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Gift Guide for Law Students
We’re sharing some gift ideas for law students! If you’re in the midst of finals, you may not have been able to give suggestions to family/friends that ask you what you’d like for the holidays. So today’s gift guide has ideas for useful presents that can come in handy for most law students. Gift Cards: Gift cards to restaurants and coffee shops are great, but you can also consider giving a gift card to Amazon or any store that sells text books at much cheaper rates than school bookstores. I know, text book purchases aren’t very fun, but any little bit helps, right? Coffee tumbler: Coffee is a given and…
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Gift Guide for New Attorneys
I love seeing all the status updates on people being sworn-in during this time of the year! Being admitted to the Bar is always such a special moment, and for us Latinas it’s a hard-won prize. It’s important to celebrate this milestone and if you have a new attorney in your life (or even one that has been practicing for a few years) the holidays are a perfect time to acknowledge this accomplishment! Business Card Holder. A very necessary tool for networking, and a card holder is the best way to keep your cards nice and clean. Giftcards. Yes, the new attorney may be starting their journey as a young legal…
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Culture Conflict: Being Humble
Being humble is often held up as a positive attribute among Latino families. How many times have we heard our parents or family talk about being humilde? Humble is defined as not thinking of yourself as better than other people. It is someone who is not proud or haughty. This can be a great quality and one that is definitely venerated by most of our communities. However, there is a second part of that definition that blurs the line and makes me call into question as to whether this quality is a trait that will help you succeed in your legal career. For some, being humble also means someone who is easily…
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Supervising Law Students
I remember the first student I ever supervised as a new attorney. It was an awkward relationship. I was all of 9 months removed from law school and felt so out of my element asking this student to help me do research. I was weak and hesitant in my requests, and remember being surprised when the student turned in her “research”–not a memo like I had expected, but rather print-out of a whole bunch of cases. Yikes. Though in her defense, I never once explained or clarified what kind of work I wanted from her. Thankfully, I have learned a lot since then and am pretty confident in managing student…
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When Family Obligation Become Obstacles
We have talked a lot about how to navigate the status quo within the legal community because there’s so much pushback from those already in power. However, we often overlook the pushback we receive from family/communities who fear that we’ll either abandon our connections or don’t understand the time and commitment needed in order to succeed. Now many of us would say that our families have always been our biggest supporters, but being our biggest supporters isn’t mutually exclusive from also subconsciously (or consciously) setting barriers in front of us. A few years ago, a study on Latino lawyers revealed that personal/family obligations were a big factor in derailing us from finishing/attending…
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Promoting Yourself in Performance Evaluations
Filling out evaluations is usually no fun. It can be time-consuming, anxiety-inducing, and can result in criticism you weren’t expecting. But some C-level executive decided evals were a good idea, and now most of us have to do it. Let’s just be happy that Microsoft’s former method of evaluating on a curve (!) hasn’t gone mainstream. When you have a chance to do a self-evaluation, it’s really important that you take advantage of highlighting your accomplishments as much as possible. The reason being that you’re likely the only one that is best suited to describe everything you’ve done well. Sometimes it’s difficult to do it, but we have to get used…
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Creating Institutional Change
If you could change anything about your law school to make it better for Latinos or women what would you do? Would you want more professors of color? More mentorship opportunities? Administrators that handle sexist/racist comments correctly? What I wanted when I was in school was more litigation opportunities for the Latino students. At my school, moot court/trial advocacy was king and the advantages of being part of a team were very evident. Unfortunately, many times the school seemed ambivalent about whether or not students of color were privy to those advantages. For example, until I was a 3L, my school sent one team to the Hispanic National Bar Foundation’s…
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Spotlight On! Solo Practitioner Daissy Dominguez
Today is the first of a very exciting series entitled: Spotlight On! The idea is to showcase new Latina attorneys and learn about the early successes in their careers. To start this series we’re interviewing Daissy Dominguez, a solo practitioner based in Chicago, Illinois. Daissy joined the bar on October 31, 2013, and opened her own practice, which focuses on criminal defense, immigration, and landlord/tenant law. I’m super excited to tell you all about her because I’ve also had the pleasure to work with her on some cases and know that her dedication to the community is the real deal! How did you decide to start your own solo practice?
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Study How You Study
We previously discussed how to prep for 1L week and –surprise–the main focus was getting prepped for studying. But it’s worthwhile to delve into “how to study” a little deeper. I say this a lot, but it’s actually really important to realize that you will be most successful if you study how you study. Think back on all the college classes where you excelled and mimic those study habits. Note that I wrote excelled, not: barely put in the work but somehow still passed–that won’t fly in law school. The reason why this is important is because law school has the tendency to push people into doing the same thing. According…
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In Defense of Hispanic Heritage Month
September 15 marks the beginning of Hispanic Heritage Month and for many Hispanic/Latinos it’s not such a happy occasion. I get it. It’s sometimes hard to swallow “celebrating” when we’re not just one culture and when there’s so much oppression and injustice inflicted on Latinos. I get that this month can sometimes seem like lip service. But, nonetheless, I’m here to defend it. Not the name, or the fact that it tries to encompass so many different cultures in one, but the general intent and the positive impact it can actually create. Because while it may seem like pandering to some, for other Latinos celebrating HHM can be…