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Adjusting to Office Work: What Every First Gen Needs to Know
As summer is getting closer and closer, I’m thinking a lot about my summer experiences in law school. My 1L summer was also the first long-term exposure I had a professional/office setting and I’m so grateful it was in a small social service agency, focused on Latino community because it let me “ease in” to those office standards and it didn’t feel so jarring. Looking back at my other experience, I do think one reason I always felt out of place in the other internships—and thus, didn’t really make the most of my experiences—was because I felt like I was playing a role of a professional rather than being one.…
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Prepping for Your Summer Internship
As many of you celebrate the end of the semester, take a sigh of relief to be done with finals, one thing you may also be looking forward to is starting your summer internship! My 1L summer internship was a complete fluke and yet it changed the entire trajectory of my legal career. It opened doors to new opportunities and helped reignite my passion for law and justice after a somewhat turbulent 1L year. I hope that whatever you’re doing this summer, you love it and it adds to your professional development. Thankfully there is not much to do but wait for the internship to start, but, if you’re like…
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Self-Motivation In the Face of Discouragement
We are on the cusp on making history. Hopefully soon, a new SCOTUS Justice will be confirmed and we’ll have the first Black woman on the bench. If you watched the confirmation hearings you saw that Judge Brown Jackson was grace under pressure and one response was a beautiful description of what it was like to feel so out of place in distinguished spaces. I encourage you to watch it here, which starts around 17:08. But today I want to talk about what happened a few minutes before (around 14:50). Senator Padilla starts his question with a comment about when he was a in high school a well-meaning counselor discouraged…
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The Magic and Panic of Post-Bar Life
If you took the February Bar, I have one thing to say–CONGRATULATIONS! YOU DID IT! Ok, I actually have more than one thing to say (obvi). It is such a relief to be done but the reality is that even after putting in all that work, you don’t know the results for weeks and the anxiety of what if can really drag you down. Life post-bar is filled with both the magic of what is possible–your entire career ahead of you. And the panic, “what if I didn’t pass?” It’s a horrible predicament. I remember, still, the weeks after the test where I’d have moments so excited about what…
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How to Prepare if You’re Not Taking a Gap Year
When you’re in undergrad and know you want to be a lawyer, there’s a fork in the road where you have to decide whether you’re going to go straight through or take a gap year. I have spoken before on why a gap year is helpful and I do encourage folks to take one. But maybe you’re like me and won’t. In those instances, being in your early/mid-twenties and going into law school does require a little extra preparation to ensure you go in steady on your feet. If I could do it all over again (I’d take a gap year lol) ok but if I was going straight through…
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Best Way to Calm Nerves When First Working With Clients
Ok, you’re a licensed attorney, you have a real lawyer job, with a client case and everything! But now you actually have to talk to clients-on your own and sometimes they don’t trust you because you look so young. Or they expect you to know about some random issue that has nothing to do with your practice area. How can you present a cool, calm, collected persona so that your clients trust you when you know there is so much you don’t know? First, take a deep breath. The good thing is that knowing there’s a lot you don’t know is the first step in good client counseling. It’s good…
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The Best Way to Prepare for a New Semester
Congrats on getting through fall semester. For me, those were always a bit tougher. As you head into a new semester I thought it would be helpful to share some ways to assess and better prepare for a new year/new semester. Whether you were happy or disappointed with your grades, it’s helpful to stop and think about what went well—where did you do better than expected or what class took you by surprise by how interesting you found the topic to be? For those classes where you excelled, what do you think made the difference? And is there a way to replicate that for other classes? If you found a…
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Don’t let law school take your joy!
Around this time each year I share this post. But a lot of time has passed since the original and I thought an update was warranted. For law students, as you try to enjoy your time off, I know that for many there will be a little voice in your head reminding you about your grades. And reminding you about a tough question and how you’re not sure about your answer. Or you’ll agonize over the question you didn’t get to because of time… What if your grades are bad? What if you don’t grade on to journal? What if you can’t apply to the job you want? It’s nerve-wracking!…
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Picking the Right Internship
Your first year of law school, it can feel like a lottery as to where you end up for your first summer job and, unfortunately, it still is a struggle to gain clarity as you move on to your second year. If you are a 2L/3L, picking internships can feel like such a make or break experience and as if you’re at the mercy of the potential internship site/employer. Let me share a story: when I was a 3L, I attended the biggest public interest job fair in my area (fun fact, I had missed the previous year because I had to work and a law school admin sort of…
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Making the Right Choice: Picking Law Schools
When it comes to deciding where to apply to law school it may seem like you have 200+ choices and that can feel super overwhelming. But the reality is that based on your goals, needs, stats, and finances your options won’t be as vast. And that’s a good thing! Lots of people cast nets far and wide when they apply, which is one strategy. But if your finances are limited (like mine were) then you have to be judicious when it comes to deciding how many fee applications you want to pay for and that means really understanding what each school can offer you. When I applied, the LSAC fee…