Two years ago, I watched as my mother ironed my clothes on the frayed wooden floors of our home in Queens in preparation for my first day as a summer associate at a Biglaw firm. I hadn’t realized that the only professional suit I owned was badly wrinkled from my travels between Boston and New York. Frustrated with the slow pace and sloppiness of my handiwork, my mom–like any other impatient mom watching her daughter panic over clothes–took over. She used the floor in lieu of our lack of a proper ironing board, wielding the same iron that we’ve had since we immigrated to the United States 20 years ago. Her wizened hands smoothed out the creases in my blazer, and I wondered how much time had passed while I hadn’t even noticed that my mom had grown old in the years she waited for me to achieve my dream.
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On Being a Parent in Law School, Part IV: Children’s Stories for Lawyers
When I first wrote about parenting in law school, I complained that my classmates were reading case law while I was reading Moo, Baa, La La La! Now, with the benefit of hindsight, it’s still clear that book had no educational value for me. But my daughter loved it. So, what can you do? Fortunately, in the years since then, my increasingly sophisticated daughter has brought me into contact with increasingly stimulating stories.
For instance, our new farmhouse-themed go-to is Click, Clack, Moo, a pro-labor story about the power of the pen. In it, cows gain access to a type-writer and use it to demand better working conditions from Farmer Brown. They then go on strike until their demands are met. The revolution will not be pasteurized. The movement for animal dignity spreads to the chickens. They bring in a duck to mediate as a neutral party. But he is radicalized and brings the insurgency to the other ducks. Fellow classmates going into labor law: get this book if you want to explain to children what you do.
Continue readingNo, This Is Exactly Our America
Yesterday was nothing short of horrifying, but unfortunately, I can’t say that I’m surprised. This act of domestic terrorism was not unexpected. It was the result of one of the most divisive American presidencies of all time; it was but a likely consequence after months of repeated baseless allegations of election fraud.
That is why I am sick of the “this is not our America” rhetoric. Because this is exactly our America right now, and we best believe it. The “this isn’t our America” rhetoric lets us think that what happened yesterday was unpredictable. It allows us to neglect that the riots stemmed from a system historically built upon and contemporarily sustained by white supremacy. If we begin to believe what happened yesterday was an anomaly, it lets us shirk away from accepting that the root of the problem is deeper than the current presidency: it is an entire system that is in dire need of reform.
Your Good News This Week: BC Law Comes Together to Meet Needs
To help address the impact of COVID-19 on students’ summer work plans, the legal needs of individuals and public interest organizations, and to support ongoing research projects, BC Law faculty and staff have come together to offer two new opportunities.
The BC Law COVID-19 Legal Services Project (CVLSP) provides legal assistance and advice to individuals and organizations affected by COVID-19 disruptions or who provide public interest services. In this virtual law firm, law student volunteers, under the supervision of experienced practitioners, will advocate for and assist those in need. The anticipated work includes habeas corpus petitions and bond hearings in the Federal District Court on behalf of ICE detainees; interviewing and counseling individuals to facilitate receipt of unemployment benefits under the CARES Act; consumer debt assistance; compassionate release legal assistance; and legal research to organizations and entities.
My Most Valuable BC Law Experience
I’m pleased to host a guest post from 3L Jared Friedberg, who spent some time last year working in BC’s Immigration Clinic.
With the semester winding down and people thinking about next year, I wanted to provide a recommendation: enroll in the immigration clinic. I spent my 2L year in the immigration clinic, and as I look back on my time at BC, it was the most impactful experience that I have had in law school.
The purpose of a clinic is to give students the opportunity to work directly with clients. In the immigration clinic, that means visits to immigration court, detention facilities, the clients’ homes, and anywhere else that the case requires you to go. Over the course of two semesters, I had five clients. While representing our clients, my classmates and I met their families, friends, and coworkers. Some of them lived a few streets from where I grew up and some lived across the world.
It’s a Good Time to be a Lawyer
I am pleased to host a guest blog today from Jason Giannetti, a 2003 graduate of Boston College Law School.
I have been an immigration attorney in Massachusetts for fifteen years and I’ve never been as proud to be one as I am now.
Let’s face it, in American popular opinion, lawyers are not exactly considered super heroes. In fact, in films such as The Incredibles, lawyers are the anti-superhero. It is due to them and their litigation and lobbying that the “supers” have to renounce their superpowers to be like all the rest of us. In the 1993 film Philadelphia, though attorney Joe Miller (played by Denzel Washington) turns out to be the hero of the film, Andy, his client (played by Tom Hanks), asks, “Joe, what do you call a thousand lawyers chained together at the bottom of the ocean?” The answer: “A good start.”
Be that as it may, America is one of the most litigious nations on the planet. Perhaps Americans have low regard for lawyers because they are such “a necessary evil” in the eyes of most. The only profession with lower regard is politician and, as we all know, many of those politicians are themselves lawyers.
However, I think that besides hemming in people’s exercise of strength (Incredibles) and creating bureaucratic and structural obstacles to swift justice (Philadelphia), the real source of America’s collective ire with attorneys is that they seem to disregard the truth: they are mercenary warriors, defending whatever position (right or wrong, truthful or not) that pays the bills. The most egregious example of this to date is Rudy Giuliani’s statement, “Truth is not truth.”
BC Law: Impact 