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Learning From Feedback
If you’re using your summer wisely than you are using everything at your disposal during your summer internship to grow as much as you can–students sometimes forget that this is the main summer goal to work on in the midst of everything else. Or sometimes a student may think the internship is just a stepping stone/resume builder while forgetting that everything they’re doing can actually help them become a better lawyer. Trust me, that I didn’t always use my time wisely, but now that I’m on the other side I can see how even small things can really impact your future practice. A critical aspect to help you improve your skills is learning…
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Quality Supervision: Ensuring Your Intern Grows
I say this all the time but it’s worth repeating: I love working with interns! I often feel like I’m drowning with work, but interns help make things move at a much faster pace. As I mentioned before, many attorneys dislike working with interns because they feel like it’s a lot of work for just a minimum amount of help. I do admit that it’s a lot of work upfront. But once you find a steady rhythm of supervising the work quality and quantity is so worth it! I can be tricky to manage when you’re new or when you’re not used to good supervision yourself–even though we’re in the midst of summer you…
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Summertime and Your Executive Presence
We have spoken before about executive presence and one of the prongs to forming a good reputation as a leader involves your looks. Making sure you look appropriate goes beyond just looking nice, but rather it helps increase your gravitas by showing colleagues and partners that you have enough insight and judgment to do what’s expected of your position. More importantly, when you look put together and polished, people will assume it’s the same with your work product. I will always remember an outside training I did a few years ago with other local legal aids. One attorney made a side comment about how you could always tell who worked…
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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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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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Summer Dress Code: Looking the Part as a Student Intern
When you’re new to the legal profession one of the surprising things can be just how conservative it really is–and I don’t mean politically speaking, rather how stuffy, traditional, and serious it can be (especially in firms). So it can take time to get used to understanding the business etiquette and expectations when you’re beginning a new internship. You really want to be able to look the part as soon as you can, by dressing appropriately because it will 1) make you look like you belong; 2) not call into question your judgement; 3) not make you stand out in a negative way. I know that in a perfect world,…
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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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Too Late to Say Sorry
Early in the year a new app was released to help women gain some power at work by eliminating qualifiers in their speech. Words like, “just,” “sorry,” “I think,” etc. The idea is that if your emails sound less like apologies and more assertive then that will lead to a better executive presence. Of course, there was also backlash because why is it always women’s behavior that is judged? Men do a lot of odd things too but they are not judged as harshly as women. I totally get the stance behind this, to say F-U I’m going to speak how I speak and your judgement won’t stop me.…
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Latina Lawyers: Conquering the Corporate Ladder
Everyone needs to read this Fortune article- Why Race and Culture Matter in the C-Suite. The article discusses some experience black executives (men) have had in relation to their race. It’s pretty stark. There are very few who have successfully climbed the corporate ladder and those who did make it don’t feel like they fit in with the culture or other executives. That feeling of isolation is largely due to those with power making them know that they don’t fit in. In summary, it’s lonely at the top and many end up quitting to create their own entrepreneurial path. This article provides fantastic information for Latinas pursuing careers in the law—especially those…