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Gaining Clients’ Trust through the Phone: Effective Client Counseling During COVID
By now you’ve probably seen the insta quote about how you’re not working from home but rather working at home during a pandemic, which yah fact, for sure. This sudden need for many of us to telecommute isn’t due to a shift in practice but literally done to save lives so I get that it’s not business as usual. And I also get that many courts are suspended for the time being but the thing is that for those of us practicing, it’s not just about working but fulfilling our duty to our clients. If you’re still doing consultations, working through discovery, filing petitions etc., then your work product still…
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Wait, How is this Going to Work? Career Planning the Midst of a Pandemic
Hello, so with all the way people’s lives have been upended, it’s really normal to feel dread about what this may mean for your career. Of course, that may not be your first worry, which makes total sense. But at times, you could feel worried about your career and then feel guilty for worrying and all those things are normal. For those on the edge of becoming lawyers, this is the milestone you’ve been working towards for a long time, so it’s completely understandable that you’re nervous and worried. I was nervous and worried too right when I graduated law school. I want to share what it was like when…
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Working in the time of COVID
First, I have to preface this by saying–this is bonkers. This is bonkers!! Like some days I still can’t believe we’re living in the midst of a pandemic with such little control. It’s a bit much. As I shared with folks on insta, I’m working from home because I’m “high risk” because of my asthma. Asthma that was just diagnosed this past fall so being able to navigate that on top of a demanding, high stress job while everything seems to be The Worst is a lot. But at the same time I know I’m incredibly fortunate to be able to work from home and not deal with the fears…
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Sidebar: So this is Adulting…
Wow, January was ridiculously long, was it not? I mean was it just last month we feared entering a serious war? What is this life even? One thing I’ve done to keep myself semi-sane is to keep focused just on local news. I know it’s a little bit like head in the sand mentality, which isn’t great, but I just can’t consume all this news all the time. Plus, local news is really pertinent to my job so it helps two-fold… Speaking of work, I made it to the six month mark! I can say that I finally, truly feel steady about what I’m doing and have found a rhythm…
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Sidebar: 2020 Vision, lessons for the new year
It’s still early enough in 2020 to share the vision and plan for the new year, right? Just asking because the new cycle moves fast & we’re basically on the brink of god knows what but trying to not live in terror, you know the vibezzz. #hidethepainharold 2019 was such a year of growth for me and I want to share some lessons I learned (some the hard way!) and hopes for the new year. One. Have the courage to change. Easier said than done! But 2019 was when I realized that if I wanted to grow in my career I needed to seek new challenges. It would have been…
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Why Can’t I Shake This? Beating Imposter Syndrome Once and For All
Hi, my name is Nubia and it’s been 0 days since I last felt insecure about my professional capacity. Ok, maybe it’s been more than 0 days, but the reality is that experiencing imposter syndrome is a frequent occurrence and beating it means really working to recognize when it’s happening and then working hard to dismiss it when it occurs. Imposter syndrome is a feeling that you are not capable of doing what you’ve been tasked to do and that at any moment people will discover that you are a fraud. Often we attribute our successes to luck rather than skills and diminish our accomplishments lest others point out just…
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The Guilt that Comes with Family Financial Contributions
A million years ago I watched the documentary about the Baltimore step team and one of the girls was heading to a top college. But she started to get concerned because the FAFSA form included a line of how much her family was expected to contribute and she felt guilty at asking her parents to give so much. Her parents got her all the way together and told her to not worry about their finances. She was their responsibility and they would make sure she got to school. Not everyone has parents with this type of philosophy or have parents that can (or maybe even want to) provide the…
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Beware of Burnout
When I first started practicing I was so fueled by excitement and hope that I never, ever thought I would get tired of doing my job. And thankfully for me it took a long time before the negative aspects of lawyering started to feel like a drag. I count myself lucky because my work didn’t have a ton of adversarial encounters (my immigration practice was mostly affirmative based). My clients were literally the best people ever, and I was lucky enough to do really novel work in terms of addressing gender-based violence. Oh and did I mention I practiced immigration during a time where immigration law was pretty much steady…
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When You Feel Like You’re Always Failing
I joked on instragram the other day about not letting a trial team’s account follow me because when I was in law school they would never let me on a team. Obviously, it was a joke and I promise I’m not upset by it (anymore!) but it was a good reminder of one of the more draining and frustrating experiences in my law school career. Basically, when I was in school aside from moot court and journals there was an elite trial team and I wanted nothing more to join them. I tried out my 1L and 2L year–and while 1L was a disaster–by 2L year, I had grown a…
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The Bad and the Ugly of Being an Attorney
Beginning your career as a new attorney is so exciting. You’re finally working in your dream career and it feels so rewarding to start a fresh, new chapter in your life. Plus, when you go to court people call you counselor and it’s pretty awesome the first few times it happens–not going to lie. But soon you’ll realize the big open secret: being a lawyer is hard y’all and that is in large part due to the culture shock you may experience. Culture shock is normal and typical when starting something new and learning new codes of conduct and expectations. Where I think some struggle with moving beyond the shock…