By Gracie Howard
Yale Law School, where Honors alumnus Anthony Potts is studying with support from the Cora Nunnally Miller Award and serving as an editor at the Yale Law Journal.
Honors alumnus Anthony Potts (BA ’21) is studying at Yale Law School, helping the American Bar Association rewrite its model procurement code, and working as an editor at the Yale Law Journal. His journey to New Haven, Connecticut, started in Athens as a CURO Honors Scholar, UGA’s top undergraduate research scholarship.
Originally an economics and management information systems double major at UGA, Anthony took a course in criminal procedure, during which a guest speaker brought up a problem about accessing jail data in Georgia; the state has an unusually high number of counties, each with its own jail. Through the following semesters, Anthony was able to tie together his interest in computer science with his budding interest in law by collecting and studying local incarceration data. The research culminated in 2020 with a publication in the Georgia Law Review.
Anthony’s passion for research was born. While in Honors, he conducted undergraduate research through the Center for Undergraduate Research Opportunities and helped draft policy through the Arch Policy Institute.
“The skills I built as a UGA student, like working with professors through data analysis and thinking across fields through applying my background in computer science and economics to the law, have been very helpful,” Anthony said.
In 2023, he began attending Yale Law School with support from the Cora Nunnally Miller Award. The scholarship is given annually to one Honors student or alumni who plans to continue their studies at either Harvard or Yale law schools, granting partial reimbursement of tuition for up to three years.
According to Anthony, the award allowed him to pursue areas of law he has genuine interest in, like procurement law, which sets the rules for government acquisition of services or property. Without the scholarship, he would have felt the pressure to pursue jobs or internships more for their pay grade due to the high cost of law school.
“The scholarship gave me added security to pursue research outside of class instead of working an externship where I could earn more money,” Anthony said. “It’s a huge weight off my shoulders.”
Anthony’s research focuses on public, state, and local procurement, specifically on competitive-bidding rules, which determine how the government chooses among bids from marketplace suppliers. His research will be published in a forthcoming Yale Law Journal issue as a student note.
“State and local governments disburse around $2 trillion every year on government contracts, which is actually a larger amount than the federal government. Many of the laws that determine how that money is spent have been unchanged since the 1700s,” Anthony said. “I’m researching how the application of these laws may have drifted over time and what revisions might make the government’s acquisition of infrastructure more affordable and higher quality.”
Anthony’s work has even started to manifest outside of Yale’s classrooms. After viewing his research, he was contacted by the American Bar Association to help rewrite its Model Procurement Code, which was originally written in 1979 and has only had one modest update since. The procurement code provides states and the thousands of counties across the U.S. with a baseline model for procuring government contracts.
Anthony is also an editor at the Yale Law Journal and is set to graduate from Yale in 2026, after which he will begin a clerkship on the Court of Federal Claims in Washington, D.C. The COFC handles legal claims filed against the U.S. government, including claims involving government contracts and grants.
His strong start at the Morehead Honors College has given Anthony a leg up on his law school journey—and he gave advice for current Honors students interested in a similar career path.
“I would say to take courses in fields and from professors you find fascinating and not just in the pre-law track,” Anthony said. “I’ve benefited so much from classwork and research outside of law, including in sociology and in economics. I use that background all the time, and it makes me see the law in a different light.”
