Chapter 1 - Path to Becoming a Defense Attorney

Defenders talk about their journeys to the legal profession generally and to public defense specifically.

When did you realize that you wanted to be a lawyer? What made you interested in becoming a lawyer?

Defenders had widely divergent paths to becoming attorneys. Some Defenders knew from a very young age that they wanted to pursue a legal career. One Defender knew s/he wanted to be a lawyer “when I was four. My dad says—he tells his story every opportunity he gets—people would ask what I wanted to be when I grow up, and I would tell them, I'm going to be an attorney.’” Another Defender recalls that he/she “was definitely one of those people who knew what s/he wanted to do from like five years old.” States another Defender: “When I was about five or six years old. I have this Dr. Seuss book. My mom still has it, and it's the Dr. Seuss book about me. It asks you all these questions: What's your favorite color? What's your favorite car? How many windows are in your house? How many people are in your family? There was one question that said, ‘What do you want to be when you grow up?’ And it says, ‘Lawyer.’” S/He also recalls legal television shows like Perry Mason and Matlock providing further inspiration. One Defender remembers: “I always knew I wanted to be an attorney. I didn't know what type of law, but I definitely wanted to do litigation. I always wanted to be an attorney.”

Some Defenders realized later in middle and high school. One Defender explains that s/he wanted to be a lawyer “when I realized I hated science, so I could not be a doctor. So maybe, seventh grade?” Another Defender had a similar experience: “I quickly changed from [wanting to be a teacher] to wanting to be a lawyer or a doctor…. So the doctor thing went out the window when I was in junior high school, because I couldn’t tolerate the smell of formaldehyde….” One Defender recalls: “When I was in high school, everyone told me I should be a lawyer, that I’d be a natural at it. I argued all the time; my entire childhood was a fight with my parents, so it was on my mind. In college I sort of dabbled in different areas and then eventually decided to apply to law school.”

Other Defenders found their calling in college and beyond. One Defender was at first interested in pursuing a career in music and music theory: “And then I took a music theory class with a Black professor—she was just phenomenal—and I realized, oh, this is extremely complicated.” Having a friend begin attending law school out of state, coupled with conversations happening at the time regarding Clarence Thomas’ elevation to the Supreme Court bench, peaked that Defender's interest and led him/her to turn to law. Another Defender also developed an interest in a legal career in college. S/He explains: “I didn’t know that I wanted to be a public defender yet. When I went to law school, it was with the sole purpose of being a racial justice attorney.” One Defender had a lingering interest in becoming an attorney, but his/her decision to go to law school crystallized after earning his/her bachelor’s degree: “I graduated college right when the recession hit. So there were no jobs for anybody that didn't come out with a STEM degree. If you didn't come out with an engineering degree [or] any of those degrees, you were not going to get a job; and my dumb ass did marketing. (Author laughs) There was no way in hell I was going to get a job in marketing. The only thing I probably was going to do was door to door sales. So I said, ‘Bump that; I am going to law school.’”

Although the paths to law school were quite diverse, the motivations to pursue a legal career were less varied. Naturally, many Defenders were attracted to the idea of being attorneys because they talked and argued a lot when they were younger. One Defender recalls: “My father always encouraged the free flow of discussion; and if you could back your points, you could disagree with him. So I really liked disagreeing with my father. (Author laughs) We were all so scared of him; so I was like, this is my chance to step up. So probably that's where I started it. And then some people are kind of blessed with the logical train of thought; others aren't. I always felt like I had a pretty logical train of thought: if X equals Y then Y must be—, you know, that kind of thing.”

Many Defenders were moved to practice law by their own experiences growing up and grappling with racial inequality. One Defender recalls being motivated by “the exposure I had at church, like just being a Black person in Milwaukee. There was a lot of discrimination by the police department; there were police abuses. I remember some big police brutality events kind of like what we have now, except in the Milwaukee context; there would be a Black man being shot or beat up by the police. I remember protests; I remember being disturbed by the [incidents of police brutality].” Another Defender remembers how abusive the police were in his/her neighborhood, “seeing undercover officers just run up on Black people and search them for no apparent reason…. There was one time I was hanging at someone's house, and the police kicked in the door. I was like, what is happening? They claimed to have a warrant when they kicked in the door. I later found out that they were lying about having a warrant. They didn't have a warrant to begin with, and all they found was a little bit of weed. So I think those experiences for me have always pushed me on the path of defense.”

One Defender was moved to do law from having a parent incarcerated when that Defender was a child: “I just remember being a kid and being so confused. A part of that was, I think, that my family wasn’t the best at explaining to a young kid what was going on. I was told, ‘Oh, your mom is in jail,’ but that was kind of it. I didn't learn why. I didn't learn certain things until I was a teenager. And even now, I don't know a lot; I guess I have assumed some of the blanks by my experience as a defense attorney. So essentially when I was a kid, I remember being so confused; and I remember being like, this sucks! So much is happening. I don't understand anything, and I don't want other kids or other family members to feel this way. And I think in my young mind, it just kind of [pushed me] to become a lawyer.” Another Defender recalls there being two major turning points for him. First, having grown up in Crown Heights in the early 1990s, he remembered the riots that happened. “There were tensions between Black folks and Hasidic Jewish folks in the neighborhood. The police definitely interacted with Black people differently than they did the Hasidic residents of Crown Heights.” The second major turning point happened in college, when he and a number of other young men were falsely accused of starting a gang at the university and ultimately expelled:

Getting kicked out of [college] and essentially having the attorney that headed their judicial unit trump up charges against me as a gang leader on a university campus was such a traumatic experience that it made me make the final decision that law was what I would pursue, because I felt so disempowered. This woman just trumped up charges, even going as far as “quoting” me saying things that were all made up, and then used those things as a basis by which to expel me. I had to get a lawyer in that situation. It ended up coming not to a financial settlement, but to a settlement where my record would be cleared so that I could go to another school. So when I went to [a new university], I went with the view of being a lawyer.

Did you have any lawyers in the family? Did you know any lawyers before becoming a lawyer yourself?

Growing up, few Defenders had a lawyer in the family. Some Defenders were the first in their families to get a post-graduate degree. As one Defender's story reflects, economic circumstances played a major role in the inability of African Americans to further their education: “My mother graduated high school. My father didn’t go further than the eighth grade. He finished the eighth grade, but he didn’t go further than that because they couldn’t afford it. He was raised on a farm in Tennessee, and he had to work. He sent his baby brother to college; [that uncle] became a science teacher.” One Defender had an aunt who practiced in Georgia, and, as that Defender notes, “I modeled myself after her.” Another Defender had older cousins who were lawyers. Some Defenders had family members become attorneys after they graduated law school. One Defender had a younger brother who practiced in Maine, while another Defender has a younger cousin who is now an attorney. Yet another Defender had an uncle that used to be a prosecutor.

Most Defenders knew no lawyers prior to attending law schools. Amongst the few that did, most met attorneys while they were undergraduate students in college or during some professional engagement. One Defender recalls: “The compliance and diversity officer at the [college I worked at] was an attorney. He was kind of like a mentor to me; we did a lot of work together to enhance diversity when I was working there. He encouraged me to go to law school.” One Defender “worked for a lawyer in Atlanta when I was in college as an intern, but I just did filing and stuff like that. He was a Black guy. I could say he was another influence on me as well. He was really successful, and he had his own law firm in Atlanta. That’s the only lawyer I knew before law school.” One Defender’s family knew a civil rights attorney: “His name was Robert Decatur. He was a lawyer. He was also a Tuskegee airman. (Author reacts) Yeah, it’s nice. I didn't learn until I was an adult that he was a Tuskegee airman. I knew him, but it was socially; I didn't know about his work or what he was doing.”

What got you interested in criminal law? Were you interested in criminal law and criminal defense together, or where you interested in criminal law first and later interested in criminal defense?

Not every Defender was interested in pursuing criminal law at the time they decided to embark on a legal career. One Defender was first interested in administrative law and liked doing appellate work before shifting to public defense. Another Defender considered doing labor law in law school, but “I realized that labor law was boring. Like, it’s just contract law; it’s boring as hell. In my internships, I was literally falling asleep; it was that boring.” Another Defender initially had aspirations of becoming a civil rights attorney: “I don't know if you remember [this public figure], but he used to be at [this storied organization] ... I always paid close attention to him. As a result, I was very much invested in being a civil rights litigator when I was in law school.” Another Defender was first interested in doing entertainment law: “Bad Boys was huge back then; Puff Daddy made all the money. I was like, I want to be their lawyer. I want to travel with them.”

One Defender was once interested in doing international human rights law. His/Her experience in his/her law school’s international human rights clinic quickly dried up that interest: “I very quickly realized that international human rights [law] means rich white ladies telling people in other countries how to live their lives. (Author laughs) No, literally. I was like, whoa, this is what this is? So the organizations that we studied or whatever were all [run by] wealthy white women; there were no organizations in international human rights that were from other countries. It was really just white people imposing their shit.” Another Defender was also once interested in international human rights law; s/he came away with a similar conclusion: “I learned that international law was bullshit…. It only applies to Black countries and Brown countries; nobody else gets in trouble, except for Germany that one time. So I quickly realized that was not going to be it for me.”

A number of Defenders first turned to criminal law while in law school. One Defender found law school unfulfilling until s/he started taking a criminal law class. “It felt the most practical and grounded and useful to me,” s/he recalls. Another Defender had a similar experience: “So I was in class. Contracts was boring. Civil procedure was boring. Property [law] was boring. I was like, hell no. I can't understand people who sit down and do this shit. This shit is boring. Criminal law and constitutional law were my two favorite classes….” Recalls another Defender: “Growing up in a housing project in the 1980s, there were points where it was literally just crime-ridden, and it was really kind of tough to deal with. On the floor where I lived, there was a guy who was dealing crack [out of his apartment] …. There was a lot of that going on. So I didn't really want to get into doing criminal defense or criminal law. I just wanted to stay away from it. But when I got into law school, I really found that it was the only thing that I was interested in. I'm like, I don't want to spend my time working to help a corporation earn money and all this other stuff.”

Despite criminal law class peaking their interests, how the class was taught often bothered Defenders. One Defender remembers: “The person teaching criminal law at our school was teaching based on theories. He had never practiced criminal law as a prosecutor or a defense attorney. So everything he taught us was theoretical: “How would you react to this in theory?” And I'm just thinking, what the hell is this? I can't do this ‘in theory’ stuff. I need hardcore examples of what it is that you did when you were a public defender or when you were a DA….” Another Defender recalls: “I think when I was starting to learn about criminal law, and even just the way the actual experience of Black people wasn't really represented in the big classes that we were taking, it did spark a thing for me, like, wait a minute, what is this about? How can we just talk about cases without talking about all of the nuance of it?” S/He goes on:

I remember there was a student who was in my criminal law class, or I think it was probably criminal procedure; I can't remember which one. The teacher had shown an interrogation video, and it was this very sterile conversation about custodial interrogation. Of course, the person [in the video] who was being questioned was a Black man. And this other student, a Black woman, got so upset, and she said, “I'm just so sick and tired of how we have all of these conversations about all of these legal principles without talking about race explicitly, or [talking about] how any of these things impact people’s lives.” I was [shocked], I couldn't believe that she had the courage to say it in this predominantly white space.
The teacher was so mortified, she literally did the worst thing I think a teacher could do. She was like, “I'm not a racist!” and left the class crying. It was horrible. But at any rate, all of it sparked something in me that I felt like I had sort of kept deep down and just kind of quietly suppressed…. So all of those things kind of just pointed me in the direction of criminal defense.

Some Defenders first gained interest in criminal law from the prosecutor’s angle. One Defender recalls: “My first internship was at the Manhattan DA's office. I was there for a summer, and it was interesting. But I always felt conflicted because I'm working on things to help prosecute people for things I did throughout my teenage years, you know? Like I made it a religion for a while to never pay [for] the subway. I'm probably guilty of jumping the turnstile, without any exaggeration, 200, 300 times…. I got into fights and things like that. So here I am, helping people be prosecuted for this misdemeanor bullshit for things that I did. And I really felt very conflicted about it because there were times when I'm like, this just doesn't make any sense. And then I did a criminal defense clinic, and really loved it. And that's when I realized, this is what I want to be involved in….”

Other Defenders found their calling after doing other kinds of programs and internships. One Defender ditched entertainment law after doing a public defense internship: “It was at that point that I knew, this is what I want to do. I want to be a voice for my community. I want to help my community, and this is how I want to do it.” Another Defender became interested in public defense after representing students in suspension hearings while in law school:

When I went to law school, it was with the sole purpose of being a racial justice attorney. I worked on racial justice issues in many legal spaces. I went to law school in New York, and one of my most favorite activities I participated in while in law school was representing New York City public school students in suspension hearings. NYC public school suspension proceedings were horrible. I mean, it's horrible everywhere, but when I was in law school, you could suspend kids for up to a year and just completely destroy their educational opportunities.
I remember one time I represented an 8-year-old who was being suspended from a school in the Bronx, and it was heartbreaking because she had been bullied at her school, and so she got into a situation. They ended up calling the cops, and she was handcuffed in front of all of her schoolmates! Like, how do you even put handcuffs on an 8-year-old? They couldn’t keep them on. The cuffs kept coming off because they were too big. She was taken to the precinct and interrogated without a parent present. It was horrifying, and she was absolutely traumatized by the fact that everyone saw her being arrested. Thankfully we were able to win the suspension hearing. She wasn't suspended, but I don't know what the long-term impacts will be.
And then I represented students where we lost their hearings all the time, and they were suspended for a year. It was very disturbing, but I think that experience really was different from some of the other things I’ve done, and it inspired me to do more client-focused work.

One Defender recalls the following about his/her internship with a judge in Minnesota:

I was interning with this judge in Ramsey County in St. Paul, Minnesota…. He was a former prosecutor. He was a former federal defender. And what he did as a Black judge was—he got tired of seeing [so many] Black men come into his courtroom—with the permission of the defense attorneys and like a probation officer, he would have this kind of informal meet up like every week or every two weeks where we would just sit down with the young men [facing charges] and talk about life [and] the choices they make. [His attitude was], I'm tired of seeing my own people constantly coming before me; what can I try to do to help and steer them in the right direction? And I thought, that's amazing. Like, no judges were doing that.
I remember one time sitting in his courtroom, and he didn't take the bench yet. There were two prosecutors. No, there was one—that was probably a Freudian slip, but it's going to make sense— there was one prosecutor there, and another prosecutor-turned-defense attorney there. They were both white. And I remember the [prosecutor] saying, “Hayes”—whatever, I can't remember the guy's name—“What are you doing here?” And [the “defense” attorney] said something to the effect that he got laid off from the prosecutor's office, so he became a defense attorney. The other guy said, “Oh, I guess you gotta pay the bills.”
I don't know what his representation was like, but that stuck with me. I thought to myself, this person is representing people that look like us and he's just doing it because he's getting a check. I'm sure he didn't give a shit about his clients. He's basically representing people like us just to get a check, so what kind of representation is he doing? Because it was like he was almost ashamed of it.

Some Defenders were interested in law and public defense together. One Defender explains: “I wanted to help people that look like me and had gone through similar traumatic events by the hands of law enforcement, the people that are supposedly there to protect us. I was on a panel about the Floyd case¹later on and I heard a CUNY Law professor named Babe Howell speak, and I was like, that's what I want. That's what I want to do. That’s the type of attorney that I want to be. I saw her as a warrior, as somebody who wasn't going to allow [a] cop on the panel to say frivolous shit that went unchecked. She was somebody that I felt deeply believed in the stuff that they were doing and was smart, articulate and just not backing down to anything. And at that moment I was like, I'm going to be a public defender. That's what I want to do.”

What are your thoughts on the LSAT?

Almost universally, Defenders have little good to say about the Law School Admission Test, or LSAT, a standardized examination aspiring law students are required to take to apply to law school. Defenders consistently find the test to be arbitrary and useless. A Defender notes, “I think the LSATs aren’t really indicative of how someone is going to perform in law school. That’s for sure. I didn’t score exceedingly high on the LSATs, and I did well in law school.” Another Defender concurs: “I find it to be quite pointless. It’s pointless. I don’t think that there’s any particular thing that’s tested on that test that determines whether or not someone is going to be an excellent advocate or not. I guess it’s supposed to test knowledge—excuse me, logic and reason—but I find it to be pointless.” Yet another Defender avers that the LSAT is “a waste of time, like most standardized tests.” One Defender recalls that, “when I got to law school, I didn’t feel like it was indicative of [success] in law school….” Another Defender thinks that the LSAT “is not particularly valuable in determining whether a person is going to be good at being a lawyer.”

Defenders also largely agree that such tests are culturally biased. One Defender states: “I hate the LSAT and I hate those kinds of tests. I think they are done to exclude people in general, people from poor communities, communities that are disadvantaged….” Another Defender concurs: “So many of these standardized tests are culturally biased. They aren’t really designed for students of color, for Black people to do well. Some of the dopest lawyers I know didn’t do well on the LSATs, but then did well in law school…. Some of the dopest writers I know, some of the dopest legal advocates I know… didn’t do well on the LSAT…. It’s just another hurdle for us as Black people to get over when it comes to accessing a quality education.” Another Defender recalls: “When I was taking it, it was really culturally biased. They were expecting certain things that were not in my background. I understand that it changed over the years, and I hope it did; but when I took it, it was not a very fair test.”

Defenders also think the test is biased against poor people. One Defender’s thoughts about the LSAT: “I think it sucks. I think you need a really good prep program, and if you don't have a good program, you're not going to do well. I couldn't afford a program, so the only thing that I could afford was this previously recorded program of an online class. It was not live, so I couldn't ask the instructor any questions; I just had to figure it out or hope someone who was actually in there asked that question or a similar question.” Another Defender notes: “Many people who need to take the prep courses can’t afford them. I think [the LSAT is] a way to exclude.” One Defender’s experience reflects this reality: “I studied for the LSAT on my own through books [borrowed from] the libraries and people lending me books.” Another Defender had a similar experience: “I did not have the money to do a full [LSAT prep] course, so I took a weekend course; and then I spent every day going to the library and getting those huge books to study through and went through them on my own, one after another, up until I took [the test].”

Many Defenders felt discouraged after taking the test. One Defender describes the LSAT as “the hardest exam I had ever taken,” and further recalls that “it was really a very sober experience for me, because I had always excelled at standardized tests…. It made me feel like I wasn’t as smart as I thought I was….” Another Defender notes that the LSAT “almost had me not go to law school.” Another Defender “took the LSAT three times, and the highest I scored was 156. I got into law school through a pipeline program because no law school would accept me, even though on paper, with my experiences and stuff like that, I was a pretty good candidate.” One Defender remembers having a colleague and fellow debater at Howard University who “had a 3.8 GPA, very smart, very intelligent. [She took the LSAT and] got her LSAT scores back. I thought they were pretty good, but she was in tears and felt that as a result of her scores, she shouldn’t be a lawyer. She never pursued law school as a result of that. So I’ve seen the kind of impact that this test and these scores have on otherwise very qualified people.” Another Defender had a particularly rough experience:

I hated it. I did horrible on the LSAT. I don't remember my score [now], but I did awful. And it's funny sort of looking back on it now, because I feel comfortable saying that I did horrible. I actually bombed the LSAT. But at the time, I took it and [then] I got my score back, and I just felt horrible. I was thinking, I don't know if I'm cut out for this….
[This] contributed, I think, to the idea that I need to go to a better school because I might not be that good; so I need to make sure that something will help me stick out. But it really, really ended up tearing me up to the point that, when I got to law school—and this is probably, looking back, a little obsessive—I literally scheduled every 15 minutes of my day. My 1L year, I was really, really nervous because of the LSAT. So I thought, okay, I'm going to check in with the people in [the office of] academic success and do literally everything I possibly can to try to stay on top of things, because I can't afford to spend all this extra money and then just become a failure. So I think the LSAT really, really tore me up….
I think, looking back on it now, that it's very similar to the bar exam in the sense that it means nothing about who you are, how smart you are, or whether you're equipped to actually be a lawyer. It literally just boils down to if you have enough privilege to shut down your entire life and just [study] for like two months straight. And I didn't [have that privilege] at that time. I was working, doing school, doing sports…. If I studied the same way for the bar as I studied for the LSAT, I definitely would not have passed [the bar exam] on the first try.
I hated it. I hated it. That was probably the worst memory I have of a test in my entire life, even worse than the bar.

A few Defenders do find the test to have some value. One Defender finds the test to be arbitrary but notes: “I think it's important to see if people can study some arbitrary facts that don't really matter for the test because that's a lot of what we do for law school.” Another Defender states: “I thought the test was difficult. A part of me thinks it was fair, but also a part of me realized that it was culturally biased. For me it was a difficult test, but I also found it to be stimulating. I thought I got smarter by taking the test and really focusing on it…. I think the LSAT objectively is a good test. Given its cultural bias, there are certain questions where you have to have a certain cultural understanding of how our society works to answer those questions; but apart from that, I thought it was an accurate test.” Explains another Defender: “My thoughts on it—in terms of whether it’s a valuable exam or not—I think that to some degree it is, because the study and the practice of law are different from the study and practice of any other discipline that I’ve studied. It just requires a different way of thinking that isn’t taught and isn’t generally experienced in the world. So, I think that it’s valuable in testing whether a person can think that way.”

Other thoughts:

Defender I found the LSAT to be incredibly difficult. I have learning disabilities and I'm severely dyslexic, and I had to fight and actually be part of a lawsuit against the Law School Admissions Council (LSAC) because they didn't want to give me the proper accommodations that I required to be on par with other people. This was a big class action lawsuit where LSAC got sued, and I signed up onto that, because they were not giving people accommodations who were entitled to them, people who had IEPs…. I found it to be very hard; I thought it was very difficult compared to the bar exam, which I passed on my first try.

Defender I think it’s stupid. It’s a test you can study for; I studied my ass off for the LSAT and improved my score by twenty-five points…. We already know that it doesn’t correlate to how good of a lawyer you will be; it doesn’t correlate to how much you know or your aptitude for the law; and it certainly doesn’t say anything about your skill, or how you think.
I’m not fond of any standardized tests, but the fact that a person can study for it and improve their score so dramatically tells you that it’s a test that can be gamed by income. You take this test, and if you have this time and this space to put 100 hours into studying for the LSAT, you can improve your score dramatically. When I was at Harvard, a professor’s research assistant—at Harvard they call them tutors—said to me, “I was pre-law for a minute. If you just buy all the tests and take them all, you can actually learn and increase your score dramatically.” And that’s what I did. What that means is that if you have time and the money to buy the practice tests and the resources to take the courses, then you’ll do well.
Even with the logic games, the LSAT has a logic games section. I had gotten [logic games] in my [white] public school as part of the gifted and talented program since I was eight years old. (Author reacts) Right? So with all of these matrix logics, I already knew how to do them, so it had been fully demystified. And I liked them; they were like games that we played. But these were things that my teacher had exposed me to—[me] not having any idea that they were on the LSAT—[they were] just things that were done to challenge certain kids. Then I talk to my students at John Jay or my students at CUNY Law, and they didn’t get any of this shit in school. None of it. And these are the smart kids.
So with a lot of this stuff, this was the privilege of growing up in white America—of course, despite all of the costs that go with that….

Defender I think it's racist. It's really just an exclusionary tool. It's ridiculous. I probably don't have that much of an entrepreneurial spirit; I normally just try to get it out by word of mouth that I can train people to beat the LSAT, because it is like a formula. I've helped a few people that came to me….
One of the self-esteem stories that I like telling people is that I was taking this reduced-price LSAT course, and this white teacher gave us a practice LSAT on the first day. Almost all of us were Black and Brown. [None of us were trained to take it,] so of course all of us did poorly. [He then] told us in the class, “Oh, the LSAT is hard. But don’t worry. You guys are African Americans. So, if you get like a 140 or so, maybe you’ll be able to go to a law school in Kentucky or somewhere on affirmative action.” All of us were so dejected. Then after class, because I hadn’t had enough and I wanted more punishment, I went up to him and asked, “So have you ever seen anybody raise their score more than 10 points? Is that possible?” He said, “No, that's not possible. You can't raise your score more than 10 points. But it's okay; like I said, you can get a 140-something.”
That Sunday, I went to church. My surrogate father, Bishop Youngblood, was then at St. Paul. I had no idea what he was preaching about; but I remember at some point he said, “I want you to repeat after me: ‘I do not accept mediocrity. I do not accept mediocrity.’” And he had us repeat it no less than 10, 15 times. And then on the 15th time, I thought, why am I listening to this white man? So I went home, and I bought the LSAT timer. I bought all the old LSAT books.
I then started [a process] I call “getting into the brain of the test.” You just do the exam and you look over the answers. You do it first, not timed. Then you look over the answers very slowly. Look at the question. Look at the answer. Look until you start to get into the brain of the test. You just have to remember that none of it makes any sense. So you have to read it like a video game and figure out what the rules are.
Doing that, I raised my score. My initial score that I got that day, I think it was a 129. The lowest score is 120; I got a 129. My final score ended up being either a 164 or 166. That was how I got the scholarships that I got. And if I had had more time, if I had figured that out sooner, I'm pretty sure I would've been able to get a 170.

Defender The LSAT is trash. (Author laughs) I don’t know if I’m supposed to give a better answer than that.

How was your law school experience?

Defenders’ law school experiences varied. One Defender “loved law school. I thought law school was amazing.” Another Defender who loved law school states: “I did a clinical program. I loved being in the clinic because all throughout DC, we were representing kids. We got to do ride-alongs with the police and be able to hear them talking shit about our clients. We got to do all sorts of things…. It was a great experience, honestly; and my clinical professor is someone that I still keep in touch with to this day. She's amazing.” Another Defender also had a very positive experience: “My law school experience was really good. I really enjoyed law school, I gotta tell you. For me, it wasn't as bad as people said it was, maybe because I practically grew up in a law office. I knew what to expect. I really was interested in most of the topics I took, because they had a good perspective in every class. They came from the right perspective of public interest, and so I really was interested. This is what I wanted to do my whole life.” Shares another Defender: “I went to Howard University School of Law, which I say with a high degree of pride. That was my first academic experience where I was not a minority. It made a huge, huge impact on me in my life, being around professors who were interested in your development, interested in your future. I had never really experienced that at any previous academic level at all.”

Some Defenders hated law school. One Defender thought law school was “terrible. I hated law school.” S/He recalls his/her law school having a diversity problem; they made poor efforts to recruit and admit Black students: “In my second year, I ended up being on the admissions committee to review incoming applications. That was extremely frustrating because it was clear to me when they were reviewing Black applications, it was like, ‘Let's admit the first 15 Black applications that we have, and then that’s it.’ They didn't [literally] say that, but there weren't robust conversations about the Black applicants and what they had to bring. They were not looking to see what Black applicants could bring to the university, what they would add, how they would make our community stronger. To the admissions team it was like they were all the same. It seemed like a rush to get to a particular threshold [so] they could be done with that.” Another Defender recalls: “I didn't enjoy it. I didn't feel like it was an inclusive environment. I didn't feel a sense of psychological safety. I didn't feel like I was particularly supported. My uncle went to my law school first, which is why I went there….”

The lack of racial diversity was a problem that many Defenders note. One Defender remembers there being “a few Black people. I think there were 15 [Black students] across my class, including the evening students. So there were maybe 330 people in my class in total, and 13 to 15 of us were Black. Two guys, two Black guys.” Another Defender's recollection: “I think I went to school with maybe two Black men when I first got there. My incoming class didn't have any Black men at all. The day program had 250 students, almost 300 students. And there was eight Black women. So we referred to ourselves as Black Girls one through eight, as like a critique on the administration….” Another Defender notes that at the law school s/he attended, “there were about 300 students there. I don't believe that more than 30 of them were Black; and I think that's being generous. When I went to [law school]—and I think it's probably still the same way—you knew every Black student there. I mean, you might not have had a personal relationship with them, but there weren't that many of us….” One Defender, a member of one of CUNY Law’s first law school classes, recalls: “The first two classes were the classes that had the most people of color. Oh my God, there was so many people of color! But it also lost a lot of people of color, too.”

Defenders consistently faced and witnessed varying levels of racism in law school. Here’s a sampling of their experiences:

Defender The way they teach in law school, it was such an academically unstimulating and just toxic environment to be honest. It wasn’t trying to ensure you learned anything; it felt like indoctrination. It very clearly felt like indoctrination: getting your brain to see the world from the white supremacist lens, and to make the arguments to support that framework. And it’s creepy how quickly people fall into it. I’ll never forget how we were in a constitutional law class, and we were studying the U.S. Supreme Court case that decided that the people who were being held in Guantanamo Bay had a right to due process. So while we’re discussing the case, there was a Korean student in our class—and she’s a first generation person, just like me; her parents are born and raised in Korea and came to the U.S.—and so we’re talking through this case and this girl makes this argument that because someone is not a U.S. citizen, they should not be afforded all the rights of the Constitution, that the Constitution is actually designed for U.S. citizens.
And I’m sitting here looking at her like, so what you’re saying is that when your parents came to these lands, they could’ve done whatever the hell they wanted to your parents? How could you make that logical assessment knowing who you are as an individual? I will never forget that; this was over ten years ago at this point. I thought to myself, this environment is literally making people who aren’t white actually start to cosign their own destruction. She’s saying this, and no one is looking at her like she’s crazy; people are nodding! My Black homegirls and I put our pens down and are like, what the fuck are you talking about? Bitch, you’re Korean! What are you saying?! But everyone else is like, “Yeah, you know, the Constitution is like, what the framers had in mind, what the framers were thinking about U.S. citizens.” And I’m thinking, when this document was written, I could never have been a citizen! What are you all saying?
And then the anti-Blackness was so deeply rooted. Our professor was James Forman, who’s now at Yale. He is a Black man, and I could see from his face that he was like, this is what you’re getting from this? And our class was wildly disrespectful to him. He was our only Black professor that year, and they would talk crazy to him. I remember one kid cut him off and was like, “You had a chance to speak, now I’m gonna finish now!” Like, this is the law professor; are you stupid? Are you crazy?
The environment was so anti-Black that I am so grateful for the friendships I made. If I was isolated, I would’ve dropped out. I don’t think I would have stayed.

Defender Law school was—I don't want to say ‘bad’ because I learned a great deal and I made lifelong friends—but there was one interaction that surprised me. I was in constitutional law. The professor, who was a great guy, had me do all of the affirmative action cases. You know, when they make you stand up and give the rule and the conclusion and the court's analysis. [He made me do that for all] the affirmative action cases. (Author reacts) Yeah. All of them. I had to do all of them. I was just on call for that week.
Later on, one of the students during a study session said, “We all know the only reason [My Name] is doing well in school is because of affirmative action.” And for him to feel the comfort of saying that in a mixed-race group of people—my friends did well and ultimately exiled that person from our study group—but just the freedom of saying it made me feel very alienated in that moment. But like I said, I was fortunate enough to have people around me who kind of didn't let that thought stick around. But it stuck with me for a while. Imposter syndrome, I think that was the first time I kind of had to deal with it. I spent a while thinking, do I deserve to be here? Should I be here? It was a difficult semester. I think it turned out to be my lowest grades in law school, because the confidence was shaken for a minute.

Defender My first year, my law school classmates held a ghetto fabulous party that was all over CNN and the blogs and stuff. They called the party “Bullets in Bubbly.”³It was held over—naturally—Martin Luther King holiday weekend. (Author reacts) It was about them surviving their first semester in “ghetto Hartford.” So they dressed in blackface and wore bamboo earrings and were just doing the most. So those were the folks that I knew I had to look forward to seeing going through the next two-and-a-half years in law school. That was my law school experience; I went to school with those people, along with some righteous badass Black women. So needless to say, I was thankful when the charade was over.

Defender There was one professor who was a Black woman. She was targeted by the students there who didn't think that she was an effective professor and quite openly questioned her intelligence and her abilities as a professor in class. So we had to organize around that. When I was [at the law school], all of the Black students received hate mail in our mailboxes, telling us to go back to Africa and calling us monkeys and that type of thing. We had to organize around that. There were also incidents where professors had acted inappropriately in classes. We had to organize around that….
I don't have anything really good to say about [the law school I attended]. I didn't necessarily have high expectations; but with the sort of expectations that I did have, I was let down and disappointed in the experience, disappointed in the professors. Not all; there were some [supportive professors]. There was Dr. Angela Joseph, who was very helpful in terms of being supportive to a Black student; and she wasn't a law professor. [Otherwise], my experience there was trash.

Defender I had some really interesting experiences. The law school decided to make these centers, and one of them was the Justice Action Center. When they made this center, some friends of mine had started an American Constitution Society within the law school. We had been doing these debates and lectures on really important, interesting issues. [The law school I attended] honestly didn't even have shit like that; they were just about test taking and weird stuff…. So I was in the Justice Action Center, a class [affiliated with the Center], and they were talking about predatory lending; and there was an obvious desire to leave racism out of everything. And I’m like, this is the JUSTICE ACTION committee, and you’re not even talking about racism. So I [started talking about racism and how foundational it was to America], and this white girl in class started crying hysterically. Suddenly, I was like the pariah of the class, because I made the white girl cry. I didn't understand why she was crying; and she's like, “I'm not racist!” It was the first time I experienced this in that sort of setting. In California, people … just had a different attitude about things; but in New York, the term “racist” is the worst thing you could ever call someone….
As a part of that class, I had written in one of my papers about an attorney at [the public defender office] that I had been interning at. I wrote about how I thought his practices were just fucked up and stupid, and I wrote all this shit about him. The professor was like, “Oh, you can't really write this in the paper.” And I said, “Why? This is in my observation.” Then it turned out that that disgusting dude I was interning with [was made to resign after his superiors] found out he was videotaping women in their offices. (Author reacts) I was so vindicated. I was like, “Okay, professor; this guy was a jerk, and I was right.”
The craziest thing that happened to me at [the law school I attended related to] my final exam. On the [day of the final exam], they had these proctors who were watching us while we completed the exam. I did the exam, and a few weeks later, they're like, “I'm sorry, we can't give you a diploma because somebody said that you were cheating during the exam.” I was like, “What the fuck are you talking about?” They claimed that this disgusting proctor guy—he's around the school; he's not a professor. He's just this obese, old Italian guy who was just sitting in there proctoring—claimed that he saw me look at another paper or talk to somebody or something.
I was so angry and fucking bewildered that they were not going to let me graduate. It was unbelievable…. I was walking out of the office, and I saw that guy outside. I went up to him and I fucking told him off; like, I had him in tears. I don't even remember what I said to him, but I was just like, “You’re fucking disgusting.” I just went in on what a fucking loser this dude was. Then I told my friend, who was another Black girl with long dreadlocks, about this. She's like, “Oh, I was in that class. I asked somebody to borrow a pencil.” It turned out that [the proctor] was talking about her asking somebody a question; it wasn't even me who he was talking about!
I just couldn't even believe I had to deal with that. I went to [the law school officials and told them off]. They had no evidence, no proof beyond this guy. So they had to drop it. But I was just shocked. I just couldn't even believe that this type of stuff goes on. And I'm pretty sure that if I weren't so completely psycho about it, if I were like a more passive person, who knows? Maybe they wouldn't have allowed me to graduate….

Defender It was very difficult being the only African American in all of those classes. You talk about cases like the Bakke decision on affirmative action and things like that; and that's when everybody who thinks they're liberal suddenly comes out, and you get to see what they really are. I was literally in a class of 95 people in that [constitutional] law class; and we were discussing that decision. And I was the only one there taking the position that affirmative action was a weak but important form of reparations that we needed. And, I mean, these people were really, really pissed off.
I had a very, very bad experience with some professors. They thought, oh, you went to that HBCU. They wouldn't say that. But they said, “Oh, you went to Oakwood College; you didn't learn how to write.” But I was in a study group, and we busted one of them. We were in a study group, and [a white student and I] submitted the exact same paper. We changed this or that or the other, but it was basically the exact same paper. And we turned it into that professor who said I couldn't write. I got a C+ on it, and the white student made an A on it. So we went to him and the dean with that, and the professor was really pissed. He said, “You do realize I could bring you in for disciplinary action, because you all turned in the same paper. That meant you collaborated, and this was not a collaboration project….” So the final agreement was, “Look, you don't say anything or move forward with anything, and we won't press any charges against you.” And that's basically the way that went. I didn't have any more problems from that particular professor….
I was in a study group, and [the other students] didn't do anything. They basically would just let me do the work. I didn't mind, because I just liked saying my ideas out loud; that kind of solidified them in my head. So we kind of had a nice relationship like that. I would go in there, and we would talk, and I would ring out what it is that I was trying to get out. It was helpful for me; and they would just sit there and take notes….
And I guess the final thing about [law school] was that, again, culturally there's a big issue with it. I had never heard of Gilbert's notes and case notes and stuff like that; so when I started law school, I was literally reading every case. We would get 300, 400 pages a night to read in some of these classes, and I was reading them because I didn't know there was something that encapsulated them or made them much easier to grasp. It would've been good if somebody was there to tell me that kind of thing, but there was no one. I finally learned about them, and then I didn't go crazy every night reading 300 and 400 pages.

Because most Defenders did not have family or friends in the legal profession prior to law school, some felt unprepared. One Defender recalls her first year being “super tough…. I remember my contracts teacher. Me and my friend were talking about it the other day. He would call on you to answer a question, you'd respond with, ‘I think the answer is—’ and he'd yell: ‘We don't care about what you think! We don't care about your beliefs!’ He was really like a drill Sergeant, and it was scary! Then, at that point in time, your pass or fail depended on one test at the end of the semester. All this time I'm spending studying, and it's going to be dependent on this one test. So of course the pressure of that in and of itself was difficult.” Similarly, another Defender explains: “I didn't think college prepared me for the beast that is law school. I felt like nothing prepared me for the beast that is law school. I studied more than I ever studied in my life. I mean, I created outlines. I did no such thing in college. My experience could have been the same for everyone, but I did not have a social life for the most part because I spent the vast majority of my time outlining, reading a hundred pages [a night], and just trying to stay afloat…. [Law school] was a beast; and it's not like I knew what to expect, because I didn't know any lawyer going in. I didn't know anyone that went to law school. So I essentially had to do it all on my own. I had to figure it out all on my own….”

One positive many Defenders got out of law school was a network and community of Black attorneys. One Defender notes that she “was really fortunate, because I met a group of Black women very early on in law school, and to be honest, I am still really close friends with all of them. Some of my foundational friendships came from law school.” Many of these communities revolved around school-specific Black Law Student Associations (BLSA). One Defender explains that she “was fortunate to have a strong BLSA coming in, and I know that's not everybody's experiences…. I was very thankful to have walked in my first year and had a bunch of badass Black women who were running the hell out of BLSA…. They had outlines [for law school courses] for days. They had nice study sessions and tutoring sessions for folks who needed it for the first years….” Another Defender was involved in the northeast regional BLSA, and she recalls having “met the most amazing group of Black women…. We had some strong Black women, and I’m still lifelong friends with them. I was always having the support of my sisters in life that helped and got me through.” Yet another Defender recalls how the Black students at the law school he attended “truly did come together…. There were a lot of Black people looking out for other Black people, which was really, really great.”

Not all nonwhite professors were necessarily supportive. One Defender recalls: “I had a lot of racist interactions with professors; and then other professors that were there—professors of color—that I raised my experiences with not only defended their white colleagues but tried to discredit my experiences.” Another Defender recalls: “We had a Black female professor who didn't give a shit about any of us Black women. (Author reacts) She was Haitian, and one of my close friends was Haitian. The professor said, ‘I don’t care that you’re Haitian. I don’t know you.’ It was very disheartening.” Generally though, experiences resembled that of one Defender who reported feeling “really supported mainly by the Black students and the Black faculty….”

Finally, some Defenders have particular memories of the areas where they attended law school. Here are two of them:

Defender I HAAAAAAAATED Boston. Oh my God. Like it got so bad with me and cops. Like there were a couple cops that wherever we would see each other in the town, we'd get it in at each other. Oh gosh. Like it was the worst. My last year [in law school], a Black person walked up to me one day and said, “Damn, bro, you need to get back home. You got that look in your face like any moment it's about to go down.” I said, “I know.” Man, like there were times where I stopped driving my car because I got tired of getting pulled over and I knew that I was getting to that point where I wasn't going to be polite…. It got bad.

Defender I felt like race was something that I was conscious of, obviously being a Black guy in [St. Paul,] Minnesota; but I was a traditional guy: baggy jeans, Timberlands, North Face, with my roller bag [that had] my law school books and my laptop. And I remember one time I was leaving law school late from study, and there was this mother there with her kid. She was letting her kid run [around] on a busy street. Then when she saw me approaching, she grabbed her child's hand. I'm like, so you're more concerned with me, who was clearly a student, then your child possibly running into the street and getting hit by a car. Now I could only attribute that to my appearance and to race…. It was an eye-opening experience for me, because there were people that were blatantly racist in Minnesota, and there were some people that were kind of doing the Midwest normal, passive aggressive thing.

FN 3: See Grace E. Merritt, Off-Campus Party Theme Called Racially Insensitive, Hartford Courant (Jan. 25, 2007), https://web.archive.org/web/20070129045005/http://www.courant.com/news/local/hc-ctlawparty0125.artjan25,0,5638619.story?coll=hc-headlines-local.

What are your thoughts on the bar exam?

Defenders almost universally have similarly negative views about the bar exam as they did about the LSAT. One Defender calls it “the continuation of the same torture ritual as everything else, leading into going to law school, starting with the LSAT, and the last good punch in the face is the bar exam.” Another Defender likens the bar exam to “the LSAT on steroids with way higher stakes. After you have hundreds of thousands of dollars in student loan debt and have been emotionally, physically and mentally beat up in law school, then they hit you with this exam.” Another Defender opines that the bar exam “is clearly more focused on law than the LSAT, but again, I don't know how it predicts what type of lawyer you would be, or your level of intelligence and your ability to comprehend things.”

Most Defenders found the bar exam stressful when they took it. One Defender notes how s/he “still [has] nightmares every once in a while.” Another Defender remembers his/her experience with the bar exam: “I’ve never been more terrified in my life. I’ve never worked harder in my life.” States another Defender: “I think the bar exam sucks. I am never taking it again. So, if I move somewhere, I can't do it for another two years, at least. And I better find somewhere I can waive in. Otherwise, it's not happening. It's just nerve wracking, and the focus that you have to put in all the time; you have to go back to the subjects that you haven't touched in two, three years; you're learning subjects that you hadn't learned at all, like administrative law. Who cares about that?!” Adds another Defender: “I thought the bar exam itself was extremely stressful. I also thought it was stupid. A majority of the things that I learned I forgot right after I took the bar exam. It was just a crunch. I learned as much information as I could during that period of time, I regurgitated it on the bar exam, and I did what I had to do. To me, it was a hazing experience.”

Most Defenders also dispute the idea that the exam is a test of competence or intelligence. One Defender recalls: “I had a good friend…. He was one of the smartest people that I've been around, like a very cultured, smart guy…. And he could just never pass the New York state bar exam for whatever reason…. And then there are some people you’ve seen in court, and it’s like, damn. They passed the bar exam, they’re sitting here, and they're dumb as dirt. So, I really don't know what precisely it has to do with your ability to practice law.” Another Defender concurs: “I just don’t know that [it is] necessarily an accurate measure of success. I think there’s still a lot of inherent bias in the way that the test asks things. I don’t know that it really accurately measures someone’s ability to be a great attorney.” Another Defender is more direct: “I think if you graduate from law school, you should be able to practice law. I don't know what the bar exam is for.”

The idea that the bar exam is divorced from its purported goal of testing competency is more firmly espoused by Defenders that failed the bar exam at least once. One Defender recalls: “Taking the bar exam doesn’t really do much for your practice. When I was a law graduate, I was going to court and doing whatever I had to do for my clients; when I didn’t pass the bar, I was still going to court and doing what I had to do for my clients. So when I didn’t pass the first time, I thought to myself, you have this test that’s holding you back, but you clearly can do the work and you’ve been doing the work.” Another Defender shares the following:

I share my story with everybody: I failed the New York bar exam two times. And I'm only saying this in the context of how this test has bearing on your ability to be an attorney. I'm a good attorney. (Author agrees) And I failed that test twice. Here's the crazy thing: so I took [the bar exams in both] New York and Connecticut at the same time …. The first time, I failed the bar in New York, but I passed the bar in Connecticut. So that's even weird right there. (Author laughs) To me, that's a problem. I know so many lawyers who fail the bar exam, [and they] are phenomenal lawyers. So there has to be a disconnect between the bar exam and it being a metric for your being able to be an attorney. There's no critical thinking there. It’s just IRAC: Issue, Rule, Application, Conclusion.
Everybody tells you how to take the test: “This is how you have to study for this.” By the third time, I'm thinking, look, I got here doing things my way. I've got to stop listening to everybody telling me how to take this test. I have to just take it how it works for me. And so I did, and I ended up passing that third time I took it.
But the mental, emotional, and physical strain and stress that it puts on people [is ridiculous. I’ve heard things like], “If you are a smoker, do not quit smoking now.” It's more important that you keep smoking so that you can sustain yourself to take this test than the health of your lungs. I mean, it's problematic, very problematic. [From] the questions on there [to] the way that it's structured—that there are two right answers, but one is more right than the other—it’s just problematic….

A few Defenders articulate concern that some applicants ascribe unwarranted value to tests like the bar exam. One Defender states: “I think it's kind of a competition with medical school or something. It's like, ‘Oh, we have a test, and if you take it and you pass it, it proves that you're smart.’ It's hard. It's a bar to keep people out to maintain exclusivity. It presents some status to the people who pass it, but I think it's useless.” Another Defender expounds: “My other thoughts on it are I have some friends who actually [feel validated by these tests]. I have one friend who still talks about his bar exam score or his LSAT score…. People do buy into this as part of their self-worth or [as proof that] they’re smart. And I have never, never thought that because I'm a good test taker that makes me a smart person. And I think it's just stupid when people are still talking about what score they got on a fucking test.”

Many Defenders similarly see the bar exam as a culturally biased test. One Defender notes that bar study was “honestly where I started to understand the disadvantages of being a person of color and growing up in the inner city and attending certain schools. I saw the limitations of not having generations of people before [me] who have done this or who have done something similar, because it's just a whole different sort of world that is being tested. So I think that's what makes it so hard.” Another Defender concurs:

I am curious to see how many of us Black and Brown folks actually pass the first time, because I feel that these standardized tests marginalize us, because we don't have the same educational opportunities…. I was pretty fortunate. I went to private school my whole life. My mother busted her behind—single mom—to put me through Catholic school from first grade through high school. And even with that, I still fell behind other people. I still fell behind other kids. Every test I ever took, I had to take twice. The SAT, the LSAT, and the bar exam; all the standardized tests. All of them. And nobody teaches you how to take those tests. You paid thousands of dollars for Kaplan, for Barbri,⁴ for whoever to tell you how to take these tests. But it does not correlate to how we—how I—was raised education-wise. You're teaching my Caucasian counterparts or whoever; you're not teaching me or people who come from the same background as I do.”

Like the LSAT, Defenders also see the bar exam as disadvantageous to poor people. One Defender thinks: “Honestly, I think if you're unable to afford a [bar prep] course, then you're kind of screwed. Well, I don't want to say you're kind of screwed, because I do know people who didn't take a course and were able to pass on their own; but I think you're at a significant disadvantage if you aren't able to take a course. I was lucky because my firm paid for it, so it wasn't an issue. But if you’re not in that position, it’s unfortunate.” Another Defender also notes that “all these tests are fucking expensive. People have to take out a loan to pay for them.”

A minority of Defenders see value in the bar exam. One Defender opines that the bar exam, “to some degree, [is] helpful. It causes you, in random situations, to remember things…. You should kind of know these things as a lawyer.” Another Defender calls the exam “stressful,” but adds: “I think that it is actually a great barometer in regard to your ability and your knowledge of the law. I think it is a good indicator of your ability to be zealous and to be effective…. I really don’t have any problems with the bar at all.” A few Defenders even enjoyed studying for the exam. One Defender notes: “I liked the bar exam. I really did…. I like the bar, and it actually had something to do with law school and it actually had something to do with the practice of law, right? It's about discipline, academic rigor, committing to something, following through. All of those skills are things that you need to be, that you should have to be a good lawyer. And to me that's important.” Another Defender who also enjoyed studying for the bar states: “I learned all these things I had never learned. I had never taken a lot of those classes in law school, and I learned all these things that I just didn’t know about.”

A few other thoughts:

Defender SUCKS!

Defender I call the bar exam the great equalizer. You come through high school, college, and law school; and you feel like you're pretty hot stuff, you know? Yeah, I'm pretty smart. I know this, I know that; I was this and I was that. The bar comes in, and it punches you straight in the stomach and says, “Here you go.” (Author laughs) I learned so much more about law while studying for the bar than I did in law school. The only thing I learned in law school was basically how to think like a lawyer and where to go for answers, things like that. But you learn substantive law on the bar exam; and it's rough.
I failed it the first time I took it. [That was an experience]; you come from something and you've never failed before. It's just not in the DNA. I never failed anything—never—and then [I went] in there and I failed it. And it's like, wow. So that was very sobering and humbling. I took it the second time, and I passed. It was not a problem; in fact, I scored really, really high on the second one. But that still didn't wash away the first.

Defender I remembered the LSAT, and I was already thinking, okay; these kind of tests are not for me. They're not. It is what it is. I can either stress myself out … or I can just do the work, prepare, and [do the best I can]. The grade that I get is the grade that I get. So that was my attitude. I think I had a really good attitude going into the bar exam. I was a 3L and I had a job, which also helped; I already had my job. So I lived with one of my best friends at the time…. I was in a good space for it. Now, if I maybe didn't have a job, I probably would’ve been freaking out….
The test is made to make people feel less confident. I didn't take any [traditional] bar classes. People were pressuring me, saying “Oh, you should take a bar class. You should do this. You should do that.” I didn't do Barbri. I did Themis, which was all online, and that worked for me. I didn't need to be in the library. I did go into the library one time. I overheard someone talking about a property question, and I think they were saying the wrong answer. Then someone else started arguing with them about the answers. So I was like, okay, this is not for me. I gotta go. I tried; I tried the library. I gotta go. (Author laughs) I left. I went across the street, and my phone fell down in the sewer. (Author reacts) So I told myself, “Okay, no more library around everybody else's anxiety for me. I'm good. I'm going to go back home.” I think I was doing Shaun T's Insanity Program at the time, waking up early, doing that and just treating it like a job. And that worked for me, when I limited the amount of people who were taking the test around me.
I also thought, if I don't pass this test, I'm screwed. I need to pass this test. I have a job, and I'm not about to come into [the public defender office] and say, “Whoops, I failed the bar.” Like I need this job and I need this money because I don't have either. But I did take it; and honestly, when I took the test, I was so Zen that I was like, if I failed it, then I failed it. I was just like, well I gave it my all; and honestly, there's nothing more I can do. Come on now; you can't tell me that this test is going to determine if I'm going to be good at getting people out of jail. That's something that I had to keep telling myself.
But I passed it. I was very, very shocked, and very happy. My family was very happy. It was just a surreal moment. But I think you have to kind of take yourself out of it….

Defender Also bullshit, kind of for the same reasons as the LSAT. I think the fact that you have to take a bar review course is bananas because that shit is expensive as hell. If I didn't have that public interest scholarship, then there's no way I would’ve been able to afford it. How is that acceptable? Why is my ability to practice law contingent on my ability to pay this third party to teach me how to do it? It doesn't make any sense to me. It's obviously a way to prevent folks like us from practicing…. Also, why do I have to pay so much money to take the bar exam? Another thing is if I don't have money to do that, then I can't be a lawyer because I don't have thousands of dollars. I can't be a lawyer. What does my ability to represent my clients and be a good lawyer have to do with my ability to pay entry into this field?
That's my thoughts about the bar exam as someone who has taken it twice, both in New York and in Illinois. I had the pleasure of taking the Illinois bar during COVID. It was very creepy. I took it at my office on my laptop and had someone, I guess, staring at me the entire time that I took the exam. Yep. Real creepy. I hated it…. I would like to move and live wherever I want. I shouldn't have to either take the bar or apply to [practice]; I shouldn't have to do all that shit. I should be able to just live wherever. Someone that moved to a different state [should be able to practice there.] It's not that hard to pick up that new state's law. It's not really that different.

FN 4: Kaplan and Barbri are test prep companies; they offer courses to help people prepare for standardized tests like the bar exam.

What was the reaction from family members when they realized you were interested in practicing criminal defense?

Almost all the reactions from Defenders’ family members to their career choices can be categorized in one of four ways: a) family members were simply happy that the Defender was a lawyer and didn’t quite understand the work the Defender was involved in; b) family members were proud of the Defender’s work; c) family members were disappointed to varying levels that the Defender did not choose more lucrative work; and d) family members were bothered by the work the Defender chose, usually from a conservative view that the Defender would represent “criminals.”

Examples of the first set of reactions:

Defender My grandmother for a long time thought that I was a prosecutor…. They didn’t have a lot of questions. My family was happy that I had a job. There wasn’t a lot of in-depth discussion about what I do. We don't talk a lot about work stuff; we leave that at work.

Defender I think they really didn’t understand what it meant. They kept thinking I was going to graduate and become a prosecutor or a judge; and I kept having to tell them, no that’s not how this works. Especially the [idea of being a] judge; my father to this day keeps saying, “So when do you become a judge?” And I’m like, “Never!” I don’t want that job; that’s a trash job. Especially after clerking, I knew I would never be a judge after that.

Defender I don’t even think till now that my family really appreciates that I specifically did criminal defense, because they just heard “lawyer,” so they come to me with everything. That being said, I think everybody was proud of me just for being a lawyer…. [It] was just like, “Oh, now we have a lawyer in the family.” Their reaction was positive, pride. But I don’t think it would have mattered if it was criminal versus anything else, because they come to me with everything.

Examples of the second set of reactions:

Defender They were proud of me. It was great.

Defender My parents were surprisingly very supportive. I didn't get any backlash like, “Why do you want to that?” or whatever. My mom and my dad would come to all of my [events]. I was on moot court in law school, so they would come to my moot court competitions, even if they were out of state. I had one in Chicago, and they came there. For the bar exam, my mom came, and she stayed in the hotel praying for me [to pass] the bar.
My mom is my number one supporter, man. When I had trials, I have her always praying for me. In Florida, we went to trial. It’s not like New York, where people can go a couple years and not have a trial…. I would have my mom always praying for me. She would come and see my trials when I would have trials. So my parents have always been super supportive as far as what I did now.

Defender Oh yeah, it was all good. My family's attitude is, “Fight the power.” There are no conservatives in my family. Everyone was like, “Yeah, stick it to the man; do what you need to do.” They were very supportive; as long as I'm happy doing what I'm doing and making enough money to take care of myself and my family, everybody's good. My sister actually ended up going to law school after me. She's older than me.

Defender Positive reactions. I would classify them as [positive] for the most part. I think people were just like, “Whoa, that’s really intense. What made you want to do that?” That was kind of the reaction I got. For the most part, people thought it was really cool. To this day, all people want to know about are stories. Everybody’s like, “Tell me some stories.” I didn’t get a negative reaction from people, like “Oh, why would you defend those people?” I don’t think a lot of Black people really think like that….

Examples of the third set of reactions:

Defender It wasn't even a reaction to criminal defense. It was a reaction to public defense. I'm a first generation American, a first-generation college student. There are a lot of people that made it possible for me to be where I am today. There were a lot of sacrifices made by a number of people to make sure that I was able to achieve this goal. Folks wanted to see the reward. [So the expectation was that I was] supposed to be that corporate lawyer. My mom's cousin's wife was like, “You get out there and make that money, girl!”
I remember my dad just being like, not devastated, but a little bit crushed knowing that he and others had made these sacrifices for me to be able to achieve this goal and that I wasn't going to make any money. At one point they started to look at [me] as their retirement plan. It’s just the truth…when you've been working odd jobs most of your life trying to support your kids, trying to keep the rent up—like my mom did home healthcare for many years and my father drove taxis for many years—needless to say, there's no real retirement plan in place. Your retirement plan is the success of your children. So I remember my dad seeming very disappointed in my decision to become a public defender.
Then I would say about a year in of just talking about my work—at the time I was practicing parole revocation defense, and we had a relative who also had a parole violation during that time—everything started to become very real and hit home. Not that it hadn't before, because members of my family have been entangled and engulfed in the criminal justice system for quite some time at that point. But I remember my dad started to feel real pride in the work that I was doing…. There was a point during my first year when the narrative changed to “my daughter does God's work.” There is definitely a lot of love and appreciation for the work that I do.
[Though] every once in a while, my dad's like, “All right, are we done? Are we making money now? Like, you're nine years in; time to make money.” I'm like, “Not yet.” He's like, “10 years in; time to make money.” I saw him a few weeks ago and he's like, “11 years in, time to make money.”

Defender They were like, “We’re public interest! You’re going to work in the public interest? We’re public interest!” They were saying that because I got internship offers and job offers from these private law firms, but I had turned them down because I wanted to do public interest law. So yeah, my family was not really that pleased. They felt like I should take the internships, go work at the big firms, make the big money, help out the family with the money, and help Black people some other way. I was like, okay, that's valid; but I didn't do that. I don't regret it. It is what it is. But the work itself, they were glad that I was doing it, that I was getting our people out of jail. They were happy about that….

Defender Oh my God; my mom for the first three years would say things like, “OK, when you're ready to practice real law and make some real money, let me know.” In the beginning, she would say, “Oh I have a client for you. I've been letting people know my daughter will be a lawyer.” And I tell her, “Mom, I don't practice that kind of law.” So she had to adjust. All of that was an adjustment. I think it was hard for her, because she wanted me to just go and make a lot of money. That was her vision for my life, but for me, I wanted to do something that I could go to every day and not feel like I'm working. I love it so much; it gives me joy.
Everybody else accepted it. Some people thought I was crazy for studying and taking all that time and then defending people who “do bad things.” And I had to always convince them: “Listen, it's just about making sure that the Constitution works for everyone.”

Examples of the fourth set of reactions:

Defender Oh, super negative. (Author laughs) Yeah, they were not [happy] about it. My father, to the day he died, referred to it as “defending scuzz.” My Black father felt this way. I’m half Haitian, and Haitians can be really law-enforcement-oriented. Caribbean people a little less so now, but that generation back then for sure was all about law enforcement. So they were not positive about it. And then I think on top of that—I think we all get this—our families feel like we're somehow wasting opportunities.

Defender (Laughter) “Why in God's name would you want to do that? Why would you want to represent little criminals?!” And I can't say that's changed.

Defender See, my family is very conservative; and the only reason why they're conservative is because they're West Indian. They don’t understand the nature of race relations. I always hear my mom—and I love my mom to death—talking about “Black Americans this” and “Black Americans that.” I think it's because of the way they grew up; people don't realize it's a completely different experience growing up in the Caribbean than it is growing up here.
[West Indians] believe that you get opportunities over here that you don't necessarily get in Jamaica. If you don't have money in Jamaica, it's really going to be hard for you to come out of the lower class and ascend to the middle class. If you're born in the lower class, it's almost guaranteed that you will stay in the lower class. But here, they're looking at it differently: if you're born in the lower class, you have opportunity because you can take out loans to go to school, you can get a job; things like that.
I would say the person that was actually most supportive, which I was surprised by, was my dad. At the time, my dad said, “Yeah, I think you'll be good at it.” He was very, very supportive… But the rest of the family, I will say that they were not excited.

Sometimes reactions were blended; family members initially reacted one way and changed to a different reaction. Examples include:

Defender At first, some people were like, “What? Wait, so you're representing criminals? But what if they're guilty? What if you know your client's guilty? What are you going to do?” And stuff like that. But then eventually they drank the Kool-Aid. My best friend, she hates cops now. She hates prosecutors. She’s just disgusted. And she’s proud of me.

Defender You know, it’s very funny. It was very mixed. It was two extremes, because I also have police officers in my family. So it made for good conversations over the holidays and stuff like that. It never got so heated where we just couldn't talk to each other or anything like that. But jokes were made. [They would say to me], “Oh, how do you represent guilty people?” and I would come back and say, “Guilty of what? Where was the trial? (Author laughs) What are we talking about? How are you guilty if you haven’t been tried yet?” Stuff like that.
That said, the reaction overall was positive. It was the same reaction I had when my cousin became a police officer, because Black folks are needed everywhere. No matter what the job is, we’re needed everywhere. So it's always good to celebrate Black folks getting into certain jobs, no matter what those jobs are. The only thing is—and I said this to her—just don't let it change your perception of what you're doing and what’s important. She's been OK. We still bump heads a lot, but it's always love after the conversation we have.
Those who aren't involved in law enforcement or anything like that were very proud. My brother is a psychologist; he was thrilled that I was a public defender. My dad, my mom, and my entire family for the most part were all very happy and very proud.

Other reactions:

Defender Nothing. I am not the first one to go to college. My mother is a teacher and she has a masters. My father went to law school. My cousin is a lawyer. I have another cousin that's a lawyer. It was just like, “Okay, so finally [My Name] got his/her shit together!” There was no yay or boo. It was, okay onward.

Defender I don't know that there was ever a sit-down at the table, “let's talk about your future and what you're going to do for work” moment as much as it was just a general sort of statement from my father: “You need to go to school and you need to find a good job.” My father raised me around dump trucks, diesel fuel, and dirt, right? He told me, “If you don't make it academically, you can work with your hands. You can drive a truck, you can fix cars, you can do [things].” And I did those things. I used to work on my own car, fix my own car, [and do] heavy mechanic work by myself. He just wanted me to try something because he didn't finish school…. He wanted to see me go to the next level. So it was just like a push to go and do something….

Defender No different from the reaction to getting into high school or getting into college or law school…. The reactions were stronger [in] my neighborhood friends and my white friends. All the Black people's reaction were, “The fuck you doing? Make some money.” All the white folks were like, “Oh, this is your destiny. It's so important that you do this and blah blah blah.” I just thought, stop it….
After the fact, people are proud and they're glad. Somebody on the block said to me one day, “You know, [My Name], it's nice to be able to know somebody that does this shit. My son caught a case, and we were all worried to death. I came to you, and you told me what it was; what you said was the truth. It made it easier.” So that’s one of those things you take for granted. You asked me what lawyers did I know growing up before going to law school. I knew none. And my dad was a chemist. So it's not like I didn't grow up with Black folks and with Black parents that weren't making moves and doing things; but still, that exposure was just not there.

Defender My mom said, “Why? How come you don't want to become a prosecutor?” And I'm like, “Why would I want to become a prosecutor? I want to help people.” So my mom—I'm very close to my mom—she said, “I don't think you should do that. I think you should try to interview with the prosecutor. There was this attorney that I saw, and he reminded me of you. He had a baby face”—my mom served in the grand jury for about a month—“He was very nice, handsome, articulate. I saw him in you. So you should apply for the DA's office.”
So against my better judgment, I applied for the Queens DA's office. (Author laughs) I passed the first interview, [and I] made it to the final round of the interview. And I remember asking this gentleman—may he rest in peace, because he passed—who was a bureau chief, this question: “How do you balance your ethical duty to uphold justice with zealously representing the residents of Queens County?” And this is what he said to me, and I'm going to quote him verbatim because I never forgot this: “Even if I knew that they weren't guilty of what they were charged with, I knew that they were guilty of something; and based on that, I felt comfortable in proceeding against them in the cases that we had. And even I've been surprised at some of the jury verdicts that I've been able to get.” This is from somebody who's a bureau chief…. I'm just like, how the fuck can you say that? I was just appalled….
So [with] my family members, some were happy; some were like, “Is that really what you want to do? What if you put yourself in danger?” I'm like, “Listen, it's going to be what it's going to be. I don't think I'm putting myself in danger; but if somebody wants to try me, they can.

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