South Carolina

Joseph Bias: Welcome y’all to the Direct Examination Podcast! My name is Joseph Bias.

Dane Phillips: And I’m Dane Phillips. Happy New Year, Joseph!

Joseph Bias: Happy New Year, Dane! I’d be doing better if Amber was here to do the “welcome y’all”! (laughs)

Dane Phillips: Amber is fulfilling her mommy duties today, so she sends her regards.

Joseph Bias: That’s right. We appreciate everyone who listened to our Golden Gavels end-of-year review episode. We had a great time recording it. But we’re not going to waste any time today, because we have a very special guest. Dane, tell the folks who’s joining us!

Dane Phillips: Our guest this week is Adair Boroughs! Adair is currently running for Congress in South Carolina’s 2nd Congressional District. Originally from the small Barnwell County town of Williston, Adair graduated from Furman University and became a high school math teacher at Mauldin High School. Determined to affect change for South Carolina children at a policy level, she attended Stanford Law School, where she served as President of the Stanford Public Interest Law Foundation and Editor-in-Chief of the Stanford Law & Policy Review. She began her career at the U.S. Department of Justice in Washington, D.C., prosecuting corporations and millionaires who cheated on their taxes, clerked for U.S. District Judge Richard Gergel in Charleston, and spent three years as the Executive Director of Charleston Legal Access. Adair, welcome to the show!

Adair Boroughs: Thank you for having me! I’m really excited to be here.

Joseph Bias: Adair, before we dive into your campaign, tell our listeners about Charleston Legal Access. What gap did that organization fill in South Carolina’s legal landscape?

Adair Boroughs: We launched Charleston Legal Access specifically to fill the gap between free legal aid and the private market. If you make $20,000 or $30,000 a year, you earn too much to qualify for traditional free legal aid, but you’re nowhere near being able to afford a $5,000 or $8,000 private attorney retainer. We created a sliding-scale nonprofit law firm to provide affordable representation for working families—helping them preserve homes, maintain transportation, protect income streams, and handle civil disputes before they fall into poverty.

Dane Phillips: What type of civil practice areas did Charleston Legal Access handle?

Adair Boroughs: Pretty much every area of civil law. On the plaintiff side, we represented people in property and consumer disputes involving $5,000 to $10,000—amounts too low for private contingency attorneys, but life-altering sums for working families. On the defense side, we represented sole proprietors and small business owners, like a local hardwood floor installer who couldn’t afford traditional corporate representation when disputes arose.

Joseph Bias: Adair, how does a kid growing up in a double-wide trailer in Williston, South Carolina, end up at Stanford Law School, the Department of Justice, and now running for Congress?

Adair Boroughs: I grew up in Barnwell County and went to Furman on scholarship and Pell Grants. I loved math because I’m a problem solver at heart. While I was teaching high school math, former State Superintendent of Education Inez Tenenbaum—who was running for U.S. Senate at the time—encouraged me to think about how a law degree could be a powerful tool for public policy. When applying to law schools, I wanted to experience a completely different part of the country, so I chose Stanford.

While at Stanford, I had an incredible tax professor who exposed how corporate tax shelters were draining public revenues. Coming from a background where my dad worked hard and paid every penny of his taxes, I became morally indignant that wealthy entities were gaming the system. So I spent my second summer at the U.S. Department of Justice Tax Division and went back there full-time after law school.

Dane Phillips: What made you and your family decide to move back home to South Carolina from D.C.?

Adair Boroughs: South Carolina has always been home. In D.C., my husband was working as investigative counsel on Capitol Hill, and I was doing federal court depositions across the country. One day he called me to ask if I could pick up our daughter because he had a late committee hearing, and I had to say, “I’m taking depositions in California right now, so that’s going to be a little tough!” (laughs) We realized we wanted to be back home near family and community.

Joseph Bias: What made you decide to step up and challenge a 17-year incumbent in South Carolina’s 2nd Congressional District?

Adair Boroughs: When conversations started around this race, nobody else was stepping up to build the kind of campaign required to compete. Building Charleston Legal Access proved to me that when something is hard, necessary, and risky, you can’t wait around for someone else to do it—you have to step up yourself.

Our campaign is focused on real, everyday issues that affect families in Aiken, Lexington, Richland, Barnwell, and Orangeburg counties:

1. Rural Broadband Access: Expanding high-speed internet infrastructure so rural students and small businesses can compete in the modern economy.

2. Lowering Healthcare & Prescription Costs: Allowing Medicare to negotiate drug prices and capping out-of-pocket costs for families and seniors.

3. Getting Corporate Dark Money Out of Politics: We reject all corporate PAC money because elected officials should represent the voters in their district, not out-of-state corporate donors.

Dane Phillips: What advice do you give to students or young people considering a career in law or public service?

Adair Boroughs: Work in a law office or public agency before you spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on a law degree! Make sure you actually love the day-to-day work of the profession. Find the area of law or service that gets you out of bed in the morning, because that passion is what sustains you through the long, difficult days.

Joseph Bias: Adair, we end every episode with a war story. What is your favorite story from your legal career?

Adair Boroughs: My very first deposition at the Department of Justice Tax Division! We were prosecuting a high-value corporate tax shelter case. The taxpayer flew in for the deposition on his private jet, walked into the conference room, looked across the table at me, and said, “What are you, like 12 years old?”

At that exact moment, I made a silent vow that we were going to win that case! (laughs) We worked tirelessly, built an airtight case, and at the end of the litigation, he paid $6 million in back taxes and penalties to the U.S. Treasury!

Dane Phillips: That is how you handle a deposition! $6 million back to the taxpayers!

Joseph Bias: Adair, thank you so much for joining us, sharing your journey, and spending time with us today!

Adair Boroughs: Thank you both so much! I’d love to come back anytime.

Dane Phillips: To learn more about Adair’s campaign, visit adairforcongress.com or follow her on Twitter @Adair4Congress and Facebook @AdairForCongress.

Joseph Bias: Follow us on Twitter and Facebook @SCLawPod, follow Joseph @JosephPBias, Dane @SCCrimLawyer, and Amber @RedJudicata. Leave us a five-star review and we’ll see y’all next week!