Interview with Judge Patrick Brady and Magistrate Assistant Connie Wong

On February 22, Discovering Unique Careers were privileged to visit Judge Patrick Brady and his magistrate assistant Connie Wong in Superior Court Department of The Trial Criminal Court, Suffolk Country.

Judge Brady has been the judge since 1989. Every day he works from 8 to 4 and most of his cases are about criminal and civil. “Patient, impartial and amiable” are the best words to describe him. In every minute, Judge Brady is obligated to do his best in his life. In his word, “I always feel that I have to be responsible to my behavior, my family and the people around me all the time. I think this is a judge’s responsibility.” Through Judge Brady, we could learn more about the court, especially the jury selection process.

A jury is made up from a list of citizens living in the jurisdiction of the court. When selected, being a juror is, in principle, compulsory. However, jurors can be dismissed for several reasons and many people are released from serving on a jury. In Boston, a citizen is chosen every three years since the population in Boston is unstapled.  The purpose of this questioning is to find out if that person can be fair and impartial. The average jury is made up of 12 randomly-selected people. However, most of the time, the judge will usually select 16 people in case that some of them are not be able to do their jury duty.

Meanwhile, Judge Brady and Connie both agreed that the law undergraduates should take different subjects such as humanities, mathematics and social studies rather than pure law classes. They felt that, learning more about the society is more important than purely memorizing the laws.

While we were all interested in the legal process, we were also concerned about their balances between family and their jobs. Magistrate Assistant Connie Wong sees being a judicial worker and her family as parallel worlds. “I find that I can balance my life between my job and my family. In addition to help the public with the justice, I am also able to do my best as a wife and mother.”  Prior to her serving the Judiciary, Connie is, among others, also involved in the Gund Kwok Women Lion and Dragon Dance Troupe. However, way back in college, Connie was a business major student when she was an undergraduate. She hadn’t found her value in the politics until she graduated.

But this was not a tremendous change in Connie’s life. By the end of the interview, she explained the relationship between politics and any other field such as engineering or business.  As one of our members Chaoran Chen viewed, “A good businessman is associated with a good lawyer and a good accountant”. Connie agreed with the statement very much. Though business seems barely related to politics, they are closely connected. In addition, Connie believed that the patent attorney would fast develop in the ten years. Since these years more and more biomedical products have been invented, more and more biomedical companies or laboratories need to protect the patents of their products. At that time, a patent lawyer can give them a hand.  Even so, Connie said that it was easy to become a patent lawyer from a biomedical engineer since he can have a background of the bioengineering.

Here, thanks Judge Brady and Connie spending their time in our interview. We had never thought that we would step into the court and got in touch with the judicial workers before. And we look forward to hearing any interesting case at the court in the future. Under the solemnity of the United States flag, DUC learned a new career once again.