PAST 38 BY 38 RECIPIENTS
Abby Lemert
"The legal profession is innately adversarial, with lawyers rewarded for their individual brilliance. But my Purdue Engineering education taught me that the largest leaps are never the work of one person. Long nights with my design teammates in Armstrong Hall of Engineering proved to me that the strongest, most robust innovations emerge only through collaboration, not competition. Similarly, the support I received from older, wiser Boilermakers taught me that you haven't fully succeeded until you've helped others solve some of the same challenges you've already overcome. My Purdue education taught me that the most meaningful success is never achieved alone."
Abby Lemert | Multidisciplinary Engineering
Associate, Edelson PC
If Abby Lemert's Purdue Engineering education taught her anything, it was that "the largest leaps are never the work of
one person," and that "the strongest, most robust innovations emerge only through collaboration, not competition." This
humble approach has fueled her scholarly exploits and catapulted her career in the field of technology accountability
law, helping regulators keep pace with technologies like social media and AI.
As Purdue's only Marshall Scholar in the last 30 years, her postgraduate study in the United Kingdom resulted in two
master's degrees, in computer science and international relations. Her next stop was Yale Law School, becoming the
first-ever Purdue Engineering graduate to study there. While at Yale, she co-founded the Tech Accountability &
Competition Project, a clinic operated by Yale faculty and students as a small pro bono law firm working on real-life,
cutting-edge lawsuits and legislation. In its first 18 months, the clinic drafted a bill for the California Assembly to
protect children against social media addiction, co-filed a brief with the DC Attorney General against Facebook,
supported the Department of Justice in its antitrust lawsuit against Google, and filed two briefs in the U.S. Supreme
Court.
After graduation, Abby returned to Indiana to work as a law clerk for Judge David Hamilton on the U.S. Court of Appeals
for the Seventh Circuit, where she helped write opinions that, once published, become governing law in Indiana,
Illinois, and Wisconsin. At just 28 years old, she finished her clerkship this fall and has returned to Edelson PC, a
tech-focused, plaintiff-side law firm in Chicago — to gain additional hands-on litigation experience. Ultimately, she
hopes to contribute to tech accountability law and policy as a clinical law professor, litigator, and civil servant.