For those of you reading this who are already civil rights attorneys or well on your way to becoming one, a question you may be wondering is how to expand your practice and knowledge base outside of litigation.
Personally, I’ve found that while litigation can be incredibly impactful on your client and sometimes more systemically, there are limitations to what you can accomplish through a lawsuit. That’s when it may make sense to turn to public policy.
For starters, you don’t a background in public policy to begin engaging in it. I certainly didn’t have one, and then two years ago a friend asked if I would help draft legislation to ensure equal pay for equal work in Colorado.
That opportunity came to me by way of having joined the Colorado Women’s Bar Association’s Public Policy Committee. I quickly learned that we had our own lobbyists and regularly took positions on legislation pending in the state legislature. And as a committee member, I had a voice in what positions we took.
Soon thereafter, I was elected Chair of the Colorado Bar Association’s Civil Rights Section. I was asked to run last minute and with very little understanding of the role. But of course I said yes.
I quickly discovered that the bulk what we did was review proposed legislation during the four-month legislative session. We held weekly phone calls to debate bills, and we provided our section’s overall position to the CBA’s Legislative Policy Committee. The LPC would then vote on a position for the CBA as a whole to take after considering all interested sections’ input.
It turns out the CBA also had a lobbyist, and his job was to lobby legislators around the CBA’s positions.
As you can imagine, the entire process felt foreign and incredibly confusing at first. And in many ways it still is. However, after two years of being exposed to legislative efforts through my volunteer work with the CWBA and CBA, I have a much better grasp on the process than I ever had before.
So when an issue came up concerning a client of mine being dissuaded from leasing an apartment due to his citizenship status, I immediately recognized that the more effective way to prevent the discrimination he was facing was to turn to the legislature. And that starts with contacting your legislators.
I spoke with my client’s state senator – who also happened to be my own state senator – and explained to her what he had experienced. Several months and some meetings later, we had drafted a bill to address the problem. I should add that the Colorado Equal Pay for Equal Work Act I worked on in the last legislative session was signed into law last May.
If you would have asked a younger me if I would have ever thought I’d be working on legislation, I would have told you absolutely not. I was going to be a litigator, gosh darnit. And I assumed if you do one, you don’t do the other. Well color me corrected.
Being a civil rights attorney comes down to one main thing: being an advocate for justice. What is important to learn is that there are many ways to advocate outside of the courtroom. So for all of you already in the field looking for ways to make your voice louder, think about expanding into public policy.