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Managing While Managing Your Own Stress
So by now we’ve maybe gotten into a groove of working from home, and overseeing projects, but if you’re a new supervisor (whether it’s full time staff or interns) finding a way to manage while managing everything else that comes with a pandemic can feel like a bit much. In these situations, when it feels overwhelming, we may end up doing one of two things: completely letting go, which is not great or micromanaging to an extreme, which is never good. So what can you do to ensure you’re still being a good supervisor while dealing with everything else? One. Scream. Seriously! We may not recognize how anxious we are…
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Gift Guide 2020!
In what can only be described as the oddest year in most of our lives it has felt weird to try to adjust and focus on “normal” things. But in the midst of so much turbulence, doing “normal” things is helpful. With that in mind, I can’t wait to share some of my fave things from this past (weirdo) year and ways you can share them with other friends and family in your life! And the best part–the majority are Latinx owned! Let’s start with law students! While zoom school of law provides different experiences to students, the stress and anxiety of law school remains the same and that’s why…
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Tough Choices: How to Know Which Law School is Right for You
Like everything else in life, picking a law school is complicated. If it was a science, then you would just go to the highest ranked school, but that is not always the best choice. And what if you got into schools all similarly ranked? How can you really know which one is the better option? Thankfully, with just a little extra research you can make a decision that best fits your goals and plans. One. What’s the vibe? It’s important to visit your schools if you can. Visiting will let you get a feel of the school, the lectures, the students, and the nearby businesses. Of course, it may not…
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What’s Next? Life After the Election
Wow. All weekend I was at a loss for words because of how HAPPY I felt about the election. Not going to lie, some days before election day, I was going to sleep super worried about what another term would mean and how devastating it would be in so many ways and how the Right has decimated the justice system even further and well… I can’t put into words how relieved and happy I am! What an incredible moment for grassroots organizing and people power. One thing I also wanted to say is how grateful we should be to organizers and communities who are often the most harmed who still…
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Stressed Out: Managing Vicarious Trauma and Work-Related Stress
We’ve spoken about vicarious trauma before–it is essentially the mental impact we experience by being exposed to other people’s trauma. Generally, we may think this is something we see with EMTs or other first-responders, but this type of trauma seeps into legal work as well. It’s the prosecutor that has to stare at murder scene pictures, the guardian ad litem that has to work with abused children, the immigration attorney that hears about the atrocities their client experienced–all those instances, and many others, do a number on us and it’s not a question if we will be impacted by it, but when and how. First, a disclaimer: nothing, not better…
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Where to Even Start: Law School Applications
One of the big barriers to starting the law school process is that there seems like there’s so much to do, so many steps to take, that it’s hard to know where you should even start. And frankly, this profession loves its exclusivity so it doesn’t make its process super accessible or knowable or affordable. If you’re going to go through the application process alone, it’s daunting enough to make you procrastinate or talk yourself out of it. But, nah! you can do this. Let’s what it through! When I applied for law school I just “knew” it was time because I didn’t take a gap year, but even though…
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Resume Musts: How to Structure a Killer Resume
So I’m about to talk about something controversial–are you ready? …resumes are an important, vital part of your job search and you need to know how to craft one that makes you a strong candidate for the job. I know, I know, there are people on twitter and Linkedin who say they aren’t important. Hiring managers who claim they never look at them. That they are a relic of the past. But that’s not true. Or if it is good advice for someone, it’s not actually advice for you. We do not have the space to be unconventional in our job search. So you need to know how to draft…
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Responding to Racist Comments in the Classroom
I wrote a post years ago about responding to racist comments and when that was written the discourse and awareness of racism in law school was not as out in the open as it was now. When I was in school (yikes that makes me sound old!), if someone complained about racist comments by other students, the students of color were told to grow thicker skin. There were few recourses for things that weren’t over the top overt so the idea was that you just grit and bear it, for the most part. And even though there is more self-awareness within some schools about implicit bias and space for students…
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Don’t Go to Law School If It’s Not Free? Ignore This Bad Advice
If you’re starting to look into law school there is one thing you’ll see that’s highlighted over and over again and that is how expensive law school can be–it’s like, ridiculous. Grad school and other professional degrees are really pricy and can be enough to scare you from applying. The other thing you may notice as you’re doing your research are well-meaning (maybe) folks that say if you’re not going to a T14 law school, you should only go if it’s free. And do that I say, “yikes, your classism is showing.” To the first point, a T14 school is the top tier law schools that are highly ranked and…
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Break It: Moving Past Stereotypes to Advance your Career
I want to direct folks back to the ABA report about women of color leaving law. The report is great and breaks down so many of the issues women face that cause a road block in their career. One frequent theme that the participants highlight is how difficult it is to find mentors/sponsors in their career because they are not able to make a connection with those in positions to help advance their careers. The women profiled found it difficult to connect with the white male leaders in their firms, but noticed that the men did not have that same hesitancy/barrier to help white women. They hypothesize that a big…