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Summer Series: Conquering Stress While Studying for the Bar
Our Summer Series continues! This series highlights different Latina students and law grads as they embark in their summer jobs and/or bar prep all across the country. We hope to provide a variety of work experiences, options for a healthy work-life balance, and general motivation through different guest contributors to help you to take charge of your summer and professional goals! Today we hear from Khiabett, a recent law school grad who returned home to Texas to study for the Bar: One. Accepting your needs and limitations: During undergrad I was diagnosed with depression and anxiety and I felt ashamed because I thought taking medication somehow made me “weak.” Once I started feeling better…
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Summer Series: Working Hard in Legal Aid
Our Summer Series continues! This series highlights different Latina students and law grads as they embark in their summer jobs and/or bar prep all across the country. We hope to provide a variety of work experiences, options for a healthy work-life balance, and general motivation through different guest contributors to help you to take charge of your summer and professional goals! Today we hear from Karen, a rising 2L, whose internship in legal aid has strengthened her resolve to pursue a career in poverty law: I knew I wanted to do public interest work before I even knew what that meant. At first I thought about starting my own non-profit…
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Is it Even an Emergency? Responding to Crisis During Bar Prep
You are a month away from the Bar Exam! I hope everything is going as smooth as possible. I was in an incredibly fortunate position to not have to work during bar prep and even without that added stress of finances, I was so overwhelmed with emotion, worry, and anxiety. Many of you may be feeling the same pressure (or will soon feel it as we get closer to the date). So, I wanted to talk about avoiding stress and situations that deter you from your goal. I have heard many stories of family “emergencies” that crop up during bar prep that distract someone from their studies and lead to…
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Finding Mentor: Using This Summer to Find the Mentor You Need
If you’re a current law student by now you should have settled in nicely at your summer gig. It can be easy to lose focus in the day to day of assignments and deadlines of what your big goal for the summer should be–securing a job (or a job lead for next summer/semester). While that is the main goal, there is something else to work towards, especially if you’re breaking into the field, and that is finding a mentor that may help guide you in your budding career. How do you find a mentor?! That is the million dollar question. If you are me, a kind law professor takes pity…
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Summer Series: Finding Your Passion
Our Summer Series continues! This series highlights different Latina students and law grads as they embark in their summer jobs and/or bar prep all across the country. We hope to provide a variety of work experiences, options for a healthy work-life balance, and general motivation through different guest contributors to help you to take charge of your summer and professional goals! Today we hear from Amanda, a rising 2L, who shares her exciting internship with in a public defender’s office: It’s amazing to be able to turn your passion into action. Going into my first year at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles, I knew I definitely wanted to make a career in…
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Summer Series: Attitude Check–Getting Excited for the Bar Exam
Our Summer Series begins again! This series highlights different Latina students and law grads as they embark in their summer jobs and/or bar prep all across the country. We hope to provide a variety of work experiences, options for a healthy work-life balance, and general motivation through different guest contributors to help you to take charge of your summer and professional goals! Today we hear from Tiffany, a Santa Clara law grad who took the Bar in February and is filled with great advice to get you started on your summer bar prep journey! It might seem impossible to get excited for summer bar prep, but mindset is a huge part of…
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Game Plan the Bar Exam
I am all about to-do lists and making action plans to get to your goal. If your goal is to pass the the bar this summer then how are you going to do that? I remember starting my Barbri course just days after graduation and just jumping into the content. Then I realized how I apparently didn’t remember anything from 1L year because I kept scoring SO low in torts and I was sure that this was a sign that I wouldn’t be able to pass. The truth is that bar studies is a long-form game because you have to study, memorize, and recall content in the certain way, so of course,…
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My PreLaw Summer: How to Prepare for Law School
Ten years ago I graduated college. Ack! I remember graduation day so vividly because I was so excited about what was to come—law school, finally! If I had only known just how difficult my summer was going to be, I don’t think I would have been as excited. I’ve mentioned before that summer before law school was incredibly difficult. There were a lot of family issues happening that made things very tight, financially. Literally, I scraped together my final deposit check through what then seemed like a miracle. It was really touch and go. All that uncertainty about whether I would even be able to enroll into law school, put…
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Dichos de Mami that Got Me Through Law School
Seeing that mother’s day just passed (for most of Latin America) and many more celebrate this Sunday, I thought it would be great to share some of my mom’s favorite dichos, osea, sayings that helped me become a lawyer—even if I didn’t know it at the time and even if I’d never in a million years tell her this (haha she’s reading this right now, I’m sure 🙂 ). One. No se dice que, se dice mande. Etched into my brain from infancy is the need to be polite. And in the real legal world, politeness goes a long way—especially when most other attorneys’ default is to rage and…
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Breaking Barriers: Selecting the Right Law School
Law school is different when you’re brown. It shouldn’t be, but it is. I mean, you already know that life is different for us. I think about this past summer when I did an outreach trip with coworkers and we traveled in southern Illinois. Someone wanted to stop to get a drink at a hole in the wall bar, but I became a wet blanket and encouraged us to just get to our next meeting spot. Not because I didn’t want a drink–hello, you must be new, but because I was so hesitant about entering a bar in the middle of S. Illinois. Whether that’s fair to those residents or…