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< | Building My Practice | >
> | Planning My Practice | | | | |
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< | -- By AimeePacheco - 27 Apr 2022 | >
> | -- By AimeePacheco - 5 June 2022 | | | | |
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< | Introduction
I have essentially been building a practice for more than 10 years now. I was 11 years old when I took my first risk and stepped in front of a podium at my local church, asking church members to invest in me as I asked for donations to participate in a legal program. At that point, I did not have more to offer than a promise to give back to the community in the future. 12 years later, I have stayed true to my promise. I have continued to stay involved with my local church: organizing community resource events, connecting members to legal resources, and offering legal education material and presentations. These community members have remained updated on my legal journey and professional growth every step of the way.
My Positionality and The Vision
My ultimate goal is to bring more legal accessibility to underrepresented immigrants and workers in the rural South by providing legal resources, tools, education, and legal services. As a first-generation, low-income, pansexual, Indigenous (Maya K'iche') Latina, oldest daughter of immigrants, care-giver, survivor of sexual violence, and community organizer born and raised in rural Georgia, I believe that my life experiences and identities give me a unique positionality in this work.
My "Why?"
My interest in immigration law is rooted in my own personal experiences. At age eleven, my life took a turn when ICE showed up to my house to detain and deport my father. It was at this age, as I spoke to my father across a screen in a cold detention center, that I realized how unfair the United States immigration system could be. Thus began my journey in legal immigration research. Knowing that my family was always at risk of being deported, I researched deportation defense and family law, where I discovered the use of "power of attorney" letters for worst-case scenarios and the possibility of me petitioning for my mother once I turned 21 years old. While I was still young, I knew that I did not want to have to depend on anyone else to determine mine or my family's fate.
Building the Practice
Building the Skills
It was these life experiences that ultimately shaped my career path as I based my college majors, internships, and leadership opportunities entirely on a vision of one day becoming the best immigration attorney and community advocate I could be. I sought the most challenging Spanish courses to improve my Spanish interpretation skills. I joined every student immigration organization and took every immigration class Dartmouth had to offer and eventually found myself learning to code with R and using ArcGIS? , a type of mapping software, to create maps that gauged legal accessibility for immigrants in Georgia based on the locations of immigrant populations, legal offices, immigration offices, and detention centers in the state. Now, in law school, I hope to be equipped with more tools that will allow me to better advocate for my communities. I plan on participating in the courses/clinics/externships/student groups/activities directly relevant to my practice. This means learning about the various fields of law that immigration intersects with: criminal law, family law, international law, labor law, health law, and more. This also means strengthening my legal writing, reading, and researching skills. | >
> | The Founding
“Who?”, “What?”, “When?”, “Where?”
My Positionality and The Vision
I have slowly begun building a practice for more than 10 years now. My ultimate goal is to bring more legal accessibility to underrepresented immigrants and workers in the rural South by providing legal resources, tools, education, and legal services. As a first-generation, low-income, pansexual, Indigenous (Maya K'iche') Latina, oldest daughter of immigrants, care-giver, survivor of sexual violence, and community organizer born and raised in rural Georgia, I believe that my life experiences and identities give me a unique positionality in this work.
My Partners
My partners, for better or worse, will include my family members. At the very base and inspiration of this very plan are my immigrant parents, who came to this country 26 years ago to provide a better life for their families and themselves. They have already given this future organization so much by providing me and my siblings with all the tools and opportunities to have the best education, and yet, they will nonetheless want to be involved in all the community organizing work. My 21-year-old brother is studying business administration to run our finances. My 16-year-old sister aspires to fall in the same footsteps as me, by becoming an attorney.
Since I will be waiting for my youngest sister to graduate with her J.D. and take the bar exam, I anticipate our practice taking off in ten years, which gives me plenty of time to figure out the finances and prepare. As the organization grows, I envision my other partners all being immigrants or children of immigrants themselves, BIPOC, first-gen, from the South, and/or queer. While I come from a tight-knit family and predict my other partners will also feel like family, it will be important to set boundaries to make it clear that we are first and foremost professional when it comes to business.
Location, Location, Location
This practice will go against every rule on where a practice should be located to create value and attract business. Given the nature of the work, my practice will be located in rural Georgia, with people from and familiar with rural Georgia. Once the organization grows, I hope to expand into other rural towns across Southern states, by either replicating the same model or helping locals set up their own practice given what makes most sense within their respective states. | | | | |
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> | I anticipate the biggest challenge with the location of the practice(s) to be transportation – either because of distance or the cost (whether for gas or to pay someone else for driving) or from clients not having a drivers’ license, not being able to take days off work, needing a babysitter, or a number of other difficulties immigrants deal with daily. For this, the organization will budget for a transportation fund and recruit and vet volunteer drivers to create a free transportation system for clients. The organization will also have a room full of books, tv, and toys, exclusively for child care.
Planning My Practice | | | Establishing the Foundations | |
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< | After graduating from college, I gained experience in the non-profit world through two organizations. Both organizations taught me how quickly a practice can become chaotic when the foundation itself is shaky. No workers' manuals, no official non-profit certification, no board members, no website, no social media. At both organizations, I built all of the social media pages from scratch. Eventually, I was able to see the official processes such as creating a board and assigning roles, taking steps for 501(c)(3) status certification, grant writing, drafting mission statements and bios for brochures. Since then, I have begun brainstorming ideas for my practice when for when I take all of the same steps.
Navigating the Challenges
Partners
My partners, for better or worse, will include my family members.My 16-year old sister also aspires to become an immigration attorney, while my 21-year old brother is studying business administration to run our finances. As the organization grows, I envision my other partners all being immigrants or children of immigrants themselves, BIPOC, first-gen, from the South, and/or queer.
Having said this, one of my biggest lessons at my last organization, came from seeing the co-founding team of three good friends dissolve and learning right before my eyes the importance of choosing your partners. I am still learning how to anticipate and prepare for potential issues in the future.
Funding
Luckily, finding clientele will not be an issue. My biggest issue is figuring out how to do the work without charging clients for the services but still making enough money to run the business with adequate pay and insurance benefits to all employees. I will not be given a $1 million fund to kickstart this organization the way the co-founders of my last organization were. However, for that organization, I created a "Funding Sources" spreadsheet with every relevant grant and donor application I could find. I knew I could broaden the scope since we covered immigration law, criminal law, and labor law but also focused a lot of our efforts on educating community members and other advocates. The greatest challenge, however, was finding sources that would not ask us to comprise our values or goals; they had to be able to see the vision. This is the process I expect to once again go through to kickstart the organization.
Apart from grant writing, I am at a loss on how to create more funds. While I know I will have an attorney salary post-graduation and that I have skills doing written and live translations, and I have worked a number of "side-hustle" jobs, but nothing seems enough for the amount of money I will need to kickstart this practice.
An excellent start. When I offer Planning Your Practice next, in fall '23 we could work together on perfecting this very promising plan.
The best route to improvement is to remove the past and concentrate on the future. The most important things to write down are the things you don't know. Framing good, basic questions is the most valuable skill you have right now. Let's use the next draft to start unearthing and investigating those questions. One, how to think about running a family practice, is already evident. But there are certainly more given your perceptive and long-maturing account.
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> | Development/ Funding (“How?”)
My biggest issue is figuring out how to do the work without charging clients for the services but still making enough money to run the business with adequate pay and insurance benefits to all employees. My plan is to create a “Funding Sources” spreadsheet with every relevant grant and donor application. One challenge, will be to find sources that will not ask the organization to comprise its values or goals — they have to be able to see the vision. Since the organization’s work will cover immigration law, criminal law, and labor law, the scope will be broad. This creates another challenge: managing expectations with funders by defining boundaries and guidelines to not overpromise or overcommit by taking on more projects than the team can handle.
Operations
Prior to hiring any more staff, the organization has to create a clear vision with a strong mission statement. This mission statement will be the foundation for all the branding on the website, social media pages, printed material (business cards, brochures, advertisements), and grant writing. From my limited experience in calls with newly-founded nonprofits and other organizations and potential donors, I learned just how important it is to be able to state an organization’s mission in a hundred different ways. While the central message will remain the same, information can be slightly tweaked, with different parts of the vision being more emphasized depending on the audience. We will want to find the similarities we have with other organizations – the common values and shared passions – to be able to connect and collaborate better. Once the message is clear, it will be easier to take steps towards 501(c)(3) non-profit status.
Building the Skills
How Can Law School Prepare Me and What Can I Do Now?
As I embark on this legal journey, I hope to be equipped with more tools that will allow me to better advocate for my communities. I plan on taking the courses and participating in all activities directly relevant to my practice. This means learning about the various fields of law that immigration intersects with: criminal law, family law, international law, labor law, health law, and more. Continuing to build my practice in law school also means strengthening my legal writing, reading, and researching skills. | | | | |
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> | This upcoming fall, I will be participating in the Immigrants’ Rights Clinic and plan to then take the Advanced Immigrants' Rights Clinic to take my skills to the next level. Lastly, I plan to continue my involvement with the legal and immigrant communities in Georgia, brainstorm ideas, write mission statement drafts, learn about different nonprofit and funding models, and figure out all the steps I will need to take to get the organization on the ground and running. | | |
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