In the fall of her senior year at Millsaps College, Sophie Lipman was applying to law school and shared her list of schools with Kenneth Townsend, one of her professors. After reviewing the list, Townsend paused and then said to Lipman, “You know you’re selling yourself short, right?”
Later in the application process, Dr. Rob Pearigen, president of Millsaps and the professor who taught Lipman Constitutional Law, reached out to her to offer to submit a recommendation letter on her behalf.
“Townsend’s guidance emboldened me to overcome my risk aversion and aim high,” Lipman remembers, and she cites his and Pearigen’s support as examples of what makes a Millsaps education so valuable.
“Had I chosen to attend a bigger college, I would not have enjoyed that kind of personal attention to my educational and career goals. I felt supported every step of the way, and I am confident that I would not be where I am today had it not been for the invaluable support system I found at Millsaps.”
The road to graduation in 2016 with a degree in history and minors in philosophy and political science was full of engaging classes as well as opportunities beyond the classroom.
“My favorite professors were Dr. Amy Forbes and Dr. Patrick Hopkins,” said Lipman. “Their classes were the first time that I felt genuine excitement about my studies. They helped me realize a passion for biomedical ethics and the history of medicine, which I was later able to further explore as an intern at the National Library of Medicine, a health policy fellow at the University of Mississippi Medical Center, and a teaching assistant of a bioethics course.”
Lipman packaged all of her experiences at Millsaps, aimed high on her law school applications and didn’t sell herself short. After graduating from Yale Law School in 2019, Lipman is now working as an attorney in New York City, where Millsaps memories still influence her.
“Much of my work is complex commercial litigation in the financial sector, but I also have an active public interest docket,” said Lipman. “I have worked on behalf of medically vulnerable prisoners, helped write an amicus brief in a gay rights case in the United States Supreme Court and defended New York’s tenant protection laws. Millsaps’ commitment to public service encouraged me to pursue a practice in which I could make public interest work a priority, not an afterthought, making my experience as a lawyer so much more meaningful.”