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Confidence Boost: What All Law Students Need to Know
During law school, I kept a semi-consistent blog where I basically just re-capped my weekends (super riveting, I know). I was looking at a post I wrote after the first day of my Bar prep course and how much I was already freaking out about failing: But mostly I’m fearful because the one thing law school was great at was reminding me how unintelligent I am. I mean, when people asked me questions about theories or laws I would think to myself, “why are they asking me?” Seriously, my intellectual confidence took a beating so it’s no surprise that I am apprehensive about this whole Bar thing. Now, some people…
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Support Starts with You: Sexual Assault Awareness Month
As April is coming to close, I wanted to take a moment to recognize that it’s Sexual Assault Awareness Month. It’s a topic that is close to home because, as I’ve grown in my practice, my main type of work has been with advocating and representing survivors of sex assault; the majority being Latinas. Unfortunately, the stats are really dismal for our community in regards to sexual violence against both men and women. And so, it’s a sad truth that many of us have examples of experiences where we have either been victims of sexual violence or have come damn near close to being victimized. When I think 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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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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Be Fearless: Try Out for Moot Court
I don’t want to beat a dead horse, but I think it’s super beneficial to remind all students the importance of trying out for moot court and other trial advocacy teams. I’ve spoken to so many rising 1Ls that don’t even attempt to try out and that is such a disservice to yourself. I know not all of us will be trial lawyers (myself included), but these opportunities provided by your school aren’t made to create trial lawyers–they are so much more than that! Here’s what you lose out on when you don’t participate in these activities: one. Connections. You meet countless practicing attorneys and judges through these programs. You can gain mentors…
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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…
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Fair Pay: International Women’s Day 2016
We discussed this last year, but the theme of International Women’s Day 2016 is parity: What can we do as individuals and a community to close the pay gap so that women are paid their worth? One of Latinas Uprising’s focal points, when it comes to discussing women, equality, and progress is almost always on women and the workplace; most importantly, women and the income we earn. The sad reality is that we earn a pittance compared to other groups and that impacts our quality of life (and that of our families), our earning potential, and our economic capital. So any raised awareness on the income disparity and how to close gap…
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Black History Month
First, big ups to Leap Year for letting me still post this during Black History Month! Second, there is so much to say on this topic and how it relates to Latinos, but I think the most important point I want to focus on today is how often we overlook the Afro-Latino experience in the U.S. Let’s keep it real and admit that within many Latino communities we struggle with deep internalized racism that makes it difficult to embrace and support Black Americans. Additionally,many Afro-Latinos are dismissed as not being Latino enough or Black enough, which is so bogus. I am obviously not an expert in this, but I…