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 hard I’ve worked and how much I’ve accomplished. Of all the experiences I’ve had as a law student I’d have to say my most rewarding consist of my time spent as a law clerk. The first law related position I’ve ever held was during 1L, volunteering at Bet Tzedek House of Justice as an interpreter. I would help their law clerks communicate with clients who only spoke Spanish. Then I started asking for more responsibility. I was given the chance to conduct intakes, to sit in on client meetings, and to research legal issues. By the summer I was working full time, and I stayed on until the end of my 2L fall semester. While at Bet Tzedek I worked in their Medical Legal Partnership and Impact Litigation departments. I worked on cases dealing with landlord-tenant issues, I helped prepare statutory wills, I worked with families to help them obtain guardianship of children, and so much more. I was exposed to so many different areas of law and I will forever be thankful to the people I worked with for letting me sink my teeth into every case I wanted. The attorneys in that office really nurtured me and helped me to feel confident that I would be a great attorney one day.

Although I enjoyed all the different areas of law I learned about at Bet Tzedek, I was really interested in learning about immigration. While at Bet Tzedek the influx of unaccompanied child arrivals happened. Suddenly all these children were showing up in America from Latin American countries, and I could see a lot of attorneys rallying together to figure out how to help them. There was a big issue, and lawyers had the tools to figure out how to solve the problem. That was fascinating to me. This was something I wanted to be a part of, but aside from the fact that my parents are immigrants, I didn’t know anything about immigration.

I applied for a position with the Southwestern Law School Immigration Law Clinic. I spent my spring semester in a small office with 11 other students working as hard as possible to help our clients apply for U-Visas, Special Immigrant Juvenile Status, and Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals. These are each humanitarian programs that offer aid and protection to applicants. This is where my interest in immigration really grew. I was helping people. Yes I had helped people before by fighting unlawful detainers (eviction) and helping them prepare for the future, but this was different. Working in immigration felt like saving lives.

Currently I work at the Law Office of Alan Diamante, and what an incredible experience it has been. Again I have been so lucky to have the opportunity to work with passionate, driven, and accomplished attorneys, who teach and nurture me, and allow me to grow at my own pace. They have taught me so much about asylum cases which I have completely fallen in love with. It’s odd to say, because asylum is really a sad concept. People apply for asylum because they fear their home country due to persecution they’ve suffered. That’s a simplified way of putting it, and there is far more nuance in each given case, but it gets the point across. I love taking on asylum cases because they really are about saving lives. If I don’t do everything in my power to work with my client on their application and its various components, it is entirely possible that they will be deported back to their home country and killed by the persecutor they are trying to escape.

I have had a bad experience as a law clerk, which I don’t think is necessary to recount, but I did learn a lot about the kind of attorney I want to be and the ethical standards I set for myself (in addition to the Model Rules). I think it’s worth noting that the bad experience I had was not related to public interest in any way. Ultimately, what I’m trying to say is this: law school is an incredible place where you learn a lot about theory, rules, and hypotheticals. Being a law clerk though, that’s where you get the real lessons. Being a law clerk is where you can expose yourself to all different types of law to get your feet wet and see what practice areas appeal to you most. Believe me, clerkships are situations where if you ask, you shall receive. If you don’t understand something, say so. If you want to learn more about a particular type of law, say so. Your clerkship is your opportunity to ask questions and learn from people who have been practicing for years. They have a wealth of knowledge and are always happy to share it with you.

So when you start working this summer, wherever you are, go in with the mentality that you will be an active participant, that you will ask questions and not be afraid to make mistakes, because this is how we learn.