Legal Practice
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Lowered Expectations: Managing Interns & Boring Assignments
So here’s a funny story—practicing law can be boring. The day to day necessities can be tedious and annoying. Even when we really enjoy practicing law, there are parts of procedure and the rules that are just super boring. I mention this because many of us are about to start supervising interns and one of the biggest things we have to do when managing interns is to help manage their expectations—especially as they realize that the day to day of legal work isn’t exactly what they envisioned. First, most students, through no fault of their own, don’t really know what practicing law entails. I recall one student I interviewed that…
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Pick a Passion: Overcoming Guilt While Providing Support
Once you start working as an attorney, you’re typically bombarded with requests for fundraisers, events, etc. helping support one cause after another. The good news is that, student debt aside, many of us eventually find ourselves able to participate in traditional forms of philanthropy. The bad news is that being more aware of problems can lead to you feeling overwhelmed with your ability to help. As women of color, we may feel more empathy to seeing these injustices because we know first-hand how unfair, mean, and biased the system can be to others—many of these causes are not just something we hear of, third-hand, but rather real problems our family…
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Keeping it Classy: how business etiquette promotes classism
When we enter the legal field, it can feel complicated and difficult to master appropriate business etiquette because most of us have not had as much exposure to this type of culture. Most of us do not come from high income families, or families with professional parents, and yet after graduation we find ourselves colleagues to those that come from higher socioeconomic positions. We do what we can to fit in, but we’re so consumed with fitting in and abiding by these rules that we don’t take time to assess them or even acknowledge why these means of communication often feel unnatural to us. Many people act as if business etiquette is just a natural part of…
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Law Student Transformation: Exposing Yourself to a Calling
It’s time for our Summer Series! We’re calling for Contributors for this summer and to give a preview of the really awesome voices of Latina lawyers, we wanted to share a piece by Roxanne. We last heard from her as a rising 3L and now she’s set to graduate in a month! Read about her exposure to direct client counseling and how impactful a law degree can be to both the student and community: I’m about a month away from graduating from Southwestern Law School. Looking back on the last three years of my life is hard, it makes me cry, because I’m so proud of myself for how…
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Seeking Guest Contributors for Summer Series!
Latinas Uprising is seeking guest contributors for a special summer series! We want to showcase: The varied and engaging work law students are doing this summer; Sneak peeks into the life of law grads preparing for the Bar exam; and Pre-law students who are enjoying their last summer as they prepare for the start law school. If you fit into any of these categories, please email LatinasUprising gmail com with the subject line: Guest Contributor. Please provide your name; location; law school/year in school; and: If you are a current law student, please provide a brief (a couple of sentences) of what your plans are for this summer. If you are…
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Cultural Conflict: Bridging the Family Gap
For those of us who are children of immigrants, or easily assimilated as immigrant children, there can be a feeling of disconnect between you and your family. It usually starts with a language barrier where we slowly find ourselves unable to communicate fully with our loved ones. Then the gap widens as you advance through school because the system is foreign to most of our parents*. The higher we go, the less likely our family is able to teach us or help us navigate the system. This is also often true for even those of us with parents who have professional degrees from other countries. It can be emotionally draining to feel…
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Learning to Love Networking
The number one piece of advice all students receive to help land a job is to network. I’ve spoken before how unnatural networking has felt for me. It’s awkward and weird and it feels odd to try to make superficial connections just in case one day in the future they can help me. It feels icky. I think for many this runs counter to how we normally tend to socialize—in fact there are many articles on what women do wrong while networking that tries to shame us from doing what comes naturally to us. FYI, I just googled “things men do wrong while networking” and one (1!) article appeared…. Anyway,…
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More than a Brown Face: Making Your Voice Heard
Ok first, if you’re not watching the People vs. OJ Simpson you need to get your life. That’s the first thing. Seriously, it so accurately touches on race in the law and what it feels like to be an attorney of color. It’s no secret that this profession has a diversity problem. It’s no secret that students of color feel isolated, and that it often gets worse once they’re actually practicing. Then we feel the pressure of feeling like a token—constantly questioning if we’re actually valued, wanted, or just there for show? The scene that really spoke to this was in this week’s episode where the prosecution is dealing with…
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When Familia Needs Free Legal Advice
One of the first rules we learn is to not give legal advice out to family/friends because it can come back to haunt us. I remember reading an article about this while I was still in law school where the author, a white man, wrote that even his mother knew to not ask him for advice because he would never give it to her. It though, wow–that’s intense. I thought of my own family that often needs legal help (for immigration, real estate, etc) and how crappy it would be to have knowledge and tools to navigate the justice system but instead just tell them, “sorry I can’t.”…
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Negotiating while Latina
I went to a fantastic Latina blogger summit last weekend and there was a ton of great lessons and activities, but what I really appreciated was the mission to empower and encourage other Latinas pursuing careers in a still somewhat novel and alternative industry. During one of the breakout sessions on negotiation,the instructor–a dynamic Latina with a background in business–mentioned how the fear of the female penalty often holds us back when we try to advocate for ourselves. The penalty being that women are often labeled as too aggressive when we participate in salary negotiations; or give ourselves strong self-evaluations; or hell, just while leading, in general. So instead we may demure because we don’t want to be dinged with that…