Dan Cummins ('90) on Majoring in English

Attorney Dan Cummins graduated cum laude with a B.A. in English from Villanova and obtained his law degree from the Dickinson School of Law.  He now practices law with the Scranton law firm of Foley, Comerford & Cummins and currently focuses his practice in motor vehicle accident and premises liability matters. His blog, "Tort Talk," has been selected by the ABA Journal as one of the 100 best blogs in the United States for a legal audience (click here to visit the blog).  Cummins also writes a bi-monthly award-winning civil litigation column for the statewide legal news publication, the Pennsylvania Law Weekly.

From Dan:

I am really glad I have found a career and other outlets that allow me to utilize my writing skills honed as an English major at Villanova. While the practice of brief writing in the law does not foster creative writing as much as it does analytical writing, I have been able to participate in column writing for a legal newspaper in addition to maintaining the blog.

My four years of study as an English major at Villanova analyzing in great detail novels by Salinger, Twain, and Dickens, short stories by Joyce and Poe, plays by playwrights from Shakespeare to Miller, and poems by Keats, Yeats, and T.S. Eliot, created skills that I continue to use every day in analyzing cases in the practice of law through legal research. Majoring in English also helped me to craft a writing skill and, more importantly, editing and re-editing skills that I continue to utilize on a daily basis.

Dan at a Civil Litigation conference.

Nowadays, I continue to try to read for pleasure whenever I can but it is sometimes difficult to do with all the reading I do at work—gotta’ give the eyes a rest sometimes. But whenever an anxiously awaited new novel comes out by John Irving or Pat Conroy, two of my favorite authors, I always purchase a copy hot off the presses. I also enjoy going back to the classic works of the great writers noted above for another read at times. Those works continue to provide reading enjoyment, and I am always surprised to see something new or different with each read.

I couldn’t have picked a better major than majoring in English at Villanova. It has both provided me with the skills to succeed in my profession and exposed me to the intense study of a wide variety of great works of literature that I might not have been otherwise exposed to and, for that, I am eternally grateful.