Lawyers need to ask themselves, 'who is your client?'

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By Joanna Brenner | Raise the Bar

Nora Stewart, family defense lawyer for Neighborhood Defender Service of Harlem, took the LSAT in December after the 2016 presidential election. Becoming a lawyer at that pivotal moment in U.S. history felt like her way to be more ready for the seismic political shift happening in the U.S. Eight years later, she’s reflecting on what it means to be a lawyer, as that shift is ever more noticeable and the bones that hold the rule of law together, she says, are starting to crack. –Joanna Brenner

What do you find fulfilling about your job? What's most challenging?

The work is incredibly fast-paced and on-your-feet, which I appreciate because I don’t like sitting at a desk if I have another option. It’s client-facing, and I love that too because to me it’s the whole point; I can see who I’m working with, and it’s a direct and clear relationship without any levels of removal (obviously, lots of lawyers do incredible work that isn’t client-facing, and that’s equally important. I’m just personally better suited to this kind of work).

The most challenging part of the job is how little due process exists in family court for the parents that my organization represents. Basically, it’s criminal court without any of the protections that criminal defendants have (limited as those protections are in criminal court) and with all of the same systemic prejudice and surveillance and policing of Black and brown people.

There's a lot going on in the political climate right now that's calling the merits of law and the Constitution into question. As a lawyer, how does this make you feel?

It’s terrifying, but I don’t think it’s surprising. I think that a lot of the cultural forces that brought us to this place have been brewing since at least the 1980s, but now the stripping down of the architecture of government is not some conservative rhetorical device. I did a lot of Shakespeare in college, and we would talk about how the plays are so densely written that you can pare them down and adapt them to within an inch of their lives, and the bones will still be recognizable. To a certain extent, I think that the American government is like that too, but at some point, there’s a limit, and the current administration seems determined to find it. Republicans in Congress—especially the lawyers—are going to have to stand up soon, or those bones will break. 

What role do you think lawyers play in preserving the Constitution, if any?

The judge who first ruled on Trump’s executive order on birthright citizenship said, “Where were the lawyers when this decision was being made?” and I think we’re all wondering that. Of course, not all lawyers are ethical, and some lawyers are evil, but law school is quite effectively designed to give you a sense of the gravity and the stakes of the rule of law as a project that you’re supposed to be becoming a part of. There’s a lot of formality baked into a legal education as well, which is supposed to foster a real sense of duty, especially to The Client (whoever that ends up being in the part of the profession you land in). I think the lawyers who are currently in government need to ask themselves who their client is.

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Raise the Bar is written by Joanna Brenner and edited by Bianca Prieto