Navigating Employment and Immigration Law

Hi everyone! My name is Rocio Josephine Lybarger-Yanes and I’m a rising senior majoring in Politics and Environmental Studies. This summer I had the opportunity to intern for MA Jacobson Law PS Inc in Seattle as a paralegal/legal assistant.

MA Jacobson law is a small law office that specializes in employment and immigration law. Because of its focus I became familiar with a variety of cases relating to visas, citizenship, workplace discrimination, PFML, wage theft, and wrongful terminations. My daily responsibilities often included collecting documents, compiling appendixes, handling correspondence with clients, e-filing with various courts, assisting clients complete legal forms (I-864’s, G-28’s, I-94’s, etc.), drafting and editing legal documents, researching, and being the triage for our referral system. I assumed a fair amount of responsibility for such a short internship period, but that was what I enjoyed most.

To have such a hands-on, thrown-in-the-deep-end type of experience accelerated and expanded my adaptability and problem solving skills in a way I haven’t found anywhere else. I would be lying though if I didn’t admit it was an emotionally taxing internship as well; learning to remain professional as clients shared confidential information about the vulnerable situations they were in was something that I really struggled with at first. As the triage point for the attorney I worked under, it was my responsibility to listen to each prospective client with legal, non-emotional ears. I’ll be the first to admit my ears were super emotional and not lawyer-y at all for the first month or so; I wanted to help nearly everyone who called, emailed, or walked in.

Unfortunately, the large majority of people caught up in tough situations do not have a legally defensible case, however, so my biggest challenge was learning how to say ‘sorry there’s nothing we can do’ to people desperate for any kind of assistance. But without this emotional challenge, I doubt I would have developed the ability to translate my empathy into professionalism. Lawyering, as I initially thought, is not all paperwork and filing, it is also hard face to face conversations with people who have had some kind of major disruption in their life; people don’t seek out legal help if all is fine and well, you know? But as time went on, I was able to find satisfaction in the legal aid and relief I was able to offer people.

This internship came to be much more emotionally and intellectually rewarding than I anticipated, which only stimulated and deepened my interest in the law field. My primary goal in doing this internship was to see if working in law was something I could actually see myself doing—and I feel more confident in my answer now than ever before.