Justin Simard is a fellow at the Baldy Center for Law and Social Policy, which is housed at the SUNY Buffalo Law School. He received his J.D. from the University of Pennsylvania Law School and expects to defend his dissertation, The Technocrats: Lawyers and Capitalism in Early National America, 1780-1870, at the University of Pennsylvania this spring. Using day books, ledgers, and letters, the dissertation provides a bottom-up history of an elite profession, demonstrating that lawyers contributed to the growth and expansion of American capitalism not with grand gestures, but by solving day-to-day problems on behalf of their clients. Justin’s research has been supported by the Cromwell Foundation, the Library Company of Philadelphia, and the University of Pennsylvania, and he has presented his work both to legal scholars and historians.