For Erin Marciniak ‘00, the FBI was always her intended destination.

“The FBI intrigued me in every way,” she said. “I knew I wanted to put my career in order to make sure I got in.” With the intent of eventually applying to join the FBI, Marciniak first landed a job with the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office in Chicago, where she spent the first 3 ½ years of her legal career.

Other UT Law alumni who eventually became FBI special agents first made stops in private practice. But no matter how they got there, Marciniak, Rodrick Huff ‘86 and Philip Smith ‘88, all say they’re glad they did – they continue to relish daily opportunities to play major roles in federal crime-fighting operations.

FBI Special Agents are responsible for conducting sensitive national security investigations and for enforcing over 300 federal statutes spanning a wide variety of criminal areas, including terrorism, foreign counterintelligence, cyber crime, white-collar crime, drug-trafficking, and others.

All three agents stress that what they’re doing today draws heavily upon their law school training. The requirement in the law to understand and apply statutes, as well as the communications skills and attention to detail that a lawyer must possess, all come into play as an FBI agent.

“The skills I brought with me from private practice really benefited me with the FBI,” Smith says. “Communications skills, thinking on your feet, statute application are all skills I use. Everything we do is based upon statute and so when we work a case, we have to work it from the perspective of a statute.”

Huff agrees. “What law school did and what private practice did was absolutely prepare me for the kinds of complex investigations that we’re doing that span hemispheres,” he says. “It was a great foundation on which to build the criminal investigation skills that we brought to bear against the Colombians.”

For Marciniak, it was working hard in law school and spending much time in the courtroom as an attorney with the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office that equipped her with the confidence necessary to handle the responsibility she’s entrusted with on a daily basis. A Special Agent in the D.C. field office, she is often struck that she has access to such highly classified information through top level security clearances.

The pay may be lower in the public sector in general, but the potential impact of doing a job well is great, she says.

“The opportunity to halt crime, or to figure something out and know that the community and the country will reap the benefits of that, is really something,” she says. “I always knew I wanted to do this. I wanted to better the community. I didn’t want people to be fearful of the community they lived in.”