Raymond Moore III needed a lawyer.

An 18-year-old at the time, he had been kicked out of a high school basketball game because school officials thought he was using a counterfeit ticket, he said. He didn’t leave the building right away — Moore said he was waiting inside for his mom to pick him up — and a police officer “just locked me up.”

With his court date coming up, Moore thought of Nick McDaniels, his teacher at Mergenthaler Vocational-Technical High School who runs a law firm on the side. McDaniels took Moore’s case, “no questions asked,” said the Morgan State University football player. The trespassing and disorderly charges were later dismissed.

“As long as he’s around, you never feel like you’re by yourself or alone,” Moore said.

Moore is just one of the many students, former students and colleagues McDaniels has helped with his law degree. Although he’s teaching full-time, the 37-year-old attorney finds time to divorce a dozen of his fellow educators, officiate two former students’ weddings and help past pupils start a business.

The law firm he started in 2020 now represents a colleague who is suing four Republican state legislators and Libs of TikTok for defamation.

Juggling school and his legal work makes McDaniels’ days nonstop. His alarm rings at 4:45 a.m. on most days. He may have to run to his law firm, LewisMcDaniels around 6 a.m. to knock out tasks like billing before heading to the high school, where he teaches law and leadership.

His lunch break brings more law work — emailing and maybe billing. If he finishes grading papers during his planning period, he can pivot to a law firm task. At least two days each week, he goes to the law office until 7:30 or 8 p.m. before heading home.

McDaniels said he still makes time for six to eight hours of sleep and at least one weekend day dedicated to his wife and daughter.

Sometimes he can merge his legal work with teaching. Just before Thanksgiving, he had a hearing at the city’s circuit court for a student who was charged with burglarizing her own home. He brought along a senior student to watch the proceedings since she hopes to intern at the courthouse someday.

“I just try to turn it into experiential learning in that way,” he said.

‘Like a dad’

McDaniels became a lawyer almost on a whim. The Carroll County native had wanted to be a teacher since middle school, inspired by his English teacher Richard “Dick” Thompson.

Before he graduated from Marquette University in 2009, McDaniels took the LSAT because his friends were taking it, he said. His score was good enough to attend the University of Maryland Francis King Carey School of Law, so he did.

By then, he was already teaching English at Mergenthaler Vocational, affectionately known as Mervo. It has felt like home ever since, he said.

Early on, McDaniels started a tradition of making goofy faces for yearbook photos. His goal has always been to make students’ high school years memorable and to be everyone’s favorite teacher, “not necessarily even the best teacher.”

After passing the bar in 2015, McDaniels became the Law and Leadership teacher at Mervo. It’s a career and technical education program that gives students a head start on their postgraduation paths. Thanks to McDaniels, students have the opportunity to earn a certification to become a legal assistant after graduation. Before he brought the test to the school in the 2019-20 school year, law and leadership students would only have the credentials to be a peer mediator.

Christmas lights illuminated the Northeast Baltimore classroom on a Friday afternoon. McDaniels, wearing a backwards hat on top of his long hair that he plans to donate to Wigs for Kids, stood in front.

His senior cohort talked about the annual social justice boot camp they attended, and the time they ate lunch with the Maryland Supreme Court justices.

But the class mostly reminisced about the transportation debacle that happened afterward. A no-show bus led to McDaniels calling Ubers for students, two of whom pranked McDaniels by telling him they’d been kidnapped by their driver.

“There was an F-bomb in there,” McDaniels recalled of his reaction to the fake news.

Some students, like Dylan Brown, are aspiring lawyers, excited for the exam at the end.

“If you pass, you’ll be able to work in a law firm,” she said.

Others have more complicated reasons for taking the class.

Nizyah Hall, who was sitting quietly in the back of the classroom, met McDaniels as a freshman, shortly after her dad was killed. She said she didn’t think justice was served in his case.

She took McDaniels class “to understand for myself, like, why was this happening,” she said. While she only goes to school, “once every blue moon,” she makes sure to attend McDaniels’ class.

“He can always tell when you’re feeling down,” she said. “Kind of like a dad or an uncle.”

The teaching attorney

McDaniels’ class is often a hangout hub for students. Even Alexa Sciuto’s Spanish students ask to do work in McDaniels’ room across the hall.

Sciuto was new to Mervo last year. She’d resigned from a teaching job in Baltimore County following a social media firestorm. She claims conservative legislators falsely accused her of making online death threats toward a Moms for Liberty member, but she wasn’t sure how to take legal action. A fellow teacher said she should talk to McDaniels.

It was five days before the statute of limitations expired when Sciuto approached McDaniels. She wasn’t sure if the complaint she wrote met the legal standard or if there was time to fix it.

“I was so scared of hearing, ‘It’s too late,’” she said. “But he was like, ‘I file stuff the last day all the time. Give it to me. I’ll proofread it.’”

McDaniels did and later told her his partner would take her case.

McDaniels was also there for Javier Herrera-Vasquez when he needed him. The 2023 graduate wanted to get married, but the courthouse couldn’t accommodate the couple on the day they’d hoped. McDaniels, who taught his favorite high school class, agreed to officiate for free.

To thank him, Herrera-Vasquez’s family gave McDaniels a gift basket. But McDaniels didn’t realize he’d be expected to take part in El baile de las canastas — a Mexican tradition that involves guests dancing with the baskets they were gifted.

While McDaniels recalled almost passing out from dancing with a basket of wine, fruit and other snacks over his head, Herrera-Vasquez said it shows McDaniel’s character.

“Because he didn’t know what he had to do, and he didn’t know anything about the culture, but he’s still participating without a second thought,” he said.

This year, McDaniels’ dedication to his students earned him an award from The Judge Alexander Williams, Jr. Center for Education, Justice and Ethics at the University of Maryland, College Park.

“Thank you for your commitment to creating transformative spaces whether in classrooms, courtrooms and communities, where every young person is seen, heard and empowered,” Williams said in a video.

In his acceptance speech, McDaniels said the future of City students may seem grim to those on the outside, but he’s “powerfully” encouraged by them.

“My students are bright, compassionate, worldly and excited to solve the problems that are being left to them,” he said. “They’re resolute in their demands for a future that bends toward justice.”

About the Education Hub

This reporting is part of The Banner’s Education Hub, community-funded journalism that provides parents with resources they need to make decisions about how their children learn. Read more.