Wanted: Lawyers Who Speak Spanish

Writing in 2004, Anne Marie Slaughter, the current Director of Policy Planning for the United States Department of State and former Dean of the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University recognized, “The consensus among lawyers, CEOs, NGO activists, and others is that the people whom they would most like to hire are those who understand how to navigate between cultures.  In a dream world, such competence would include knowledge of at least one foreign language.”

Slaughter’s wishful thinking now appears to be reality. A recent Wisconsin Law Journal article reports that bilingual attorneys are carving out a “growing niche” in legal practice in the state.  The WLJ reports, “As the minority populations in the state continue to grow, so too has the opportunity for bilingual attorneys to expand their client base.”   Now it seems, new lawyers will not only wish to market their law school academic achievements, but also their command of a language other than English.

In particular, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, the Hispanic population in Wisconsin has increased by 48.2 percent since 2000, numbering close to 300,000 members of our community.  In Milwaukee alone, the Hispanic population represents twelve percent of the population.  

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Take Down This Wall

With the twentieth anniversary of the tearing down of the Berlin Wall yesterday, I have been reflecting a lot on divides.  I was lucky enough to spend a year working in Germany, from August 1988 to May 1989, in Cologne for the year between college and law school.  And, although it killed me not to get back on a plane to Berlin in November 1989 to experience that historic moment of the wall coming down — I was a first year law student at the time and too panicked to miss class! — I was always grateful that I lived in divided Germany so that I could experience it as it was.  I visited Berlin three times during my year, seeing the Wall, Checkpoint Charlie, the Brandenberg Gate from behind the wall.  It was nerve-wracking to take a train through East Germany to get to Berlin and somewhat surreal to visit the divided city.  In the summer of 1989, just as things were starting to open up, I visited Prague and Budapest.  Prague was gorgeous but still in the throes of communism – Vaclav Havel was still just a playwright – and I remember being struck that you could not find fresh fruit.  Budapest was already quite different with more open markets and more goods.  It was not quite the West, but it was not quite fully Communist either.  I returned to go to law school and the Wall came down while I watched. 

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“I’m a Dominating Bully”

“I’m a dominating bully” — how often do you hear sentences like that? For that matter, how often do you hear the voices of teens, no matter what they are saying, at conferences aimed at dealing with issues involving young people?

The involvement of high school students as presenters at the sixth annual Restorative Justice Conference at the Marquette Alumni Memorial Union Tuesday was one of the reasons the day-long event, attended by a capacity crowd of about 350, was a success. The conference was sponsored by the Marquette Law School Restorative Justice Initiative.

Three students from Milwaukee’s Custer High School, two girls and a boy, didn’t offer research evidence or a PowerPoint presentation. They just described incidents they have been involved in as bullies and as victims, gave their thoughts on why students act the way they do — and held the rapt attention of the audience.

All three are part of the Violence Free Zone project at Custer, run by Running Rebels, a local organization that aims to direct teens away from violent behavior. 

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