Bound for Harvard, Limbaugh seeks to serve ‘in a bigger way’

Look out, Harvey Specter, James Limbaugh may be coming for your corner office at the law firm Pearson Hardman.

Limbaugh, a 2018 graduate of Sallisaw and a graduate of the University of Central Oklahoma, has been accepted to Harvard University Law School, and he knows what he needs to do to get ready for his three years in Cambridge, Mass.

“I was told I have to watch ‘Suits’ before I go, and so I just started, I’m working on it. I’m on like the eighth episode,” Limbaugh said last week, his enthusiasm piqued by what is surely critical pre-Harvard advice. “And I was told I have to watch ‘Legally Blonde,’ and I watched that. I’d never seen it before. So I’ve now checked both of those off my list.”

Chosen as one of the 560 admitted each year to the prestigious law school — “I don’t know how many people apply, but about 500 get accepted” — Limbaugh is counting down the days, literally, until his first class in mid-August.

“Oh, yeah, I’ve got the countdown going. I’m down to — got it right here on my phone — 40 days, 13 hours and 48 minutes. That’s exactly how long,” he said last Friday morning. His date with destiny has now inched closer, 33 days as of today.

“I’m trying to enjoy the rest of my summer before I get entrenched in the work [at school],” a three-month break that includes working at an Oklahoma City SCUBA diving shop.

Dive shops don’t have a reputation as among the highestpaying jobs, but Limbaugh will need a pretty healthy bank account by the time he arrives in New England. Three years at Harvard Law costs about $300,000.

“Harvard doesn’t give merit scholarships. They only give need-based, and I’m still waiting to hear back on that. At the moment, I’m gonna pay full price, but they’re gonna get back to me. I’m very much expecting need-based assistance,” he says hopefully.

“But who knows what will happen. If not, I’ll just be taking out loans.”

But if the latter is his financial odyssey, he sees a silver lining.

“Harvard’s very good about helping you after you’re out of law school. They have a program called Low Income Protection Plan. So if I wanted to go do a government job or a public service job or anything like that, they’ll help me pay off my loans even though I’m not making as much money as most of the other kids if they go to corporate law,” Limbaugh says. “So I won’t be stuck in a high-paying job just to pay off my loans if I don’t want to. They’ll help me get a public service job if that’s what I decide I want.”

Of course, even though he’s only eight episodes into the nine seasons of the legal drama “Suits,” he wouldn’t mind a spacious corner office like Harvey Specter’s overlooking the New York City skyline.

“I assume I’d have the little tiny cubicle desk at first,” he says pragmatically, but not limiting his potential for advancement.

“I don’t know exactly what kind of law I want to go in yet. I’m keeping an open mind about that, because I don’t want to go in there like I know what I’m doing and be all decided. So I’m just waiting to kind of be pushed towards a certain way and just gonna go with an open mind and see where it takes me. That’s the plan. I can see myself going several paths, but I don’t have any one place that I’m set on yet.”

Nervous in a good way

But being accepted to Harvard is only the first step. Although Limbaugh admits to a certain degree of apprehension, he maintains a positive attitude.

James Limbaugh

“I’m nervous. It’s gonna be a lot of hard work, and it’s gonna be a level of work that I’ve never experienced before. But every time I’ve been faced with something like that, I just get it done and work hard at it, and one way or another it’ll figure itself out. I’m definitely nervous, but more excited. I think if you’re not nervous a little bit, you don’t care enough about it. I’m excited about it. It’s gonna be a good time one way or another, and I’ll figure it out,” he says.

Then he reveals why he’s able to remain positive.

“The thing that I think is most important for people to realize is that no matter … we’re from Sequoyah County, but that doesn’t mean you can’t go and do something like this or even better. I think when I was in high school, at times I kind of limited myself. I was like, ‘Well, I’m just from this small town, I can only do so much. I’ve got to protect myself, protect my own feelings and not go after these aspirational things.’

“But once I kind of got out of that mindset, things started changing for me. I kind of got in a mindset where I can go do whatever I want, I’ve just got to go after it. I think once I had that mentality shift, things just started changing for me. That’s what I want other students that are going through high school to know and what other kids that are my age — and even adults — everybody can learn something from that. That’s what I tried to teach kids at Boys State, and I think that’s what the American Legion helped me realize, was that once you start recognizing that you’re responsible for your own life and you can make those changes and you can go after those things, and things will really turn better for you if you do those things. That’s when all the good things started to happen. I’m sure it won’t always be good, I’m sure I’m gonna face a lot more adversity, but having that mentality has really changed my life for the better. I think any student — anybody — can feel the same change that I did.”

Part of Limbaugh’s growth came after serving as a delegate to American Legion’s Boys State, a high school student’s opportunity to jump start their college education by earning up to three tuition-free college credits.

“The American Legion was a big part of what got me wanting to really aspire to do good things. They paid for me to go to Boys State when I was in high school (the summer between his junior and senior year). I’ve been back to Boys State every year as a counselor, and every year American Legion is just always there to help me and support those other kids. I’ve seen it turn not only myself but other kids into pretty good leaders and give them a lot of opportunities to be successful. I’m just really thankful for them and what they do.”

Limbaugh expects his support of Boys State to continue, despite his law school career.

“I’ve been back every summer to help them out. They invested in me, and so I’m trying to help them and give back to them and go every summer, and I plan to do that even though I’m going to be living in Boston,” he says.

Law school or bust

Following his graduation from UCO with a degree in political science, Limbaugh, the son of Sallisaw veterinarian Dr. Paula Haraway, took a gap year to teach sixth-grade geography and English as well as coach football, basketball and baseball at an Oklahoma City middle school.

But he always expected to go to law school. While Harvard was at the top of his list, he had a backup plan. Georgetown University was his alternate a year ago, and he was within a couple of days of heading to UCLA this year when he got the call from Harvard.

“I’ve always known that I wanted to do some kind of public service or something in that realm, and I really enjoyed my time as a teacher, but I recognized that there are other ways to help out and other ways that law school could help me do it in a bigger way. So that’s kind of what, from the beginning, pushed me towards law school, was just the impact a good lawyer can make, because they can have all kinds of impacts on any community anywhere. That’s what really drove me to deciding to go to law school,” Limbaugh recalls.

“There’s a pretty lengthy application process. You have to take a test called the Law School Admission Test, the LSAT, and it took me about two, almost three years of really hard studying on that. When I first took the test, my test score was nowhere near where it needed to be. It just took a long time, a lot of studying to get to where I could even be competitive for that. And then I just worked on putting together a really impressive resume,” he explains.

“One of the positives of COVID for me was that I was able to be home a lot studying, and I just made sure I didn’t waste that time and put it towards something useful, and it ended up paying off.

“I sent in my application around November 2022, and then I did my interview around Christmas, and I didn’t hear back until May. I was actually wait-listed,” he explains. “You can be accepted right off, you can be denied or you can be wait-listed where they’ll reconsider you later. I was wait-listed and I was pretty down, pretty sad. I was, ‘It’s probably not going to end up with me getting in,’ because I had been waitlisted last year as well.

“Last year, I had applied to Harvard and been wait-listed and then denied. My backup plan at the time was Georgetown. But I decided against Georgetown. I wanted another swing at Harvard.”

But Limbaugh still had a backup plan.

“I had been planning to go to UCLA Law, I had been accepted there, and I was actually planning to fly out and go find a place to live there. And then about two days before I was to fly out to LA, [Harvard] gave me a call back and told me that I got accepted.”

As he pursued his graduate school options, he did something he says he’s always wanted to do: Coaching and teaching.

“I loved it. It was easily the most difficult year of my life. Teaching is incredibly hard, and made me appreciate all the teachers that I had, because I’m sure I was a jerk like those kids,” Limbaugh says.

“I did my interview in my [sixth-grade] classroom in Oklahoma City, and [Harvard] loved the idea that I was teaching school. I kind of built a story around public service and the things that I wanted to do after law school, and my time in school was a part of that,” he says. “It was about an hour interview with the dean of admissions, and she was really nice and it was really comfortable. I was expecting something to be intimidating, but they were very nice and she made it very conversational and I wasn’t nervous. I was nervous at first, but then once she started talking, she just made me feel comfortable and it was nothing like I expected. It was very calm. The interview process wasn’t too crazy.

“And then when I got the phone call that I had been accepted, I was actually in the middle of class. I had a bunch of students with me, and I can’t keep them quiet, so they’re all really loud. I just was smiling from ear to ear, and I couldn’t contain my happiness. All the kids were so curious as to what it was. They had known that I had been applying, and when they found out, they all were so excited for me. It was a cute little moment,” Limbaugh says.

And now his transition from the scorching summers and temperate winters of Oklahoma begins.

“I visited once. It’s nice. It’s beautiful,” he says of Boston. “I only went in the summer, though, so I don’t know what the winters are like. I’m a little afraid of the cold. But it’s OK, I’ll adjust one way or another.”