Before law school, I was a paralegal with Brooklyn Defender Services’ New York Immigrant Family Unity Project (NYIFUP). The injustices I saw there inspired me to go to law school. My clients’ stories and predicaments were emblematic of the varied ways that the criminalization of poverty, coupled with over-policing and harsh sentencing practices, can interact to create barriers that constrain opportunity and limit access to justice.
When researching law schools, I learned about Professor Eve Primus, ’01, the founder of MDefenders, the faculty-led student organization dedicated to mentoring and training future public defenders. That’s when I knew Michigan Law was where I wanted to be. Professor Primus showed us how to be relentless, thoughtful, client-centered advocates.
I returned to Brooklyn Defender Services after graduation as a family defense attorney, which built on my work as a student-attorney in U-M’s Child Advocacy Law Clinic. I enjoyed fighting to preserve families and defend parents who had been wrongly judged. But I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to rejoin the NYIFUP, where I work with some of the same people who mentored and encouraged me to go to law school. It feels so meaningful to fight for justice in the same immigrant community I grew up in. The immigration law and crimmigration courses I took at Michigan and the volunteer opportunities through the Michigan Immigrant and Labor Law Association helped prepare me for this role.
