At 18, Mississippi's Jimmy Chilimigras has graduated law school and aims to litigate against social media companies for creating harmful, addictive products. He also seeks to reform US tax law.
Key points
Jimmy Chilimigras graduated law school at age 18
He aims to litigate against social media companies
Chilimigras is the world's youngest certified public accountant
He was homeschooled and displayed intelligence early on
Mentioned in this story
Jimmy ChilimigrasMississippisocial media companies
A Mississippi teenager who in May became one of the youngest ever law school graduates says he wants to help reform US tax law as well as litigate against social media companies over claims that they design their products to be addictive – and therefore harmful – to youths.
“What they’re creating is extremely predatory and harmful, and yet they’re sending it out knowing that it’s … harmful and not really taking any action to reduce the harm or address it,” 18-year-old Jimmy Chilimigras said with respect to his interest in participating in such social media litigation.
“You have a duty to protect people from harm, and if [you] breach that duty, and that breach causes these people damages … you should be held liable.”
Chilimigras shared those ambitions in an interview with the Guardian recently in which he also detailed his unique educational journey, including his becoming the world’s youngest certified public accountant (CPA) – and, given his age, his ordering milk or cranberry juice at law school functions where his classmates tended to get alcoholic beverages.
As his family has put it, Chilimigras displayed signs of being highly intelligent quite early growing up in the Mississippi community of Bay St Louis. He could speak in full sentences at age two, and he undertook home schooling through high school, completing textbook-based courses and related testing at his own pace with his parents’ supervision.
The result was a high-school diploma for Chilimigras at age 12, when most US students are middle schoolers. And by 15, when the vast majority of his peers were not even midway through high school, he had attained both a bachelor’s and master’s degree in accounting, having completed the requisite coursework online.
Chilimigras acknowledged that experience was atypical – and, as far as he sees it, that is completely OK.
“I think learning being asynchronous, where different people are allowed to move at different paces, is really valuable,” he remarked. “I think one thing that modern education gets wrong is just having everyone moving at the exact same pace, no matter their life circumstances – who they are, what they’re interested in or what their ability is.
“I think that’s a mistake – and that we are losing out on potential because of that, and a lot of people [are] being forced to do things that they shouldn’t be.”
‘They’d know my name’
From there, Chilimigras tackled the challenge of taking an exam to become a CPA, consisting of four parts that are each about four-and-a-half hours long. He said it took him about a month or two of studying to prepare for each part. Chilimigras ultimately earned recognition as the youngest CPA worldwide after passing the exam.
Q&A
Who is Jimmy Chilimigras and what are his achievements?
Jimmy Chilimigras is an 18-year-old law school graduate from Mississippi, known for being one of the youngest ever to achieve this milestone and for becoming the world's youngest certified public accountant.
What legal actions does Jimmy Chilimigras plan to take against social media companies?
Chilimigras intends to litigate against social media companies for designing addictive products that he claims are harmful to youths, arguing they have a duty to protect users from such harm.
How did Jimmy Chilimigras complete his education at such a young age?
He was homeschooled through high school, allowing him to complete his education at his own pace with his parents' supervision, which contributed to his early graduation from law school.
What does Jimmy Chilimigras believe about the responsibility of social media companies?
He believes that social media companies are aware of the harm their products cause and should be held liable for breaching their duty to protect users from such harm.
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He would also ace the law school admission test (LSAT), scoring a 174 out of 180, all before his 16th birthday. That enabled Chilimigras to enroll at Louisiana’s Loyola University New Orleans, which is about 60 miles from Bay St Louis.
Again, there are likely few people who can relate to Chilimigras’ trek through law school.
He would carpool to classes at Loyola from the family home he shared with his father, a real-estate manager, his mother, a broker, and six younger siblings. He found his reputation preceded him because his precocious academic successes had generated national news media coverage, with people at the law school coming up to him to essentially lay eyes on him.
“There were a bunch of people who would say hi to me, and they’d know my name and a little bit about me – and I’d never seen the person before,” Chilimigras said.
His age was also an inevitable topic of conversation. He recalled how in one class a professor was lecturing about when police have legal, reasonable suspicion to detain a motorist – such as the smell of marijuana emanating from a car. The professor posited that “everyone knows what the smell of marijuana is” before glancing at Chilimigras and retorting to a round of laughter, “Well – maybe not you.”
The age gap between Chilimigras and his law school peers was also plainly evident at gatherings equipped with bars where his fellow students would order alcoholic cocktails, wine and beer, given that Loyola New Orleans is in one of the world’s most festive cities.
Chilimigras said he would initially ask for milk. Yet, after being told by enough befuddled bartenders that they had no milk available, he adjusted by instead making cranberry juice his go-to request.
Nonetheless, as much as was feasible under those circumstances, Chilimigras said his law schoolmates and professors prioritized treating him like any other student.
Amid that environment, he ranked in the top 2% of his class. He earned the highest grade in 40% of his courses. And on 10 May he graduated with highest honors.
A list compiled by the history and culture website oldest.org suggests he could be among the four youngest people worldwide to have obtained a law degree. Loyola, meanwhile, touted him to be the youngest law school graduate ever in Louisiana, which joined the US in the 1812.
Either way, his graduation day ended with another reminder of how exceptional his education had been. He went home after his Loyola law commencement and supported one of his childhood pals, of the same age, by attending the friend’s graduation – from high school.
Two teenagers on a football field, with one in graduation regalia and the other in a T-shirt.
On the same night he graduated law school at age 18, Jimmy Chilimigras attended a friend’s high school graduation. It was the first high school graduation that Chilimigras had attended, having done home schooling through high school and then taking online classes until law school. Photograph: Courtesy of Jimmy Chilimigras
It was the first time Chilimigras had ever been to a traditional high school graduation ceremony.
“I guess it kind of hit me [there] a … bit,” Chilimigras admitted.
‘A great area to do some good’
After his family celebrated his graduation with a Caribbean cruise vacation, Chilimigras began studying in earnest for the bar exam, which law school graduates must pass to earn their licenses to practice as attorneys.
He also began wrapping his mind around pursuing a master of laws (LLM) degree in taxation from Northwestern University’s Pritzker School of Law in Chicago, which is further away than he had ever moved from Bay St Louis.
Chilimigras said he had already identified a couple of spaces where he wanted to focus during at least some of his looming professional legal career.
One was participating in litigation aiming to decide whether jury trials should decide tax controversies. They don’t at the moment, though a lot of encounters with the Internal Revenue Service can “feel like criminal prosecution”, Chilimigras said.
He also said he was keenly interested in litigation over whether there should be exceptions to the 90-day deadline that people are given to contest an IRS audit letter. At the moment, he said, there are no exceptions to that deadline, even if “your lawyer was a fraudster and never filed your [tax] filing, or maybe your house burned down, or there was a hurricane, or the IRS letter never actually reached you”, which has been known to happen.
Chilimigras said he sees such issues as “a great area to do some good”.
Furthermore, Chilimigras said he could see himself partaking in litigation wishing to hold social media companies liable for instilling addictive behaviors in children.
He said he got the idea from seeing how much time some of his siblings spend on such sites and apps. Conversations with friends who describe being completely absorbed by social media have also driven his concern, according to Chilimigras.
“They spend more time on it than they like, and they’ll tell me, ‘What this does to me – I don’t like it, but I can’t do anything about it,’” Chilimigras said. “It’s sad, so it kind of sticks with you a little.”
