Alumnus Spotlight: A Conversation with Asher Martin-Rosenthal, class of 2024
Recent alum Asher Martin-Rosenthal talks to current history major Paige Bohart. Listen to hear more about Asher Martin-Rosenthal's career journey in governmental work, from an internship at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to a paralegal role for the Department of Justice.
Video transcript
Paige Bohart (PB): Hi Asher. Thanks for meeting me today to talk a little bit about what you're up to post-grad. But before we get started, if you wanted to just introduce yourself quickly.
Asher Martin-Rosenthal (AMR): Yeah, definitely. So, I'm Asher Martin-Rosenthal. Long last name. I graduated in the spring of 2024 from Northwestern. I was a history major and a computer science minor.
After graduation, I left the great state of Illinois and moved to New York City, specifically Brooklyn, where I work for the Department of Justice in the Eastern District of New York. Even more specifically, I work in the business fraud division, securities fraud division. We prosecute white collar crime across New York and the country.
PB: I'd love to just hear a bit more about your journey and what led you to your current role.
AMR: Yeah. So, you know how it is at Northwestern. It’s like an internship rat race in sophomore and junior year. It's always a little crazy.
I never really knew what I wanted to do. I was applying to random internships, and I got an internship my junior year working at the EEOC, Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which is part of the federal government. I was a legal assistant. And I really enjoyed that role.
That role was very directly helping people, you know, trying to win cases for people who were discriminated against in the workplace. And I also enjoyed working for the government specifically. It felt very important. It felt very exciting. And yeah, I am in New York because I'm originally from Massachusetts and I kind of always wanted to come back here and it's a great place to be and I love Chicago as well, but it's also exciting here.
How I actually got this job … I randomly saw it on Google Jobs and I applied, never believing I would get it. And here we are. You know, it's not the most exciting story, but I think that's how a lot of this goes nowadays.
PB: No, that's really awesome. I'd love to just hear a bit more about what a typical day looks like for you in your division and the work you're doing.
AMR: Sure. So, we have a bunch of fancy names for litigation specialists. I'm a paralegal. The general role of paralegal is you need to do whatever the attorneys need you to do on any given day. So, I work directly with the AUSA's (Assistant US attorneys). They work directly for the US attorney who is appointed by the president. So, it's a pretty clear hierarchy.
They are usually doing about three or four trials at any given time, or three or four major cases. So, right now I'm assigned to, I think, 25 cases technically, which isn't really fair because, you know, we only have about 10 trials a year there are hundreds of cases.
Not everything goes to trial. They're all at different stages. Some can be in the investigative stage where we work a lot with the FBI or the IRS or some agency—sometimes Homeland Security. One of my cases right now is going to trial. So, we're in the final stages where we are prepping exhibits. I have to print exhibits for like five hours today. You kind of work across the spectrum of cases, and the tasks vary depending on what stage they're in. There are very different tasks based on each stage of the case. But yeah, the general tasks are a lot of file management, a lot of exhibits, a lot of close readings to find things to redact, summarizing legal documents so that the attorneys don't have to read them.
And then, when worse comes to worst, you gotta sit and print binders and binders and binders of exhibits for hours. But that's necessary for the process of justice. So yeah, that's a normal day. It's very hard to say, like, a very clear thing I'll be doing. I never really know what I'll be doing when I show up to work. It's weird. It's like Severance [the Apple TV show] a little bit.
PB: That's really interesting. It makes a lot of sense. You're managing that many cases at many different stages, and that must feel very difficult.
AMR: Yeah. Sometimes I'll draft a whole subpoena for a case. I had no idea how to do it, and then I'm writing a subpoena to some company and thinking, huh, this is interesting.
PB: I would love to hear how your background as a history major influences your approach to your work and the cases that come across your desk—whether that's, you know, hard skills or just lessons learned.
AMR: Yeah, definitely. First of all, I loved being history major. I’ll love it forever. I still love history and I hope to continue to learn it for a very long time.
I think that on a very basic level there is a lot of reading and writing in this job, and I don't even know if I can say that for all jobs nowadays. So, I do get to read long legal briefings. They're not quite as interesting as the readings I had for, you know, whatever random history class at Northwestern.
But I'm used to reading a lot of pages on any given weeknight, and that has helped my writing a little bit as well. But I think the biggest thing that history helps with is—and history at Northwestern especially—is that my courses were usually built around like large, long-term projects. Especially when you get into the 300 level classes. You know, you get assigned the final essay on like day two, and you think about it and you slowly build it up through the whole quarter and eventually you create a great paper.
And my job now is that on an even longer scale. These trials take years, and this job usually lasts for a year or two. Most people don't stay much longer. I probably won't see a single trial from start to finish because the trial will usually take around three and a half years. So the trials I started halfway through, I might get to see all the way through. And this one I have in May, I probably started with it already 75 percent done.
But you just have to be able to work on such a long time scale and not lose sight of the eventual goal and not lose sight of all the moving pieces. And it feels in many ways, like writing those 40-page term papers for a 300-level history class helped me develop those skills. I think it's very useful and something that the History Department uniquely gifts to their students.
PB: Yeah. That's really great to hear as a current history major. Going through a lot of that process myself, I think history does uniquely equip you with those close reading and writing skills that you need in a job like yours. So, looking ahead, I was wondering if you see yourself continuing in the legal field or if there are any other areas you're interested in exploring. You can also not know what you're looking to do!
AMR: Yeah. I don't think anyone knows what they want to do. I definitely don't. A lot of people who work this job, like I said, they stay here for a year or maybe two, and then they apply to law school and go to law school. I don't know a hundred percent if that's how I feel.
I think that it's definitely a path that I would like to look at. It's challenging because I've seen a very specific kind of law. You know, I've seen prosecution of massive federal fraud cases, which is one drop in a giant bucket of a career. So, I am interested in learning more about it. But you know, it's hard. I think one thing that Northwestern really teaches us is that you should have all these multiple interests. And I think it's amazing that I got to study history and computer science. But I also think that, when you first graduate, it leaves you with this feeling of like, oh, you know, Northwestern students especially have so many interests, so many things we want to do. And picking one is probably more of a challenge than if we didn't get to foster so many interests in school. But I think overall that is a gift and not a curse; having too many things I want to do, I never stress about it too much. So that's how I feel about my future.
PB: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I think there are, of course, other outlets for a lot of interests. I agree that Northwestern students tend to do a lot. I know I saw you were the president of Sherman Ave when you were here. That’s quite different from the legal field …
AMR: … and the crossword team. Don't forget the crossword team.
PB: Ha, yeah. You know, working in government right now, particularly, it's a bit of a crazy time. Government is always changing. So, I was hoping to hear a bit more about how you feel about working in government and working in the legal field.
AMR: Yeah, working for the government is very interesting. I've never really worked for a company yet because, like I told you, my internship was with the government.
There are certain things that you just don't have. There's no HR; it just doesn't really work that way. There are no raises and promotions and bonuses. Everyone gets paid on a preset schedule that raises with inflation, and all this stuff. It's not very high tech. I have a 2011 Dell computer.
But I think one thing that's really interesting is that the people here really care about what they're doing because there's no way you could possibly say they're just in it for the money. Especially these attorneys I work with, because they went to great law schools, they have great experience.
They could go work at a law firm and make ten times the salary they make. Instead, they choose every day to take a pay cut to do this work, because it means something to them. It's very cool to work around people who have that kind of drive.
But just generally, working for the government right now is very strange. There are a lot of changes that happened with DOGE. We have to send an email every week saying five things we did that week. And people are getting fired and people are getting replaced. Especially in the Department of Justice, it's just very unclear what the future is. But I've been very impressed by peoples’ ability to continue to do the work that they care about in the face of so much uncertainty.
So, yeah, it has been a great experience. Yeah, I think the commitment and dedication of local government and local workers is always necessary and impressive and even more apparent in times of change.
PB: Yeah. It's great to hear that you're doing well and enjoying your work and I'm sure everyone back here at Northwestern wishes you the best.