Guest Chapter 15

Name: Emily Galvin Almanza

Current Position: Founder and Executive Director, Partners for Justice; former public defender

Former Post-Law School Positions: Senior Legal Analyst, The Appeal Media; Criminal Defense Attorney, the Bronx Defenders; Clerk to the Honorable Thelton Henderson, U.S.

Legal Practice Area: Criminal defense, criminal legal policy, civil rights and human rights

Law School and Year: Stanford Law, 2010

Time between undergrad and law school: 3 years (writing and wandering around)

One or two books I recommend: Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson, Evicted by Matthew Desmond, Ordinary Injustice by Amy Bach, Misdemeanorland by Issa Kohler-Hausmann, Privilege and Punishment by Matthew Clair, and the collected closing arguments of Clarence Darrow.

Short background on why I went to law school

I almost didn't go to law school. It wasn't something I planned, or had aspired toward. I went—as many people do—because the thing I was doing wasn't working out, and a lot of people I admired told me you can do anything with a law degree. (In hindsight, I think that's pretty terrible advice, since for most people, a law degree saddles you with the kind of debt that forces you to be a lawyer no matter what.) But with my job going nowhere and having been accepted to a great school, I got in my car and drove from Los Angeles to Palo Alto to see what law school was like.

More interesting than why I went, though, is why I didn't turn my car right back around and drive back to LA. At the event welcoming 1L students. Professor Lawrence Marshall stood up and told us that when we became lawyers, we would have to be licensed, because our minds and our mouths would be weapons. I decided I wanted to turn my mind and mouth into weapons as expeditiously as possible, and use the force that gave me to push for liberation and mercy.

What frustrated me most about coming out of law school andor what frustrates me with regards to people I work with or hire who are newly out of law school

The space in which I most frequently encountered new lawyers was the criminal courthouse: young prosecutors learning the ropes by arraigning cases, handling simple pretrial hearings, and occasionally covering their colleagues’ calendar calls. The most frustrating thing was the degree to which they had emotionally removed themselves from what they were actually doing.

The practice of law is a confrontation with human narratives. Things find their way to court because something went wrong between people, and now will require other people to engage in a highly ceremonial process to find an outcome that we imbue with social legitimacy. In criminal law, the law brings us stories of absolute tragedy, and also stories of incredibly petty transgressions and police-manufactured crime. At least three-quarters of the things that find their way into criminal court probably don't really need to be there (arguably, with robust community-led practices, almost none of this stuff needs to be there, but that's a topic for another treatise).

Among our own side, mentoring and helping young lawyers learn to appropriately value the matters in their hands is easy—we can have frank conversations and offer advice and guidance. But when the relationship is adversarial, it is difficult to offer advice and have it be taken. When the power given to a lawyer vastly outstrips their experience—when, for example, with a few months on the job, one has the power to separate a new mother from her baby over stolen diapers—that lawyer's personal maturity level and ability to retain their human common sense in spite of adversarial urges or a perceived professional duty is essential. Watching young lawyers forget the degree to which their every choice can alter the course of someone's life and cause irreparable harm was my greatest frustration.

How have you used (or not) the core concepts of lawyering as this book proposes: Empathy, Listening First, Asking Questions, and Giving Advice?

Yes, all of them, together, in every single client interaction—and now, teaching them as I train non-attorneys on how to build a fruitful relationship and get results.

When you enter a relationship with a client, no matter what identities or lived experiences you may share with that client, there will always be a power imbalance: you are the lawyer, and they are the person who needs a lawyer. This fundamental fact is one of the single biggest barriers to deeply effective lawyering, as it must be overcome to build the kind of trust and partnership that you will need to get your client to be honest with you about their struggles and concerns, their hopes and priorities, and, in some cases, their larger goals or plans.

The best lawyering, after all, happens in partnership with the client rather than on their behalf. They are the expert of their own life, and almost certainly the expert in the situation you'll be litigating, so they hold crucial information regarding the case before you. But case-related information isn't the ballgame: they also may have priorities that surprise you, fears they need allayed, a vision of what success looks like that may differ from yours. The concepts outlined here are an excellent toolkit to get yourself out of the way, listen to, and learn from your clients, and then, once you're truly informed, be able to give the kind of personalized advice that defines a good lawyer. No one wants one-size-fits-all counsel.

As a public defender, one is often meeting people on the worst day of their lives. On top of that, one is entering the conversation as a stranger in a suit who may hold very different identities from the other person. I need to very deliberately do things to make my clients feel safe being honest with me, a stranger who they met (usually) on a really bad day. I have found the best way to do that is to listen. Listen deeply. No presuppositions. And then ask the right questions to help my client feel able to tell me not just what is going on in their case, but what's going on in their life, so we can make better decisions together. A person with both a family court case and a criminal court case might get a better outcome in criminal court playing the long game and pushing the case to trial, but if a swift resolution means getting their kids back home, that is almost always the most important thing to a parent. So my legal judgment about what's best in the case (trial) has to take a backseat to what's most important to my client (the kids). Priorities aren't always immediate, either—knowing, for example, that a young client has a dream of going to college (and needing loans to do so) or becoming a security guard (for which he'll need a specialized license) or joining the military (much more difficult with a record) will materially impact the strategic decisions we make in the case.

Biggest mistake(s) you made while in law school

I was so focused on representing clients and fighting cases, I don't think I spent as much time as I could have getting to know my professors. And they were incredible professors, many of whom I now count as dear friends, so my lack of attention to the hours they offered me, the conversations they were open to… it feels like such a needless missed opportunity. There are very few times in life when one is in the company of so many great minds, and has access to them. I wish I had given myself the time to learn from them outside of class—maybe even outside the law—instead of impatiently shoving myself toward the bar exam.

What class(es) did I wish I had taken while in law school? In or outside the school? What about today?

Again, going back to the professors—there are no classes I regret missing for the subject matter, but there are professors with whom I wish I had studied. Pam Karlan, for example, is one of the defining legal thinkers of her generation. As a 2L, I didn't feel adequate. I didn't take her class, and I really wish I had. Just to have gotten to watch her think out loud for a few hours a week.

Also, if you have a chance to learn Spanish, learn Spanish.

Most useful classes in law school

Beyond classes that put you in rooms with professors who excite you, I would say the best learning opportunities come from clinical practice. Ideally clinics where you get to take on real clients—volunteering to fill out domestic violence restraining orders or benefits applications in a come-and-go community clinic is virtuous and, yes, informative about how to interview a client and navigate bureaucracy, but there is something tremendously different about representing one person over a longer period of time.

Additionally, clinical work teaches you the things you will otherwise be most insecure about when you leave school.

How did you decide what to do post-law school? With hindsight, how good of a job did you do?

Because I spent so much time in law school trying to work as a lawyer rather than being a student (for better or worse), my path after graduation was clear to me. I wanted to be a public defender so badly that I actually lobbied my school to create the first Stanford Criminal Defense Fellowship, so that I could find work in an industry that does not often have positions for post-bar, pre-license graduates. In hindsight, I was able to make an informed choice not just because of my prior work in the field, but because I spent one summer of law school at a big, multinational law firm: Kirkland & Ellis. I spent my 1L summer at the LA County Public Defender fighting for kids and, ultimately, second-seating a murder trial, which ended in a wrongful conviction I would spend the next decade of my life fighting to rectify (and ultimately we did bring my client home). But after the incredibly emotional experience of ride-or-die public defense, I needed a breather for my heart. So I went to a big firm, where I knew my brain would be busy and my heart would be uninvolved.

I learned some surprising things that summer: that misogyny in big law is real, that I weirdly love antitrust, that a trip to the LA Gun Club is not a great work outing, and that in spite of the financial promise of a firm, doing work without my heart's involvement is not for me. But had I not tried it out, I wouldn't have had such certainty at graduation.

It's worth noting that I only had the freedom to make that choice because I went to a school with a glorious debt-forgiveness system. I knew that I could take a job as a public defender and my school would have my back, paying back my loans for me every year as long as I worked in the public interest and made a lower salary. The freedom that affords its graduates, in my opinion, is the biggest benefit to the school: its graduates can afford to follow their dreams and be happy lawyers instead of taking a job just for the paycheck.

Biggest mistake you made while at your first job

When I think of decisions I made in that first year that I would make differently now, it's hard to call them mistakes—after all, almost every single one of them led me to where I am today, and taught me things I needed to know. Most of the big screw-ups I came closest to were driven by passion: wanting to go too far investigating a case, or making choices that were expeditious but risky. Luckily, I had a great colleague at the time who would remind me that no case was worth my license, so no, I shouldn't go over and chat with the complaining witness one-on-one just because she was open to it, I should leave that to the investigator. No, I shouldn't sneak into the crime scene and snap a few crucial photos even though the DA wouldn't give us access to it, I should litigate the issue properly.

(That colleague is now my husband and I am still licensed.)

Best advice you received or have given for those coming out of law school

Be the lawyer you would want to have.

Even if you are privileged or lucky enough to have never been in that position, we have all been in crisis. No one is exempted from pain and disaster. We have all had the sinking feeling in our stomach of something going really, horribly wrong. We all know what we want in that moment: safety, trust, someone who will really listen, choices, information, a modicum of control over what happens next. Digging into the universality of our own human experience, and thinking deeply about what it is you have reached out for when you were lowest or most afraid—that's the best guide on what you should do as counsel.

Worst advice you received or have given for those coming out of law school

Lawyering is such a rigorously ceremonial profession that most of the advice we receive pushes us toward blind professionalism at the expense of humanity. Lawyers so often strive to be perfect instead of striving to be effective—thinking, for example, about the law underlying a judge's ruling and failing to consider the judge's mood, the context in which the conversation is happening, the rhetoric guiding the tenor of the conversation. We as a society have, for better or worse, created a system of justice that is made out of humans. Human decision-makers, fact finders, arguments, fears and flaws and dreams and mistakes at every layer. Law school rarely reminds you of this. Much of the advice you get will push you toward behaving as though it is the ideas that matter most, the arguments and statutes and citations. Don't fall for it. Humans are flawed, so is the practice of law, and the more you lean into that—and are strategic about it—the more effective you will be.

How have you remained happy in your profession? Have there been times when you were not? If so, what did you do to improve your situation?

As a trial lawyer, I was happy because I cared deeply about my clients, and wanted to be the lawyer they were hoping to have. Regardless of the outcome, when I could make someone feel safe, informed, and in control of their choices, I felt I was able to offer a form of empowerment to the people this system seeks to crush. The goal was to win, yes, but also to rob an oppressive system of the tools it uses to churn out punishment: to let my client's story, goals, struggles, achievements, and dreams be so unavoidably present and amplified to decision-makers that they could not comfortably dehumanize the people whose lives they impacted. I was happy because I was forcing the powerful to listen to the people they sought to disempower, which felt inherently good. And I won almost all my trials, which helped.

Stepping back from trial practice was an incredibly tough decision, and one that I worried would rob me of some of that joy I kept in my daily practice. But the decision was driven by the larger mission-orientedness that fueled my happiness: as a lawyer, I always believed that it was my job to defend a person, not a case. That meant that whatever the person was struggling with—complex, intersecting problems, multiple demands on their attention, conflicting needs, the horrible emotionality of it all—was also my burden and my responsibility. I never felt comfortable saying, “Sorry, that's not my area, best of luck,” when asked about access to food stamps or housing trouble. I wanted to say yes to my clients, yes to their requests, and let their priorities and goals guide the process as much as possible—even if their priority was not the case on which I was assigned.

I went to work at Bronx Defenders so that I could practice this way, on a collaborative team of multidisciplinary professionals, lawyers and non-lawyers, all working together to ensure that our clients were represented in this fuller, more empowering—and more effective—way. But thinking back on my trial practice in California and my time as a student, when I had done defense work in 12 California counties and New Orleans, I couldn't help but feel frustrated that lawyers everywhere weren't able to practice this way. Overburdened and mandated to focus exclusively on criminal matters, defenders were unable to be truly client-centered. So I decided to leave practice, and try to build something better.

Now, I run a program called Partners for Justice, which I co-founded, and which helps any public defender become holistic—rapidly and with enormous support. We recruit and train brilliant early-stage professionals, people who might one day be the next brilliant generation of lawyers, organizers, and leaders, and embed them with public defenders across the country. There, they operate as a plug-n-play wraparound service team: connecting people with housing and jobs, getting people into treatment, hooking up benefits, chasing down civil rights claims, fighting for licensure and against school suspension and more. When they collaborate with lawyers, they get better results inside and outside the courtroom, which, of course, means clients are more likely to walk away with their lives—and futures—intact. I'm going to keep doing this until every person in America can access a wraparound public defender.

If you could go back in time and tell your younger self something about making the transition from law school to the real world, what would it be?

Savor it. And embrace the adrenaline.