After graduating from Williams College in 1885, he went on to study law at Columbia Law School, spending his second year reading law at All Soul's College in Oxford and the Inns Court in London. He taught Roman history and Latin for a year in St. Paul's School, Concord, New Hampshire, and from 1888 to 1903 practiced law in Cleveland. He was professor of contracts in the law school of Western Reserve University from 1891 to 1897, and in 1896 helped to organize the municipal association of Cleveland, where he also served as president of the Chamber of Commerce from 1908 to 1909. He was professor of politics at Princeton University from 1903 to 1908. While at Princeton, he befriended future president Woodrow Wilson. In 1908, Garfield became a law professor and eighth president of his alma mater, Williams College in Massachusetts. He was president of the American Political Science Association from 1921 to 1922.