Samantha D. Floro

It’s important for me to represent real people because they feel the actions of a company’s silence, negligent, or recklessness. People forget that behind every screen or phone call there is someone who is a real person with a real life. They are impacted directly by the decisions made a company who may just see them as another name and not as a person.

Law school was a rough experience because I went to a school out of state with no friends or family nearby as a support system. In law school, your first year is known as the “weeding out” period. They want to make sure that the people who stay are serious about pursuing a legal career as well as ensuring they have what it takes to represent clients. That being said, I was also a scholarship kid who went to private institution. I was told every day by the professors that I wasn’t good enough, nor was I hungry enough to want to be an attorney. They made sure to tell me — and the rest of my cohort — every chance they got, that we would have to work twice as hard for half of what the other law students in the area were getting opportunity wise because of our background. A good portion of us came from rural and poor families. That being said, I know what it’s like to wake up every day and want something so bad it’s all you can think about. I know what it’s like to have to claw tooth and nail to get to where I am. So, I never had any second thoughts, only a second wind to want to fight harder.

What inspired me to be an attorney was knowing that my sister had been sexually assaulted and the criminal justice system did nothing about it. The place where it occurred– our high school — did nothing about it. Held no one responsible and implemented no change to ensure that it wouldn’t happen again. I watched my sister report her crime, get a rape kit done, and still be told to her face that she didn’t need to bring a good man down. Rape kits were back logged in Kentucky, and it took years for my sister to finally get her results. The day she went to the hospital my career path changed. I knew what it was like to have the system fail you, to have a lawyer not argue your case hard enough, and I knew I never wanted another family or person to feel the way I felt or my sister did.