Achieving Just Outcomes Spencer Thomas '25L discusses his externship with the Commonwealth's Attorney in Roanoke.

By Law Communications
February 10, 2025

Spencer Thomas ‘25L is from Spartanburg, South Carolina. He attended Wofford College, where he received a B.A. in English. After graduating in 2017, he served for three years as an active-duty Engineer officer in the U.S. Army and then worked for two years as an admissions counselor at his alma mater before beginning law school. At W&L, Spencer was a Kirgis Fellow as a 2L and currently serves as a Burks Scholar (Legal Writing) for Professor Julie Schwartz. He is also a Senior Articles Editor for the W&L Law Review and a member of the First-Gen Student Union. Outside of class, Spencer enjoys playing racquetball, cycling, and slinging discs on the back campus with fellow 3Ls. This year, Thomas worked in Roanoke, Virginia, with the Commonwealth’s Attorney for the City of Roanoke.

How did you secure this externship?

I applied to join the prosecution externship program in the Spring of 2L and was selected to be part of the cohort. The prosecution externship is one of several different options available to rising 3Ls to apply for. I did not specifically ask to join the CA’s office in the city Roanoke, but I was thrilled to get the placement that I did.

Professor Anthony Giorno, a former career federal prosecutor, led our class at W&L Law. He was an awesome lecturer, and the whole experience was enhanced because of his involvement with the course.

Describe your work experience and daily schedule.

My day-to-day schedule varied significantly depending on the day. This in turn led to varied experience more broadly. Depending on the week, I was in the office either one or two days. My workload increased towards the end of the program, so I was in the office more frequently. Any given workday included the full spectrum of potential criminal proceedings: I attended numerous initial appearances, preliminary hearings, misdemeanor trials, and even full‑scale felony trials, including those involving homicides. I conducted substantive legal research for multiple murder trials, first-chaired several misdemeanor trials in the General District Court, and ultimately first-chaired a full evidentiary suppression hearing and argument in Circuit Court. The hearing concerned a Fourth Amendment matter following the defendant’s motion to suppress evidence. With supervision from the assigned Assistant Commonwealth’s Attorney (“ACA” for short), I prepared the sole brief arguing the Commonwealth’s position and prepared the testifying officers immediately prior to the hearing. The judge later issued a full, written order on the merits––somewhat of a rarity in Circuit Court for those types of matters. The hearing took place on my final day with the CA’s office, so it was a really rewarding way to end my time there.

What are some skills you developed?

Trial advocacy, trial advocacy, and more trial advocacy. It’s really hard to overstate how different a courtroom can feel compared to a law school classroom. I had the benefit of taking Trial Advocacy last spring, so I understood the general mechanics of how things were supposed to work, but it is still a different experience when a judge is expecting you to advocate for the Commonwealth–and, more importantly, when someone’s liberty is at stake. There was rarely much argument about what the law itself required, particularly in General District Court. The advocacy is dominated by the facts, or, more precisely, each party’s construction of the facts. Reading appellate cases in a classroom cultivates a fundamentally different set of skills than the ones required daily in a prosecutor’s (or defender’s) office. I never felt completely comfortable leading direct or cross exams, but I think my skills did improve. I also got to watch other excellent attorneys at work, both on behalf of and working against the Commonwealth.

What surprised you about the work you did during your externship?

My answer is somewhat congruent with the previous one–I was surprised by how little discussion of law happens in the courtroom. The only time I ever argued what the law required was during the Circuit Court hearing concerning the Fourth Amendment issue. Otherwise, there were only ever arguments about facts, and at a rapid pace. It’s easy to appreciate that reality in the abstract, but it is another thing entirely to see it applied to real cases and also to consider the strategy behind fact-development and creating a theory of a case. The elected Commonwealth’s Attorney, Mr. Donald Caldwell, was extremely generous with his time. He offered to discuss trial strategy with me concerning particularly serious cases, including multiple murder trials. Trial strategy eclipses the legal elements of the criminal law a 1L might find in a criminal law hornbook. Again, it is one thing to ponder how a jury might have reacted to facts recited in an appellate case in a textbook. It’s a totally different matter to see video footage of violence, arguably provoked or mitigated by the victim’s own conduct, and then try and formulate a theory of the case that is fair, accounts for the equities unique to every case, and ultimately achieves the Commonwealth’s goal of achieving just outcomes.

I would be remiss if I didn’t also mention that I was routinely impressed by the professionalism and judgment shown by the ACA’s. I went into the externship with a healthy dose of skepticism about the entire criminal justice process. At the risk of oversimplifying, I still think there are systemic societal ills that the criminal justice system is not equipped to remedy, but that doesn’t obviate the responsibility of prosecutors to bring their cases. In any event, the prosecutors I worked with were fair-minded, often extending courtesies to opposing counsel well-beyond what the rules of ethics may have required, and also showed restraint at times when it was clear that a defendant had simply made an unfortunate mistake. So too were the judges in both the General District Court and Circuit Court. The system only works if there are good advocates on both sides. It is never perfect, of course. But I respected and admired the folks that I got to work with every day.

What was your favorite aspect of your experience?

The suppression hearing I argued in Circuit Court was hands down the coolest experience of my semester. It involved Fourth Amendment law for one thing, something I learned in Dean Wilson’s classroom and felt very conversant with. Much of criminal law is state-specific, so there was typically a small learning curve. Not so with that hearing. More importantly, it was in Circuit Court–the final trial court of record in Virginia’s system where most major felonies are ultimately adjudicated. The ACA managing the case placed significant trust in me by allowing me to manage the hearing.

Because I got to write the majority of the brief ahead of time, I was far more familiar with both the law and facts than I was with the misdemeanor cases I often handled in General District Court (GDC). In GDC, I would typically learn the facts of cases on the same day I argued them. In this instance, I had time to sit with the facts and really plan out an argument, and also respond to/distinguish the arguments by the defendant. Finally, I had to use the two different skills that the externship and law school broadly had developed: eliciting facts in a courtroom and then applying legal theory to that set of facts. The hearing lasted over two hours. During the first half, both the defense and the Commonwealth elicited testimony and introduced different evidence—that involved the trial advocacy skills I had developed and had watched other attorneys employ throughout the semester working in the office. And then the latter half involved my argument as to how the law applied to those now-established facts–the skill that 2.5 years of law school has developed. I managed to bring forth all the relevant facts I needed during the first hour, then felt very comfortable arguing over how the law applied.

I am proud to share that the Court ultimately held for the Commonwealth on both independent theories I argued during the hearing. The whole experience was one of the few times during law school that I have felt like a real lawyer.

Has this experience helped you figure out your post graduate plans, and if so how?

I have been extremely fortunate with the way my post-graduate plans have crystallized. I knew before the externship began that I would clerk for one year after law school, and I also had an offer from the private law firm that I spent my 2L summer with. That said, my experience with the CA’s office did further buttress my interest in one day working as a federal prosecutor. Admittedly, I found that some of the mechanics of local prosecution frustrating—I did not enjoy the last-minute, fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants nature of some of the proceedings that are simply an inevitability in a Commonwealth’s Attorney or District Attorney office. I much preferred the deliberative process of sitting with facts for a prolonged period, crafting thorough arguments as to how the law applied to those facts, and then participating in proceedings with the time and space to pressure test those arguments against an equally well-prepared and deliberative opposing counsel. In the end, I found the work fascinating and fun. Trial work is exciting and daunting. The discretion prosecutors have in bringing cases is extraordinary, and it requires great attorneys occasionally making snap-judgements in real time. My short-term post-graduate plans have not changed, but it is likely one day that, if given the opportunity, I will try my hand at prosecuting full‑time, ideally in federal courts.