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Make Yourself Heard: Increasing Your Skills as a Litgator
This article about a 96 year old judge making a rule to help encourage women attorneys to speak up more often in court is making the rounds. It’s a great piece and great example of how people in power can use their position to make a difference. Lost in the discussion (maybe ironically) is that the catalyst for this was a mentor/friend of the Judge’s; retired judge, Shira Scheindlin. Judge Scheindlin wrote an Op-Ed earlier this month about just this issue: the dismal percentage of women litigators speaking before the court. Judge Scheindlin discusses a study she conducted in New York that asked judges to observe when and how often…
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When Your Professor is Racist
Hello! It’s been a minute and really this entire week I have been watching and reading about the attacks in Virginia. It has made me more guarded and angry. And I really don’t know what the solution will be, but I guess we can only take it one day at time or whatever. Anyway, the best way for me to refocus this energy is to connect with this community and I want to talk about ignorance in the classroom, which seems like it will be especially prevalent now. We’ve discussed reacting to ignorant comments by classmates before, but we haven’t discussed what happens when your instructor holds ideas that put your…
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Summer Fashion for New Interns: dos & don’ts
I always am hesitant to talk about clothing and young women. I just think finger-wagging about what women in their 20s wear is such a slippery slope that leads to micro-managing, is patronizing, and just a ball of trouble. And also the older I get, the more bitter I would look going around talking about “girls” these days. Like, I’m not about that look. So here is my preface regarding this post. Wear what you want. If you need whatever flare you think is helping you feel more put together than go for it. I mean, who am I to say that that short skirt you may wear is any…
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Know Your Worth: Combating the Wage Gap
This piece was originally run on ShopLatinx, but they’re currently under construction, so I thought I’d share it here to raise awareness for Equal Pay Day. ————————————————————————————————————————— 54 cents. That is how much Latinas earn to the White man’s dollar. Often it is recited that women earn 77 cents, but that is the figure attributed to white women. In reality, Latinas fare far worse when it comes to income disparity; in states like California and Texas, which compose of the largest amount of Latinas working full-time and year-round, they earn a dismal 43 cents to the dollar. The negative impact of wage disparity reaches beyond the individual worker and spans generations.…
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First Impression: What if You’re Not Good Enough?
A few weeks ago I read some reports from the Yellow Paper Series—reports on studies conducted on racism and bias in the legal field. The report, Written in Black & White, discusses the way implicit bias impacts how supervising attorneys review written assignments by attorneys of color, specifically Black attorneys. Previous studies have shown that supervising attorney are more likely than not to perceive Black lawyers as having subpar writing skills in comparison to their white counterparts. Written in Black & White delved further in the topic by seeking out whether confirmation bias causes supervising attorneys to then evaluate legal writing by Black attorneys in a more negative light. Implicit…
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Skills Beyond Question: Beating the Imposter Syndrome
I have been writing a few pieces outside of this site lately and have been trying to find the guts to make pitches to “bigger” platforms because there’s a voice in the back of my head that questions my ability to write? And to be honest, I would have taken the leap to do more and more writing a year ago, but my fear kept holding me back. I keep thinking that I’m not that good, I have no real training, is my voice even needed? But a few things happened that encouraged me to push myself. Maybe I will fall flat on my face in my attempts to write…
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Latina Leader: Criminal Defense and Immigration Attorney Latisha Rivera
This is another installment of the series, formerly called Spotlight On! A series where we showcase Latina lawyers and learn about the successes in their early careers. Today we talk to Latisha Rivera, a criminal defense/immigration attorney based in Baltimore. Now, through our Instagram community, I am privileged to see sneak peeks into the lives of so many of you and all the hard work you do. So it’s no small thing when I say that Latisha works! I see her putting in the time to make herself a better litigator and advocate that always leaves me so impressed! Super excited to have her share some of her knowledge today: 1. When did you…
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Why We Talk About Our Struggles
There was a big back and forth online this week about the discussion that took place between Jessica William and Salma Hayek at some like women in Hollywood retreat. LA Times had a transcript on the event. Essentially, this was a huge, missed opportunity in intersectional feminism. Jessica tried to explain how her identity as a black woman is almost always on the forefront of how people see her and Salma (and Shirley MacLaine [da fuq]) dismissed this as almost silly. On top of also making some statements that seemed to imply programs that are akin to affirmative action are condescending… But Remezcla did a great piece on this situation…
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The Vital First Steps to Take to Find Your Mentor
We’ve discussed before how awkward networking can be when you’re new to the profession. We’re told so often to “network!” during school, but it can be a foreign concept. Actually, to me it always felt icky that we’re going to these events to “make contacts,” which is often code for “what can this person do for me?” See? Gross. Instead, when I flipped this concept to make networking feel more reasonable for me, I found that I really enjoyed it. It can still be a little nerve-wracking to go to an event, unsure if I’ll know anyone, but it’s very rare when I go to something and feel like the…
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Uprooting The Seeds of Domestic Violence
October is Domestic Violence Awareness Month and it’s an important topic for me because I work daily with survivors of domestic violence. That’s the general reason why this matters to me, but another big reason why advocating for survivors of DV matters to me is because I also experienced & observed inter-family violence in the home as a child by my former step-father. One thing about me is that when I want to understand why something is happening, I like over-do it and research it to death. These life circumstances were no different, and by the time I was in middle school, I would seek out books about DV in…