Brad and Debby Nahrstadt, who live in Buffalo Grove and work as attorneys in Chicago, were on the Monmouth College campus earlier this month to speak to students in pre-law, economics and English.

Brad, a 1989 graduate of Monmouth and a member of the college’s board of trustees, is a managing partner with the Williams Montgomery & John law firm, while his wife, Debby, is a managing attorney for the labor and employment group of British Petroleum’s offices in Chicago and Los Angeles.

Although Brad is the alumnus of the college, Debby was the featured attraction for the day as she met with female pre-law students, two economics classes and, along with Brad, a group of pre-law students.

“One of the classes she spoke to was my ‘Labor, Unions and Industrialization’ class,” said assistant professor of political economy and commerce Wendine Thompson-Dawson. “She addressed firing for just cause, what the laws are and how it’s different if you have a union contract. It was exciting for the students to see someone who has been successful in an industry talking about the things that we’re studying in the classroom. She talked about real cases that an arbitrator has decided on and gave our students a chance to guess what the outcomes were.”

Brad, who said he simply “tagged along,” for the day, also spoke with pre-law students and with a group of students majoring in English.

“Studying English taught me how to write well and to put thoughts down in a coherent fashion,” he said while explaining how useful his undergraduate degree is in his profession. “In law, motions are the written form of persuading a judge to rule in your favor. Some cases are decided solely on the written arguments presented to a judge. Ninety percent of my job is written communication. And if you’re not writing, you’re reading.”

Brad, who also majored in political science, said that being an English major enabled him to be the author of 60 articles and 15 book chapters, and he has also edited two books. He praised his liberal arts education in general, saying it provided “an exceptionally good background for my profession. It teaches you to think critically.”

In addition to the courses in his majors, he also stepped outside the box with a course called “Oral Interpretation of Literature,” which fulfilled a fine arts requirement. Taught by theatre professor Jim De Young, he called it “the class outside my major that I really, really enjoyed,” and he encouraged the students to also “do something unexpected” in terms of choosing courses. “You might surprise yourself,” he told them.

Brad told the students he first experienced Monmouth College while participating in a Biology Olympics competition when he was a sophomore at Genoa-Kingston High School. He remembers that “everyone was so nice,” and when college solicitations began arriving in his mailbox, the Monmouth ones carried added significance. His desire to attend a small college helped in his college decision, as did a meeting arranged for him by professor Ira Smolensky with attorney David Hultgren, who would go on to be a state representative and a judge.

It’s quite possible that the campus visit that he and Debby made to Monmouth will carry the same type of weight with today’s students – pre-law and otherwise – as Hultgren’s meeting with Brad did nearly 25 years ago.