These days, Melissa Murray dresses for work to express herself. It could look like brightly colored clothing or eye-catching statement accessories. And if your first guess is not that she’s a legal scholar or law professor, you’d be sorely mistaken.

In addition to being a professor at New York University, Murray is a host of the podcast Strict Scrutiny, the coauthor of The Trump Indictments, and someone who values bold self-expression, even if her field skews a bit more conservative. However, in speaking with Murray and understanding her journey from law school to legal scholar, it becomes clear that authenticity—even when she didn’t expect it to—has served her well.

The thread leads from her Yale Law School clerkship interview with pre-Supreme Court Justice Sonya Sotomayor, through to her biggest career risk just a few years ago when she left a tenured role at the University of Berkley to relocate to the East Coast. It was a move that transformed and expanded her career beyond academia and led her to ultimately become one of the go-to public experts on legal guidance—a vital position in a political climate growing more chaotic than ever.

I lived in this very small town in Florida where all the big fancy people in town were lawyers…It seemed clear that this was a position where you could accrue a lot of authority and social standing. 

When I was 17, my dad passed away and he died without a will. We had a probate lawyer. It was such a disruptive moment in my family's life. I was an only child and my mother was unexpectedly, newly widowed, and this lawyer was basically a lifeline for her and for me. That was when it occurred to me that lawyers were translators for a very opaque set of rituals and rules and regulations for people not trained in that vernacular. Being an insider appealed to me and was the through line for it all. So I set my sights on going to law school. 

One of my top choices [for clerkship] was Sonya Sotomayor, then a judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in New York City. I applied and, about a month later, I got a call to go to New York from [Yale] for an interview. I was so prepared to talk about the law, and about things on her docket, and be really smart and together. The first question she asked me was: “Tell me about your family. Who are your parents?” 

I told her that my mom was a nurse and my father a dentist. They were both immigrants, had come here in the ‘60s, and my dad died when I was 17. She was intrigued and wanted me to tell her more about how I decided to be a lawyer. By the time I left to go back to New Haven, I felt so embarrassed and ashamed. I don't think it was very commonplace, certainly at my law school, for people who didn't have a whole lot of privilege to be open about it. I never talked about how difficult it had been when my dad died or that I was financing law school independently or any of these things. And then, I was vomiting all this to a federal judge. I thought I'd made a huge mistake and that she'd never pick me. Then a day later I received a phone call. She was inviting me to join her chambers team.

For years, I thought that I had gotten that job in spite of what seemed like an enormous gaff. It wasn't until she became a Supreme Court Justice and wrote her autobiography…about her mother being someone who had come from Puerto Rico for a better life for her children, and her father died while she was young, and her being a lifelong diabetic. For the first time, seeing it all splayed made me realize I'd gotten this job because she saw parallels in my story to her own. She likely saw someone who was a little bit like her or someone she could mentor and be useful to. That was really important to her. For the first time, I no longer thought I'd gotten the clerkship in spite of doing something dumb. I'd gotten that job because I had been completely myself and had been forthcoming with her about my experience.

One of my top choices [for clerkship] was Sonya Sotomayor, then a judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in New York City. I applied and, about a month later, I got a call to go to New York from [Yale] for an interview. I was so prepared to talk about the law, and about things on her docket, and be really smart and together. The first question she asked me was: “Tell me about your family. Who are your parents?”

I told her that my mom was a nurse and my father a dentist. They were both immigrants, had come here in the ‘60s, and my dad died when I was 17. She was intrigued and wanted me to tell her more about how I decided to be a lawyer. By the time I left to go back to New Haven, I felt so embarrassed and ashamed. I don't think it was very commonplace, certainly at my law school, for people who didn't have a whole lot of privilege to be open about it. I never talked about how difficult it had been when my dad died or that I was financing law school independently or any of these things. And then, I was vomiting all this to a federal judge. I thought I'd made a huge mistake and that she'd never pick me. Then a day later I received a phone call. She was inviting me to join her chambers team.

For years, I thought that I had gotten that job in spite of what seemed like an enormous gaff. It wasn't until she became a Supreme Court Justice and wrote her autobiography…about her mother being someone who had come from Puerto Rico for a better life for her children, and her father died while she was young, and her being a lifelong diabetic. For the first time, seeing it all splayed made me realize I'd gotten this job because she saw parallels in my story to her own. She likely saw someone who was a little bit like her or someone she could mentor and be useful to. That was really important to her. For the first time, I no longer thought I'd gotten the clerkship in spite of doing something dumb. I'd gotten that job because I had been completely myself and had been forthcoming with her about my experience.

I was paying for law school myself so I split my summers between public interest shops—like the NAACP Legal Defense Fund—and a New York white shoe law firms— which are very much not like the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. The first summer I worked at one of the big law firms, I got mistaken for someone's administrative assistant almost every day. It occurred to me how uncomfortable it was not to be seen. But also, I didn't want to be in a job where I was being told what to do constantly. When I came back to law school that fall as a second year, I realized I had to find a career where I could pay off the enormous school loans, but also have a degree of autonomy.

That semester, I realized my professors seemed incredibly happy. They almost felt a bit like the cat who got the cream. No one seemed to be in danger of being in forbearance on their student loans. They all seemed to have a relative amount of autonomy over their lives. They researched what they wanted and they taught what they wanted. It seemed to me like it was a really good gig…The more I investigated and shadowed them—very selfly, to see how they live their lives and work especially—it became something I wanted to do and that I saw myself being good at.

When I started my job as a law professor, I was 30 and not that far away in age from some of my students. So, I wore suits as a way to communicate I'm not a student…but it's restrictive. Clothes are a way you communicate your personal style, who you are, and your personality, and if you are in that kind of suit-and-a-shell box, it's harder to do. Over time, I became a mother, I became a little more assured and surefooted in my career. As I got closer to tenure and more confident that I would get tenure, I started to break out a little more colored separates. And now I'm all over the place. I wear enormous necklaces, and a lot more color, and African prints. 

I love clothes and it's a really fun way to express yourself. Academia is not a place where a lot of fashion plates go. One of the things I struggled with in my career is, as a clothes horse, you're viewed as being a little frivolous. You're not really substantive. You're not substantial. I just reject that entirely. Why wouldn't you care about what you put on your back? It's literally how you present yourself to the world. 

Now, when I show up as I want to show up, I'm unapologetic about it. It doesn't mean I'm not serious. And now I can actually say, of course, it doesn't mean I'm not a good scholar. Look at all the scholarships I've produced, and now I'm wearing leather. This is me showing up to slay and you can have a problem with it or not—but it's really on you.

All of these milestones happened after I left my position at Berkeley to come to NYU. I loved living in Northern California, and after 12 years there, I had a really tight-knit group of great friends. But I felt like I was in a rut at work. In addition to teaching and writing, I was doing a lot of administrative work and committee work. It was important institutional work, but it was time-consuming, and often emotionally draining. And there were times when it was clear that—while it was important for the institution—it was serving my needs, whether for my own research agenda or my mental health. 

In that regard, a big part of my decision to go to NYU was about starting fresh and forging an entirely different relationship with the institution where I worked. I could focus on the administrative service that served me and my passions—like the Birnbaum Women’s Leadership Center. A side benefit was that suddenly I had more time to try new things, like podcasting and other media.

To be entirely honest, the successes of the last few years stem completely from the realization that I wanted my relationship with my academic home to be different and to take the steps to remake it.

Even today, Black women comprise a very small portion of law professors in the United States. The number shrinks further when you factor in law professors with tenure and those at top-10 institutions. For many of my students, I am the first Black woman they’ve ever had as an instructor. This is all to say that just by showing up at work and in the classroom, I am challenging the status quo.

Always remember who you are and whose you are. Whenever I feel my confidence or faith in myself flagging, I think of my parents, who came to this country and sacrificed so much for me to have these opportunities. And then I get back to work.