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Who’s the Daddy? Managing Clients
So there’s so much to discuss when it comes to the #SohoKaren situation and let me say emphatically her behavior may have stemmed from a lot of issues, but the most troubling one is the racism. Y punto. But what I want to talk about here is her hat. Ok, not just the daddy hat, but everything that led to an interview with a daddy hat and the importance of client management. Managing clients, especially difficult ones, is a skill set we must develop sooner rather than later. A common misconception is that we say yes to every client whim, but that is a disservice to the client. While we…
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Mastering the Interview
Soon, it will be interview season for folks looking for summer positions. I’ve been thinking about my first interview for my 1L summer job and how grateful I am that the organization was so Latino-centered that they gave me a lot of grace that I wouldn’t have received in other spaces. It’s not that I didn’t take the interview seriously, it’s just that having only ever worked retail or service jobs, I didn’t get that there is an added polish that is expected in the legal industry. So if you’re about to interview what are the things you should focus on for this extra polish? Looks. Ugh, I hate offering…
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Make or Break: Summer Job Search
On top of finals, and memos, and the holidays, and next semester (anything else? A pandemic?), it’s also time to start your job search for next summer. I want to emphasize here, especially for those that didn’t grow up with parents in professional jobs, just how normal it is in this industry to apply for jobs that start six months from now. When I started law school, my only work experience was hourly work in retail/restaurants. The kind that hired you on the spot or a few weeks after you submitted an application. It was completely new to me that anyone would hire anyone for a job that started months…
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Lessons Learned During Ten Years of Practice
So, in early November I passed the ten year mark. It doesn’t feel like I’ve been practicing for ten years, but at the same time, I’ve been able to pack so much in the past decade. There was so much happening in early November, I didn’t feel like there was space to discuss this milestone but there is no way I can reach this anniversary and not say something! I thought it would be fun to share some big and small lessons that have made the difference in my career. When I graduated law school, it was at the height of the worst recession (ha!) and no one–NO ONE–in my…
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Managing While Managing Your Own Stress
So by now we’ve maybe gotten into a groove of working from home, and overseeing projects, but if you’re a new supervisor (whether it’s full time staff or interns) finding a way to manage while managing everything else that comes with a pandemic can feel like a bit much. In these situations, when it feels overwhelming, we may end up doing one of two things: completely letting go, which is not great or micromanaging to an extreme, which is never good. So what can you do to ensure you’re still being a good supervisor while dealing with everything else? One. Scream. Seriously! We may not recognize how anxious we…
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Tough Choices: How to Know Which Law School is Right for You
Like everything else in life, picking a law school is complicated. If it was a science, then you would just go to the highest ranked school, but that is not always the best choice. And what if you got into schools all similarly ranked? How can you really know which one is the better option? Thankfully, with just a little extra research you can make a decision that best fits your goals and plans. One. What’s the vibe? It’s important to visit your schools if you can. Visiting will let you get a feel of the school, the lectures, the students, and the nearby businesses. Of course, it may not…
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What’s Next? Life After the Election
Wow. All weekend I was at a loss for words because of how HAPPY I felt about the election. Not going to lie, some days before election day, I was going to sleep super worried about what another term would mean and how devastating it would be in so many ways and how the Right has decimated the justice system even further and well… I can’t put into words how relieved and happy I am! What an incredible moment for grassroots organizing and people power. One thing I also wanted to say is how grateful we should be to organizers and communities who are often the most harmed who still…
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Stressed Out: Managing Vicarious Trauma and Work-Related Stress
We’ve spoken about vicarious trauma before–it is essentially the mental impact we experience by being exposed to other people’s trauma. Generally, we may think this is something we see with EMTs or other first-responders, but this type of trauma seeps into legal work as well. It’s the prosecutor that has to stare at murder scene pictures, the guardian ad litem that has to work with abused children, the immigration attorney that hears about the atrocities their client experienced–all those instances, and many others, do a number on us and it’s not a question if we will be impacted by it, but when and how. First, a disclaimer: nothing, not better…
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Where to Even Start: Law School Applications
One of the big barriers to starting the law school process is that there seems like there’s so much to do, so many steps to take, that it’s hard to know where you should even start. And frankly, this profession loves its exclusivity so it doesn’t make its process super accessible or knowable or affordable. If you’re going to go through the application process alone, it’s daunting enough to make you procrastinate or talk yourself out of it. But, nah! you can do this. Let’s what it through! When I applied for law school I just “knew” it was time because I didn’t take a gap year, but even though…
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Resume Musts: How to Structure a Killer Resume
So I’m about to talk about something controversial–are you ready? …resumes are an important, vital part of your job search and you need to know how to craft one that makes you a strong candidate for the job. I know, I know, there are people on twitter and Linkedin who say they aren’t important. Hiring managers who claim they never look at them. That they are a relic of the past. But that’s not true. Or if it is good advice for someone, it’s not actually advice for you. We do not have the space to be unconventional in our job search. So you need to know how to draft…