In a new Q&A with C-SPAN, Randall D. Eliason, Professorial Lecturer in Law, spoke about why he chose a career in the business of the law. He also discussed the ongoing trial of Senator Robert Menendez (D-NJ) and his white collar crime course at GW Law.
Mr. Eliason began by discussing his early career. After graduating from Harvard Law School in 1985, he moved to Washington for a job at a private law firm. After a few years, he joined the U.S. Attorney's Office in D.C. and worked there as a federal prosecutor for 12 years, focusing on many high-profile cases involving public corruption and fraud against the government. He said that one particularly memorable case was the 1990s prosecution of Dan Rostenkowski, the late congressman from Illinois. "Even before I went to law school I knew that what I really wanted to do was be a trial lawyer. I wanted to be in the courtroom trying cases," he said. "And I figured out after a few years in private practice that the best way actually to get trial experience was to be a prosecutor or a criminal defense attorney because they're the ones who are in court all the time."
The discussion then shifted to the trial of Senator Robert Menendez, who has been charged with 18 counts of fraud and bribery crimes. Mr. Eliason has been following the case and has written about the details of the Senator's expenses. "I think if you watch something like the Menendez trial, it should give people the face in the system," he said. "There are individual cases of misconduct where things don't go well where the system breaks down. My experience by and large has been that the justice system actually does work well, that people can have confidence in it. And in these high-profile cases like this when you have the sort of vigorous clash of good advocates on both sides and professional prosecutors who have looked at the case and determined there's a valid case there and put it together, that you can rely on now what's going on in the courtroom to get at the truth and have the jury make a determination."
Toward the end, Mr. Eliason spoke about the white collar crime course that he teaches at GW Law. He shared that it is a popular class which usually consists of third-year law students. "It's an elective course and so it attracts students who are interested in criminal law, possibly in being prosecutors or sometimes in being white-collar defense attorneys," Mr. Eliason explained. "And so I've been lucky, I get pretty motivated students who are really interested in the topic." He added a reason why the course is enjoyable for students and for him is that they talk about the issues that are discussed in the news, saying, "There's always a lot of things happening in the real world that we can talk about that show what they're studying is relevant to what's going on."