After earning his undergraduate degree at Bates College in Lewiston, Maine, Alex Tritell took time to consider his career options. He worked for a year in Israel, traveled through Southeast Asia, and worked at a restaurant before settling on the law. “I came out of college not sure what I wanted to do. But as I thought about people whose jobs I’d one day like to have, I realized many of them had law degrees,” he said.

To confirm his interest, Alex returned to his hometown in the Washington, D.C., area and joined the international law firm Sidley Austin as a project assistant. “I worked with attorneys in the privacy and cybersecurity group, focusing on issues like data breaches and data privacy legislation. And working at a big law firm didn’t scare me off!” he said.

When considering law schools, Alex decided he wanted to attend a school outside of the D.C. area that offered the small-school environment he enjoyed at Bates.  “I knew I would eventually return to D.C.,  so I wanted to experience living somewhere else. Plus I felt that I would get the best educational experience in small classes where professors actually know me,” he said.

Alex moved to Nashville to start classes at Vanderbilt Law during the COVID-19 pandemic. Vanderbilt offered in-person classes for 1Ls, where students and faculty practiced social distancing and wore masks. “I was extremely grateful that classes remained in person and that I didn’t have to attend all my first-year classes on Zoom,” he said.

As a 2L, Alex took constitutional law scholar James F. Blumstein’s Health Policy seminar. His paper for the class, “In WHO’s Interest?: Regulating Human Germline Gene Editing,” won the American Bar Association Health Law Section’s 2022 student writing award and was published in The Health Lawyer in June 2022. His prize included a trip to Miami to attend the Section’s annual conference in April 2022. “I was getting emails from the ABA’s Health Law Section and saw there was a writing contest, and since I had already worked hard on the paper, I figured I might as well edit it for the contest. The paper raises a lot of legal and ethical questions where the answers remain unclear,” he said.

Bioethics expert Ellen Wright Clayton, who also teaches at the Vanderbilt School of Medicine, reviewed Alex’s paper and provided helpful comments. Alex took Professor Clayton’s Bioethics class and Genetics and the Law class. He also worked as her research assistant, co-authoring a paper, “Avoiding Liability and Other Legal Land Mines in the Evolving Genomics Landscape,” that was recently published in the Annual Review of Genomics and Human Genetics. They are currently collaborating on another article which focuses on state-level regulation of direct-to-consumer genetic testing companies. “Many of my professors here at Vanderbilt Law School are leaders and experts in their fields. It’s exciting to see them cited in textbooks they or another Vanderbilt professor didn’t write,” he said.

Alex was president of the Health Law Society, which he says enhanced his law school experience. “It provided valuable leadership experience, such as organizing and moderating events with panels of speakers. It also allowed me to connect with students who have similar interests and with national professional organizations, such as the ABA and American Health Law Association.”

In addition to its faculty, Vanderbilt’s strongest advantages, Alex says, are its atmosphere and sense of community. “There’s a real camaraderie and collegiality across the student body, and it extends to the professors and staff,” he said. “These factors have definitely been important contributors to the topnotch legal education and overall experience I have had at Vanderbilt.”