Adam Winkler
Prof. of Constitutional Law
UCLA School of Law
Education
Georgetown University
B.S.,
1990New York University School of Law
J.D.,
1993UCLA
M.A., Political Science
1998Podcasts
41:24310: What It’s Like To Be A Law Professor & Award-Winning Author w/ Adam Winkler, UCLA Law School [Main T4C episode]
Adam Winkler is an author, editor and a law professor at the University of California, Los Angeles who specializes in the Supreme Court, constitutional law and gun policy. Winkler’s most recent published book We the Corporations: How American Businesses Won Their Civil Rights (2018) received the Scribes Book Award and..
Career Path
Interview Highlights
“There’s nothing better in my job than those moments when I’m in the classroom teaching students and they have that ‘aha’ moment where something that was unclear becomes clear and they get a new understanding about how the law works. That’s always a much more promising moment because there’s that instantaneous award that you get from a student who has connected with you and learned from you.”
Best Career Advice
“When [you] go for interviews, be extremely attentive. As one person said, and I don’t think it was just metaphorically, sit on the edge of your seat. Be very present. Some people sit back and let the interview come to them, but the idea was, know that you need to assert some control over the agenda of your initial interview … The interviewer is going to ask the questions, but you’re providing the answers and those answers provide you the way to highlight your strengths and the reasons why you should be hired. So an interview is not a passive process, but an active one.”
Career Challenge
“One of the things you typically do over the two summers that you’re in law school is you go work for a law firm or go work in some kind of entry-level law job. And I went to go work for a big firm. And I was very cocky at the time … and I didn’t work that hard that summer. I kind of took it for granted that I was going to get a job offer from them. And then at the very end of the summer, they called me to say they weren’t going to give me a job offer, that I had failed my trial run. And I remember the feeling of shame, of just being so humbled by the whole experience, and it really shaped my attitudes about how I should think about life and about going forward … That experience really taught me … when given an opportunity, you’ve got to work really hard and you’ve got to act like you think you’re not going to get the job.”
Skills
Legal Writing, Legal Research, Appeals
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