Spotlight on Eric Brooks: MFIA Alum and Gibson Dunn Litigator

Eric Brooks ’19 didn’t set out to become a First Amendment lawyer. He started in mathematics and computational genomics. But somewhere between Yale Law School, the FTC, a handful of federal clerkships, and a seat in Justice Elena Kagan’s chambers, a pattern emerged.

The through-line was not a single area of law. It was an attraction to hard problems, careful reasoning, and work with real-world stakes.

“At every stage of my career, I’ve been attracted to opportunities that allow me to work on important and difficult and fascinating legal questions,” Brooks said.

Now a litigation associate at Gibson Dunn’s Washington, D.C., office, Brooks works across the firm’s Antitrust, Appellate, Administrative, AI, and First Amendment practice groups. Lately, some of his most visible work has been in the last of those, an area Gibson Dunn recently formalized into its own practice group after years of work in the field.

Brooks has worked on media-related First Amendment cases for clients including The New York Times and NPR. For him, the most meaningful legal work is the kind that produces a concrete result for a client. In the NPR matter, the legal team helped secure tens of millions of dollars for the organization after challenging what Brooks described as an illegal executive action. In the dispute, NPR accused the Corporation of Public Broadcasting of violating its First Amendment rights when it suspended grant money appropriated by Congress.

“Seeing that tangible win that helped sustain an important piece of satellite infrastructure funding was extremely rewarding,” he said.

That interest in work with visible consequences goes back, at least in part, to his time at MFIA. Brooks joined the clinic in his second semester of law school, drawn to the First Amendment issues but also to the chance to start doing real legal work almost immediately.

“I was excited about the idea of working in a clinic — the idea that as quickly as my second semester of law school, I could already start engaging in legal matters,” he said. “After all, that is what I went to law school to do, to practice law.”

MFIA gave him exposure to the practical mechanics of litigation. He learned how to open a federal court docket, how to understand what was happening in a case, and how professional litigators approached their work.

“I learned the basics at MFIA,” Brooks said. “For the first time, I opened up a docket of a federal court and had to decipher what was going on there.”

The clinic also gave him models of strong lawyering. Brooks pointed to MFIA Director David Schulz ’78, along with clinical fellows John Langford ’14 and Hannah Bloch-Wehba, as lawyers whose work made an impression on him.

One MFIA matter especially stayed with him. A journalist in Philadelphia was trying to access court records he had a legal right to obtain but had not been able to get on his own. MFIA sent letters on his behalf and helped him secure access without filing a lawsuit.

“We were able to persuade them that their legal obligations were to give him the records,” Brooks said. “It was rewarding to vindicate his rights.”

The case stayed with him because it showed how legal work can make a difference without always needing a long fight in court. A clear legal argument, made at the right time, Brooks saw, helped someone get access to records he was entitled to see.

His advice to current and incoming MFIA students is to take on as many different kinds of matters as they can. Even within MFIA’s focus on media freedom, transparency, and access to information, students can work across different courts, different legal questions, and different forms of advocacy.

“I think the best thing for young lawyers is to get as many opportunities as possible to figure out what they want,” he said.

He also urges students to focus on legal writing.

“The ability to write clearly and persuasively is a prized commodity in the legal profession,” Brooks said.

Brooks said that advice applies beyond MFIA and beyond litigation. Even for students who do not plan to become litigators, he said, strong writing is one of the most useful skills they can develop.

Looking back, Brooks sees MFIA as a formative part of his legal education. It gave him practical experience, strong models of advocacy, and a chance to work on matters where the stakes were immediate. MFIA was one of the first places Brooks saw what litigation looked like in practice, and where he began building the skills he still relies on now.