Hot Bench: Ethan Brown ’25
Hi Ethan! Thanks for sitting down with me for this week’s Hot Bench. Let’s warm up with the basics: name, class year, where you’re from, and what you were up to this summer?
Hi Ashanti!! My name is Ethan, I’m a 3L from Manassas, Virginia, and last summer I was a summer associate at Hogan Lovells in Washington, D.C.
Oo I was also in D.C. for the summer, it was very hot and very sweaty, but what’s your review of the D.C. summer?
Sticky! No, it was lovely. I absolutely love D.C. I say all the time it’s America’s best city. You’ve got museums, you've got really good food, you've got fun bars, you’ve got Rock Creek Park, you've got federal bureaucrats who love their country—hahahaha just kidding! (There are none of them left.)
Hahahaha, I don’t know whether to laugh or cry at that! Are you returning to Hogan after graduation?
Yes, I will be!
This may be too soon, but were you a victim of the D.C. Bar website crash of 2025?
Ashanti, it is absolutely too soon but I was a victim insofar as I had to experience it for five hours! Thankfully I was able to still get a spot even though it took probably four years off my life.
Oh my, I am so sorry to make you relive that trauma live on national television, hopefully you and the others will be entitled financial compensation soon! How has the countdown to graduation felt?
Thank you, I need my compensatory damages ASAP! It’s felt long! I am deeply and desperately ready to graduate. I have liked my three years here—thanks in no small part to things like the Law Weekly™ —but it’s time for a new chapter.
As someone who has known you since William & Mary and the good ole Flat Hat, I'm so proud of you and all you’re going to do in the future! Have you put any thought into your bar trip?
Don’t make me cry! Right now, I’m thinking of going to Buenos Aires in August. But my boyfriend recently moved to Stockholm for his PhD, so I might just go hang there for a month or two!
OMG that sounds so fun, I've always wanted to visit Sweden! Okay, now time for a super-duper lighting round: Oscars and spring break edition! What was your movie of the year?
Oooo! Okay. Movie of the year is probably Challengers because Mike Faist, need I say more?
I was obsessed with Challengers! Do you think Conan O'Brien is actually funny?
I can proudly say that I have never spent time thinking about or listening to Conan O’Brien.
That’s the correct answer! What is your dream spring break location?
Dream spring break location would be to go back to Montreal.
To outline or not to outline during spring break?
And as a 1L, you know I was ferociously working on my property outline all of break like a freak! But as a 3L, absolutely-the-hell-not. I will be having a beer with my boyfriend and thinking about nothing to do with the University of Virginia School of Law—and that’s what every 3L deserves!
