Jorge Plaza graduated from Notre Dame in 2021 with a major in Philosophy and Economics and a minor in Constitutional Studies. While at Notre Dame, he participated in the Menard Family Tocqueville Fellowship for five semesters. After working at Deloitte for two years as a consultant, Plaza has joined the Harvard Law School class of 2026.
Plaza was introduced to the CCCG by a fellow Notre Dame student. He was enticed by the character of Professor Munoz, who his friend said was “great on topics related to the Constitution and the crossroads between the principles of Christianity and the American Founding, and how that’s meant to inform our understanding of constitutional principles now.” Through Tocqueville programming, Plaza was able to meet with Judge Amul Thapar, Judge Thomas Hardiman, and now-Supreme Court Justice Amy Barrett, among others.
Entering college, Plaza always had law school in the back of his mind, feeling as though it were a profession in which he could apply the bigger-picture principles that he’d learned. Graduating during COVID, however, steered him toward taking a few years to be certain it was the correct career path, “knowing how demanding it is and knowing how much of an investment it is,” he said.
Deloitte “was very intense,” he said, “I had to travel every single week from Miami to Chicago in the dead of winter; I was working probably like 70 hours a week.” After being placed on a bank merger, Plaza was made responsible for managing the information exchange process of the two banks, implicating anti-trust and privacy law. “I got a lot of insight into what in-house counsel does on a daily basis…and what really attracted me was how the attorneys balanced the requirements of the law with the needs of the business.” While he didn’t enjoy the consulting side of the job, Plaza said he began to see himself pursuing law as a career and applying the metaphysical ideals he’d learned at Notre Dame to the everyday life of business.
In applying to law school, Plaza felt that having the Constitutional Studies minor and the experiences with the Tocqueville Fellowship helped him to stand out and demonstrate that he has a genuine interest in the law.
Plaza chose Harvard Law School because of the large class, which he says helps with networking opportunities and also ensures a “critical mass of conservative-leaning people.”
“The reality is that people with conservative ideas are in a small minority in law school, generally,” Plaza said. He had heard great things about the Federalist Society at Harvard, and ultimately feels that he was able to create an environment of like-minded people around him; “it still feels like Notre Dame here with the people I surround myself with,” he said.
While there isn’t a lot of room to apply the theoretical principles of politics and governance in law school so far, Plaza says his constitutional law class has begun to discuss natural law and originalism, a topic he feels prepared for with his Con Studies background. He also anticipates getting involved with the religious liberty clinic at Harvard, which would provide him the opportunity to apply the principles he learned in Constitutional Studies.
After law school Plaza hopes to move back to Miami to become a law clerk. After his experience at Deloitte, Plaza says he knows he is not interested in transactional law, but hopes to litigate instead. “The seminars in the Tocqueville program helped me very much in collecting my thoughts in the moment, absorbing what other people are saying [and] dense material that we are addressing, and expressing my thoughts in a coherent and eloquent way…that’s a skill that I was able to hone through the Tocqueville Program that I hope to apply in practice through litigation,” he said.
Plaza offers those still at Notre Dame a piece of advice: “Outside of the Notre Dame bubble it is hard to keep up the ideals that you’ve held yourself to…it’s hard to see where all of it makes sense in the ‘real world.’ Don’t lose sight of what you’ve learned, don’t lose sight of the habits that you’ve honed. Try to maintain the person that you grew to be by the end of your Notre Dame experience.”
Article contributed by CCCG Writing Fellow Merlot Fogarty.