Megyn Kelly of Fox News handled law firm 'macho culture' as a former lawyer
Megyn Kelly was a lawyer at two well-known law firms before she became a Fox News anchor who tangled with Donald Trump in a debate.
DNAInfo has a story on Kelly’s legal past, citing information in a New York Times Magazine profile and a 2014 story by Business Insider.
Kelly attended Syracuse and hoped to get into a communications program to pursue a news career, but she was turned down for the program, according the Times. She majored in political science instead and attended Albany Law School with the aim of becoming a prosecutor. She gave up on the idea of a government career because of $100,000 in student loans after her 1995 graduation.
Instead she landed a job as the only female associate at Bickel & Brewer in Chicago. The Times reporter spoke with Robert Cummins, who was a partner at the time. Cummins “told me that he asked some of the other associates to take her out to see if she could handle the firm’s macho culture,” the story author says in the article. “She could.”
Two years later Kelly left for Jones Day. Kelly made a TV news demo tape in 2003 and was given a job at an ABC affiliate in Washington on a one-day-a-week trial basis. She went on to Fox News, where she covered the Supreme Court and saw flaws in what turned out to be false charges against Duke lacrosse players.
“I started off as a lawyer for almost a decade before I decided I was completely burned out,” Kelly told Business Insider. “When choosing a new profession, I just said to myself: ‘What can I do that would utilize some of these skills, but that I would enjoy a little more and will also be fun and still intellectually stimulating?’ And this was an obvious choice.”
