Building a Legal Career Around Helping People feat. Kayla Williams-Campbell

6 hours ago
4 min read

Kayla Williams-Campbell is Deputy Director of Community Legal Services of Prince George’s County, where she oversees attorneys, manages grants, and supports eviction prevention programs. In this episode, Kayla shares how networking opened doors throughout her career, why public service became her passion, and how young lawyers can build careers around work they genuinely care about.

About This Episode

Background

Kayla Williams-Campbell is the Deputy Director of Community Legal Services of Prince George’s County, a nonprofit law firm serving communities across Prince George’s, Montgomery, and Anne Arundel counties in Maryland. Her role has evolved significantly since joining CLS in 2018. After beginning as a litigator and piloting the organization’s first eviction prevention program, Kayla moved into leadership, where her responsibilities now include supervising attorneys, onboarding staff, managing databases, writing grants, preparing funder reports, and overseeing housing-related programs.

“Truly my passion has always been for helping people and public service," shares Kayla Williams-Campbell on You Are A Lawyer.

That passion has remained consistent even as Kayla’s responsibilities have changed. Her work has included eviction prevention, expungements, domestic violence matters, and exposure to other areas of civil law. She encourages lawyers to take advantage of opportunities outside their assigned practice area, both to continue learning and to build a broader foundation they can carry into whatever comes next.

Why Law School

Becoming a lawyer wasn’t always Kayla’s plan. She entered Hampton University thinking she might become a nurse, only to discover after working in a hospital that healthcare wasn’t for her. Law school entered the picture almost unexpectedly. Kayla remembers overhearing two older Black women at Hampton discussing their plans to attend law school. Having grown up without lawyers in her family and rarely seeing Black lawyers outside of television, simply seeing people who looked like her pursuing law made the possibility feel real.

“I had just always thought it was outside of something I could do. But then when I saw someone who looked like me, I’m like, well, okay, you need to maybe explore this a little bit more" explains Kayla Williams-Campbell on Episode 260 of You Are a Lawyer.

Kayla didn’t seriously begin considering the LSAT and law school until her senior year of college, when she also added a criminology minor to her business studies. The process challenged her confidence, but her family believed in her even when she doubted herself. Looking back, Kayla can now confidently say that she can do hard things, a belief that grew through navigating law school, the bar exam, and the challenges of legal practice.

What Can You Do with a Law Degree

Kayla’s career demonstrates how many directions a law degree can take you, even within public service. She clerked for a circuit court judge in Baltimore City, worked with juvenile justice and criminal matters, became an eviction prevention attorney, and eventually moved into nonprofit leadership and management. Along the way, networking repeatedly helped her find opportunities, including the judicial clerkship she landed after attending an Alliance of Black Women Attorneys event and simply asking someone how she could position herself for one.

“I would say you can do anything. You truly can. You just gotta work it," shares Kayla Williams-Campbell on Episode 260 of You Are a Lawyer.

For Kayla, having the degree is only one part of building the career you want. She encourages young lawyers to reflect on where they want to go, work hard, intentionally enter rooms with people who can help them get there, and seek mentors who can provide guidance. Her career is evidence that a legal path does not have to be perfectly mapped out from the beginning. Opportunities can come through relationships, curiosity, and a willingness to say yes to work you may not have originally imagined yourself doing.

Lawyer Side Hustles

Kayla’s career story expands the idea of what lawyers can build beyond traditional client representation. Although she isn’t pursuing a conventional side hustle, her role requires her to use skills that reach far beyond litigation. Grant writing, program management, data reporting, staff supervision, training development, and organizational leadership have all become important parts of her work. Those skills have allowed her to create impact without spending every day in the courtroom.

“I just want to highlight the importance of taking advantage of different areas of law that your office provides,” Kayla Williams-Campbell expresses in Episode 260 of You Are a Lawyer.

That approach has allowed Kayla to explore expungements, domestic violence matters, wills, and other areas beyond eviction prevention. Rather than allowing a job title to define the limits of her experience, she intentionally looks for opportunities to learn. For young lawyers, that mindset can turn a single position into a much broader professional education and create options for future career moves, leadership opportunities, or entirely new directions.