Jamie Pudwell
Lawyer
- BA Honours English Literature with Minor in Greek and Roman Studies (Carleton, 2020), J.D. (Queen’s, 2023)
I am a junior lawyer practicing across business and estates, with a growing focus on commercial and residential real estate.
How has your Carleton English degree informed your professional and/or creative path?
When I first came to law, my training as an English major struck me as a hindrance. Legal writing and research seemed to demand neither the depth nor imagination needed for literary study. As a result, I felt that I had to learn a new language, a new type of English.
Later, however, I discovered that years of reading and thinking about Old English texts, modernist prose, and dense literary theory had built an above-average reading comprehension and a critical eye which allowed me to adapt to any new environment. That foundation allowed me to develop myself as a lawyer, where I encounter an enormous variety of texts, and produce just as many for various audiences.
My English degree, in short, made me a flexible and adaptive reader and writer. Which is my whole shtick: I read and write and talk and think and solve problems for people.
Why Carleton?
Carleton offered the most direct path to studying what I wanted. After dropping out and returning on academic probation, the Academic Advising Centre welcomed me without hesitation — they mapped out a clear plan to get me back on track and into the program I was after.