I cannot believe this is my last week in San Francisco. It really feels like last week when I wrote about checking out my new work place in anticipation of my first day of work. These past three months in SF have been a meaningful experience to me both professionally and personally. I have no hope of capturing my experiences with words as I am still processing most of them, but I thought I’d follow Laurinda’s example and give you my top five lists for working at ERA and living in SF, in no particularly order.

ERA
1. seeing the inner works of the biggest sexual discrimination case in U.S. history
2. writing a portion of a brief opposing summary judgment
3. attending a key witness deposition in a Title IX case
4. being part of an organization that has been at every seminal discrimination case from Geduldig v. Aiello (1974) to Meritor Savings Bank (1986) to Harris v. Forklift Systems (1993) to Burlington Northern v. White (2006)
5. getting to know amazing attorneys who actually do what law school applicants aspire to do – change the world!

SF
1. painted ladies
2. classic cars
3. dim sum to-go
4. san franciscans, and their cultish and yet admirable obsession for recycling
5. sunny, blue sky, skirt-wearing, 50 degrees winter weather that makes me smile each morning

I will miss you, San Francisco.

Posted by Wen at 12:28 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I see discrimination unfold on a daily basis through the advice and counseling hotline and the ongoing litigations at my current co-op. While it can be overwhelming at times, I have learned to cope with its existence and accept my small role in the fight against it at ERA. Yet, I know there are many people who would whole-heartedly question the very existence of such “backwards” notions of sexism and racism in today’s world. And why shouldn’t they? Things seem fair enough. Women are no longer disenfranchised. People of color are no longer forced to sit at the back of the bus. Anti-discrimination statements appear at the end of every job posting. However, if sexism is merely a vestige left over from the last century, I wonder why ERA’s hotline is flooded with shocking stories of inequality every time I pick up the phone. The truth is while antidiscrimination legislations outlawed the most visible forms of discrimination, it did not eliminate our prejudices and biases. And these biases, in their less overt manifestation, constantly challenge the existing antidiscrimination legal framework.

Case in point - last Friday, I went to a conference sponsored by UC Hastings’ Center for Work Life Law on the emerging legal claim coined as “Family Responsibility Discrimination”. A few pioneering cases and state statutes have recognized that discrimination based on an employee’s family responsibility (such as giving care to children, elderly or disabled parents or relatives) is unlawful. One of the highlights of the conference for me was the scientific hard data on what the researchers called “motherhood penalty”. Research shows that a mother’s earning is reduced by 5% per each child she has. Over a lifetime, the motherhood penalty for a college-educated woman is approximately $1,000,000. Furthermore, a 2007 study by researchers at Cornell University confirmed the biases against mothers by submitting over one thousand identical resumes to real-life employers. While about 6% of women received call backs from these real-life employers, only 3% of mothers (those resumes that contained subtle hints of family responsibilities such as “member of the PTA”) were called back. That roughly translates into this: if you are a woman and have children, your chance of being hired for a job is reduced by a half compared to a childless woman. And these findings came, not from a lab, but the world we live in today.

Posted by Wen at 1:34 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

NUSL alums have a way of showing up at unexpected corners. NUSL does not mass produce attorneys (in fact we admit a pretty small class each year compared to other law schools) nor have we been around forever. So I never expected NUSL alums to play much of role in my life. Interestingly enough, while I’m out here in the wild west on coop, I’ve already met two and heard about many more alums. During one of my first few days at ERA, I learned that one of the senior staff attorneys there graduated from NUSL. Whenever I go to lawyerly social events and I introduce myself as a student at NUSL, people always tell me they have a best friend / niece / sibling who went to NUSL and loved it. Most impressively, when a recent alum heard that I was going to be doing a coop in San Francisco and didn’t know a soul in the city, she called me and took me out to dinner. We had a fantastic time and found that we were both involved in APALSA and competed in the Thomas Tang Moot Court Competition.

Statistically speaking, I should not be randomly bumping into alums as much I have been. But of course, NUSL was never about the statistics. I’ve discovered that our alums will often gather at public interest events regardless of whether they are public interest attorneys. If you travel in the public interest law circle, you will feel like they are everywhere! So even though NUSL may not have the largest alum network, it feels like a pretty good one when alums take time out of their day to help me out.

Lastly, I hope everyone exercised their right to vote today and happy lunar new year to those of you who celebrate it.

Posted by Wen at 2:52 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)