort in particular allowed her to “look up and look around.” She thought about the decisions she was making. She created time for herself. She made it a point to get fresh air. Her time in the cohort, along with the time she made outside of it “helped me show up better as a law student,” she says.
McGee, who worked in non-profits before enrolling in law school, didn’t have a hard time going back to work life after graduation. But the transition from excelling as a law student to thriving as an attorney required her to learn new skills. “You don’t have the luxury of sitting and reading cases and going through things very deliberately and having someone guide me towards the conclusion they want me to reach,” she says. “You figure out things live and problem solve on the fly.”
Even so, she’s been able to draw upon her time in the cohort to remind her what it means to flourish. “I don’t just want to be someone who’s really good at billing hours,” says McGee. She wants to build community in her firm. She wants to make sure her clients are supported and seen. She’s found a lot of common ground among her fellow attorneys, and often finds herself using the language of character at work, a vocabulary she picked up in the cohort.
All of which means Clare McGee is, like the succulent on her desk, blooming where she’s planted. “I’m grateful for the cohort,” she says. “There’s something to be said for being open and confident and vulnerable in speaking about matters of character in the workplace. That opens the door for other people to do the same.”
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