Hon. Marguerite A. Grays ’82 is the Administrative Judge for the Civil Term of the Eleventh Judicial District and was recently named to the Hofstra Law Distinguished Alumni on the Bench Hall of Fame. But she’s not the only Hofstra Law graduate in her family. Her husband, Hugh W. Campbell ’82, is a trial lawyer with Rodman & Campbell, P.C., and their daughter, Melanie Campbell ’17 is a corporate associate at Davis + Gilbert.
Hugh and Judge Grays met when both became members of the Black Law Students Association (BLSA) during their first year at Hofstra Law. “BLSA was a small, tightly knit group back then,” Hugh says. “We developed a lot of study groups, which were critical to survive in law school. There were only a small number of African-American students, so we stuck together and did a lot of things together.” BLSA became an important part of their Hofstra Law experience. Hugh became an officer and chair of the Northeast regional convention, which was hosted at Hofstra Law, in his second year.
Like her parents, Melanie was also a member of BLSA at Hofstra Law. In her 2L year, she was BLSA’s secretary and, along with Samantha McDowall and Raven Rutledge, spearheaded BLSA’s first inaugural alumni brunch. “I worked with my dad to make it happen,” Melanie says. “We tag-teamed it and got a great turnout. It was nice to connect with my dad on something we had in common: the same school and the same organization, 30 years later. He gave phenomenal suggestions about developing the alumni committee and it was nice to see his peers and colleagues in same room as mine.”
But the BLSA alumni brunch isn’t the only way Hugh helped his daughter in her law school career. He recalls an instance when Melanie called because she didn’t understand a real estate concept. “I thought, ‘I could explain it to you, or I could just give you a brief I argued and you can read it and see how these laws actually develop through the appellate process.’ It was nice to be able to pass something I did along to her and help her in her career,” he says.
The First Generation: Public Interest Law and Litigation
While at Hofstra Law, Hugh was interested in public interest law. After a short internship at the Nassau County Attorney’s office, the school matched him with Housing Opportunities Made Equal for a summer position, and then with Queens Legal Services the following summer. He received a public interest fellowship when he graduated, and chose to work for Bronx Legal Services, where he remained for one year before moving to private practice. But he has not lost his interest in public interest law; he has continued to serve on the Legal Services Board of Directors since 1989.
Judge Grays also began her career in public service after graduating from Hofstra Law, beginning at Queens Legal Services. Later, she clerked for several judges before being elected to the Civil Court bench in 2000, and then to Supreme Court in 2003. She is the first African American female judge to serve as an Administrative Judge for the Civil Term in the Eleventh Judicial District.
The Next Generation: From Counseling to Counselor
Although both of her parents were lawyers, Melanie Campbell wasn’t initially focused on law school, and indeed she had another career in chemical dependency counseling for 8-9 years before attending Hofstra Law. “I wanted to be a forensic psychologist like George Huang in Law & Order SVU,” she says.
“But for Hofstra Law, I wouldn’t be here because that’s where my parents met. It was nice to come full circle to go to same school where parents met and started their relationship.”
“I came out of undergrad optimistic, energetic, and thinking I would save the world,” she says. She took courses in chemical dependency counseling and did that counseling for 8-9 years. “But although I enjoyed parts of it, the job involved more and more administrative work over the years – I was working more to implement policies, rules, and regulations, within the clinic to ensure compliance towards the end of my counseling career. I found I was reaching out to a lot of attorney friends or family and asking what certain statutes or regulations meant so I could interpret them for my organization. Finally, I got tired of doing a lot of work that was tangential to the law without the qualifications to know how to interpret it, so I decided to go to law school.” At the same time, the clinic where she was working was starting to close down. “It was a good opportunity to take the time to go to law school and get a law degree,” she says.
Hugh says he didn’t try to steer his daughter toward law school. “I wanted to stay out of it,” he says. But Melanie says that her mother was a bit more assertive about it. “My parents will tell you if I’ve made up my mind about something, I’m a hard person to bend. I have to come to it on my own — or think I came to it on my own,” Melanie says.
Melanie also chose her own path with her legal career. “My dad loves to debate. He is a tried-and-true litigator,” Melanie says. “He makes my critical thinking sharp and keeps me on my toes.” But Melanie ultimately chose a corporate transactional practice over a career outside in the courtroom. She wanted to learn how companies run and what makes them tick, so she took classes in corporate law, and worked in an in-house legal department her first summer as a New York City Bar Diversity Fellow. “I was on the inside looking at how companies do what they do,” she says.
The following summer Melanie was a Summer Associate at Morgan Lewis & Bockius “to see what it is like working in a big law firm.” In that position, she had the opportunity to take assignments from several different practice groups. “I realized I really liked transactional work, despite the fact that the majority of my parents’ careers were spent in the courthouse,” she says. “I liked drafting and negotiating deals. It’s my job to make sure that the contracts I work on don’t go to litigation.”
In her third year, Melanie participated in the LawMeets transactional competition in which she and her partner, Ashtyn Hemendinger, drafted and negotiated an agreement for a fictitious client. They won the regional competition. That experience fine-tuned her interest in transactional work because, as Melanie says, “I got to dig into an agreement and pick apart the different sections, which isn’t something you can usually do in law school.”
Law Degree: Priceless
The Campbell family is passionate about helping to cultivate the next wave of Hofstra Law graduates – Judge Grays, Hugh and Melanie are all members on the law school’s Career Services Alumni Committee, Judge Grays and Hugh have served as a coach for the law school’s BLSA Moot Court team, and Melanie is a member of Hofstra’s Alumni Board Diversity Committee and has participated in mock interviews and 1:1 networking events hosted by the Hofstra Law Review, Career Services and the Women of Color Collective. “A law degree is something absolutely priceless if you want to help people,” says Hugh. “The sky is the limit if you get a law degree. No matter what you want to do, whether you want to be a teacher, sportscaster, or a mediator, a law degree fits it. You have enormous opportunities with law degree, even if you don’t take the bar. People respect your point of view because you have a certain level of expertise if you went to law school.”
And of course, it’s extra special to have three family members with a law degree from the same place. “Hofstra Law has a special place in my heart,” Melanie says. “But for Hofstra Law, I wouldn’t be here because that’s where my parents met. It was nice to come full circle to go to same school where parents met and started their relationship.”
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