Legal Practice
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Game On: Actions Steps to Take Now to Land a Full-Time Attorney Position
When I started law school I didn’t really know how I was going to get a job. I just assumed that closer to my graduation, I’d start applying for entry level positions. LOL. Of course, soon I learned about the importance of externships/clerkships and back then the “rule” was that where you summered your rising 3L year was where you’d likely get an offer from and you’d be set by the time you took the bar. LOLLOLOL. Cue the recession. But honestly, with or without the recession, I wouldn’t have known how intricate and long-term legal job applications can be; your interview process can begin a year from your start…
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Summer Series: Fighting Against a Carceral State
Our Summer Series continues! This series highlights different Latina students and law grads as they embark in their summer jobs and/or bar prep all across the country. We hope to provide a variety of work experiences, options for a healthy work-life balance, and general motivation through different guest contributors to help you to take charge of your summer and professional goals! Today we hear from Cynthia, a rising 2L at Stanford, who is spending her summer in the South defending those facing capital punishment: “It implies that you are not a citizen of a democracy but the subject of a carceral state, just waiting to be cataloged.” – Justice Sonia Sotomayor dissenting in…
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Finding Mentor: Using This Summer to Find the Mentor You Need
If you’re a current law student by now you should have settled in nicely at your summer gig. It can be easy to lose focus in the day to day of assignments and deadlines of what your big goal for the summer should be–securing a job (or a job lead for next summer/semester). While that is the main goal, there is something else to work towards, especially if you’re breaking into the field, and that is finding a mentor that may help guide you in your budding career. How do you find a mentor?! That is the million dollar question. If you are me, a kind law professor takes pity…
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Old & New: Balancing Your Idealism with Your Senior Colleagues’ Experience
I joke that I am #foreveryoung and will always attend young alumni events (though I think in all honesty I probably have one more year left on that 🙁 ). Regardless, of how I feel, the truth is that I’m not a super young attorney. Yes, I’ve been practicing for less than ten years, but I’ve done enough of the same thing to really know what I’m talking about, which has led to an interesting situation when I interact with younger attorneys. Often new attorneys will come, bright-eyed and idealistic, and present ideas that I know will not work. And it sucks to be a Debbie Downer; to lay out…
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Dichos de Mami that Got Me Through Law School
Seeing that mother’s day just passed (for most of Latin America) and many more celebrate this Sunday, I thought it would be great to share some of my mom’s favorite dichos, osea, sayings that helped me become a lawyer—even if I didn’t know it at the time and even if I’d never in a million years tell her this (haha she’s reading this right now, I’m sure 🙂 ). One. No se dice que, se dice mande. Etched into my brain from infancy is the need to be polite. And in the real legal world, politeness goes a long way—especially when most other attorneys’ default is to rage and…
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Be the Boss: Exuding Grace Under Pressure
A while ago, I attended a panel of local Latinas who are also General Counsel in their jobs and they had a ton of advice to offer. One of their big pieces of advice, that they all agreed on, was the need to exude confidence and grace under pressure. This is easier said than done—especially if you practice in a field where everything is high risk or you’re in a firm where people act like everything is a crisis. How can you cultivate this skill? Being calm and exuding confidence takes practice. It’s mindful and purposeful. It requires working on your reactions and demeanor both in and out of the…
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Summer Fashion for New Interns: dos & don’ts
I always am hesitant to talk about clothing and young women. I just think finger-wagging about what women in their 20s wear is such a slippery slope that leads to micro-managing, is patronizing, and just a ball of trouble. And also the older I get, the more bitter I would look going around talking about “girls” these days. Like, I’m not about that look. So here is my preface regarding this post. Wear what you want. If you need whatever flare you think is helping you feel more put together than go for it. I mean, who am I to say that that short skirt you may wear is any…
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Career Advancement: Are You Blooming?
I’ve been really fortunate that a lot of my job duties and focus have changed about every two years. This has kept me interested and learning new areas of laws and skills, which is really fortunate because there’s a risk that we get stuck in the day to day and accidentally become stagnant in the work we do. And that is a disaster for your career. We should be constantly growing and looking for new opportunities, and I don’t mean job-hopping, I mean really growing in your craft. Of course, when you’re new to practicing everything is challenging and new, obvi, but a few years in you need to make…
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First Impression: What if You’re Not Good Enough?
A few weeks ago I read some reports from the Yellow Paper Series—reports on studies conducted on racism and bias in the legal field. The report, Written in Black & White, discusses the way implicit bias impacts how supervising attorneys review written assignments by attorneys of color, specifically Black attorneys. Previous studies have shown that supervising attorney are more likely than not to perceive Black lawyers as having subpar writing skills in comparison to their white counterparts. Written in Black & White delved further in the topic by seeking out whether confirmation bias causes supervising attorneys to then evaluate legal writing by Black attorneys in a more negative light. Implicit…
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Don’t Take It Personal: Working to Accept Constructive Criticism
Previously, I’ve discussed my experience with the public defender’s office and how it was less than ideal. This was the first professional environment where getting yelled at was super common–not just by the clients and victims, who frequently sexually harassed me, but by the attorneys. This isn’t a shade post on PDs–I think the work they do is incredible and not respected enough, but my personal experience was bad. So bad that I can confidently say that I have never had a boss as straight up cray as I did my first time around with the PDs (I actually did two rounds with them lol). After that experience, I had…