Category Archives: Law

Sebastien Wadier ’12, Los Angeles City Attorney’s Office

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My Princetern­ship started off smoothly enough. The Los Ange­les Metro—or at least the Gold Line—was much faster than I expected, and I arrived at City Hall half an hour early. When I tried to get into the build­ing, how­ever, I was hor­ri­fied to real­ize that I had for­got­ten my passport—my only form of gov­ern­ment issued I.D. With­out my pass­port, I couldn’t even get a visitor’s pass, and I cer­tainly couldn’t get fin­ger­printed! I pan­icked and retreated to the food court. For­tu­nately, my host, Mar­cia Gonzales-Kimbrough ‘75, soon showed up, calmed me down, and got me into the building.

Mar­cia spent the next hour or so talk­ing to me and Silvia—the other Princetern she was hosting—about her child­hood in Taos, New Mex­ico, her time at Prince­ton, and her career at the City Attorney’s office. Mar­cia has been work­ing at the City Attorney’s Office for over thirty years, in a num­ber of dif­fer­ent capac­i­ties, from pros­e­cu­tor to coun­sel to the fire depart­ment. Right now she is work­ing in the Munic­i­pal Advice Sec­tion, which means that she pro­vides legal advice to the Los Ange­les City coun­sel and other munic­i­pal entities.

One of Marcia’s pri­mary respon­si­bil­i­ties is advis­ing the over­sight com­mit­tee for the ‘L.A. for Kids’ pro­gram. ‘L.A. for Kids’ receives $25 mil­lion each year through a spe­cial tax assessed on all prop­er­ties in the city. This money is used to build parks and play areas for chil­dren. By law, projects built with this money need to meet cer­tain require­ments, and Mar­cia helps city agen­cies and non­prof­its under­stand what they need to do to meet these often com­plex requirements.

Our con­ver­sa­tion with Mar­cia was inter­rupted by a phone call: a city agency wanted advice regard­ing a pos­si­ble con­flict of inter­est. After answer­ing the agency’s ques­tions, Mar­cia took Sil­via and I to lunch at a Mex­i­can restau­rant on Olvera street. On the way back to City Hall, she pointed out land­marks down­town. Then, after a tour of City Hall, we climbed to a bal­cony near the top of City Hall and saw the same land­marks from above. On the way, we ran into a coun­cil­man, Tom LaBonge, who was giv­ing a tour to the Japan­ese con­sul gen­eral to Los Ange­les. We went back to Marcia’s office, where we met other city attorney’s, includ­ing Phil Lam, the city’s intel­lec­tual prop­erty lawyer.

The next day, after I got fin­ger­printed and received a vol­un­teer I.D., Sil­via and I went to a city coun­cil meet­ing. Mar­cia had explained the agenda to us, so we were able to fol­low most of what was hap­pen­ing. Tom LaBonge, the coun­cil mem­ber we had met the day ear­lier, rec­og­nized us at the meet­ing. After the meet­ing, we went to lunch with Mar­cia in Lit­tle Tokyo, where, com­pletely by chance, we met Char­lie, a friend of Marcia’s. Char­lie is a crim­i­nal defense attor­ney who takes only cap­i­tal mur­der cases. After lunch, Char­lie took us on a tour of the East Los Ange­les Supe­rior Court. We saw an arraign­ment, a prosecutor’s clos­ing argu­ment, and jury selec­tion. In each court, Char­lie explained what was hap­pen­ing to us.

On the morn­ing of the last day of my Princetern­ship, Mar­cia gave Sil­via and I sev­eral reports to read. The reports con­cerned the use of grant funds for the acqui­si­tion and devel­op­ment of prop­erty. The con­tent of these reports is impor­tant because it is later used to sup­port grant appli­ca­tions, and incon­sis­ten­cies or errors in the reports can pre­vent projects from being funded. Mar­cia explained the com­ments she made on some of the reports, and then asked us to review two oth­ers for incon­sis­ten­cies. After she dis­cussed the reports with us, Mar­cia got a call she had been wait­ing for. The city agency that had called on the first day of the Princetern­ship called to get fur­ther advice on a con­trac­tor they believed might have a con­flict of inter­est. Mar­cia explained that they were not pro­hib­ited from doing busi­ness with the client by munic­i­pal law under the cir­cum­stances, but could refuse if they thought it was too risky.

After she got off the phone, Mar­cia drove us to the Police Academy.

Sebastien and Mar­cia Gonzales-Kimbrough

We ate lunch at a 50’s style diner, and then walked around the acad­emy grounds. The area around the acad­emy has been turned into a beau­ti­ful rock gar­den, with water­falls, trees, and a med­i­ta­tion chapel. As we walked, Mar­cia explained the work she had done for the L.A.P.D. when she rep­re­sented them.

We returned to the court house, hop­ing to con­tinue watch­ing one of the tri­als we had seen the day before. Unfor­tu­nately, the court­room was empty, so we went to watch another trial. We saw a guilty ver­dict being read out, and then returned to Marcia’s office. There, we asked her a few more ques­tions about her career, and she told us about her expe­ri­ence bal­anc­ing her career with her fam­ily. We ended the day by going to a party where a judge who used to work in the City Attorney’s office was being hon­ored by the Latino City Attorney’s Asso­ci­a­tion. After the party, Sil­via and I said good­bye to Marcia.

The last three days had been amaz­ing. I have got­ten to see how Mar­cia advised the city on legal issues, met attor­neys prac­tic­ing a num­ber of dif­fer­ent areas of law, and seen the city gov­ern­ment and court sys­tem in action. I would def­i­nitely rec­om­mend any­one who wants to explore a career in law apply for this Princetern­ship if it is offered again in the future.

Ananda (Ruiwen) Zhu ’15, Los Angeles City Attorney’s Office

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My first day as a Princetern at the Los Ange­les City Attorney’s office began as I stepped into City Hall, sit­u­ated amidst the bus­tle and excite­ment of down­town L.A. There a fel­low Princetern and I met our host, deputy city attor­ney Mar­cia Gonzales-Kimbrough ‘75. After a brief tour of her office and intro­duc­tion to her col­leagues, we began our three-day expe­ri­ence of the work of a city attorney.

The activ­i­ties of my first day imme­di­ately gave me a clear idea of the nature of Ms. Gonzales-Kimbrough’s work. As a city attor­ney, she plays the cru­cial role of pro­vid­ing legal coun­sel for a wide vari­ety of issues and projects in the city of Los Ange­les. I had the priv­i­lege of attend­ing sev­eral meet­ings she had as the gen­eral coun­sel for the L.A. for Kids pro­gram, which pro­cures and dis­trib­utes fund­ing for park and recre­ation projects in the city. Ms. Gonzales-Kimbrough dis­cussed var­i­ous aspects of a large num­ber of projects with not only other lawyers, but also land­scape archi­tects, whom we met on the first day to dis­cuss a poten­tial dri­ving range in west Los Ange­les, as well as civil engi­neers from the depart­ment of Pub­lic Works. We also met with the City Admin­is­tra­tive Offi­cers for the pro­gram and mem­bers of the Com­mu­nity Rede­vel­op­ment Agency, which had an incred­i­ble num­ber of projects under­way yet was being dis­solved due to bud­getary con­straints. Ms. Gonzales-Kimbrough pro­vided legal advice for these groups, par­tic­u­larly in terms of ensur­ing that all the details of their pro­pos­als for the com­mu­nity projects adhere to the city’s char­tered rules and will be approved by the city coun­cil. She also looks over the legal­ity of the mul­ti­ple con­tracts that are a part of each project.

Though these meet­ings may seem tedious, I def­i­nitely felt that they were an irre­place­able part of the com­mu­nity, and that law, whether it is a bill passed by the coun­cil or an ordi­nance issued by the mayor, is made an inher­ent part of these gov­ern­ment func­tions for the pur­pose of improv­ing the lives of indi­vid­u­als in the com­mu­nity. I was par­tic­u­larly struck by the sig­nif­i­cance of Ms. Gonzales-Kimbrough’s work when we drove by some of the very parks and sites for future devel­op­ment that were dis­cussed in the meet­ings. By shad­ow­ing Ms. Gonzales-Kimbrough, I gained a com­pre­hen­sive under­stand­ing of the care­ful con­sid­er­a­tions, the com­pro­mises made, and the col­lec­tive efforts of many indi­vid­u­als behind each park, recre­ation cen­ter, or children’s museum. I saw the tes­ta­ment to democ­racy at work through the process of turn­ing a pro­posal into reality.

In addi­tion to attend­ing meet­ings with sev­eral branches of the city gov­ern­ment, Ms. Gonzales-Kimbrough also gave us the oppor­tu­nity to attend a con­tin­u­ing legal education

Ananda and Mar­cia Gonzales-Kimbrough

lec­ture given by a Prince­ton grad­u­ate on sev­eral con­tro­ver­sial top­ics, includ­ing the legal­iza­tion of med­ical mar­i­juana and respon­si­bil­ity dis­pute of city side­walk repair. Fur­ther­more, on the last day of the Princetern­ship, we also attended a City Coun­cil meet­ing and observed the pass­ing of bills by the coun­cil mem­bers and com­ments made by com­mu­nity activists on the spe­cific issues of their concern.

Aside from hav­ing the chance to observe the above­men­tioned meet­ings and gov­ern­ment func­tions, meet­ing and hear­ing the sto­ries of Ms. Gonzales-Kimbrough her­self, her cowork­ers and other Prince­ton alumni in south­ern Cal­i­for­nia was, in my opin­ion, an extremely ben­e­fi­cial part of this expe­ri­ence. Ms. Gonzales-Kimbrough gra­ciously talked to us about her past expe­ri­ences as a law school stu­dent, a pros­e­cu­tor work­ing in crim­i­nal law, and her tran­si­tion to a city attor­ney. She also intro­duced us to her col­leagues, who all kindly told us about their par­tic­u­lar areas of legal exper­tise, and recent Prince­ton grad­u­ates. Gain­ing a glimpse into the work they do and learn­ing about how they made their career choices gave me very help­ful infor­ma­tion with which I may, hope­fully, make my own deci­sions about future aca­d­e­mic and career pur­suits. Of course, this Princetern­ship was also an invalu­able chance to build pro­fes­sional rela­tion­ships that you would not gain otherwise.

From this expe­ri­ence, I learned so much about not only the legal field, but also the prac­ti­cal appli­ca­tion of law. I per­son­ally thought that this greatly influ­enced the way I per­ceive the career of a lawyer, which I believe is very mean­ing­ful and extremely mul­ti­fac­eted and inter­est­ing. If I had not observed Ms. Gonzales-Kimbrough’s daily work, my aca­d­e­mic or career deci­sions with regard to law would be based on pos­tu­la­tion rather than facts and real expe­ri­ence. Princetern­ships pro­vide a unique and rare oppor­tu­nity to gain insight into a par­tic­u­lar career and allow you to truly immerse your­self in the envi­ron­ment so that you can decide whether this is the right career for you. I am extremely glad that I chose to apply and par­tic­i­pate, and I am very grate­ful to Ms. Gonzales-Kimbrough and Career Ser­vices for gen­er­ously pro­vid­ing me with this opportunity.

Lauren Davis ’14, Boston University School of Law

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Day One:

The three of us, me and my fel­low Princeterns, arrived in Pro­fes­sor Fleming’s office at 9 am, and had a chance to hear the full account of how he came to be a Law Pro­fes­sor, from col­lege to the present day. We shared our var­i­ous aca­d­e­mic inter­ests with him, and Pro­fes­sor Flem­ing in turn set up a vari­ety of appoint­ments with other BU Law pro­fes­sors whose work over­lapped with our inter­ests. At 10 am, one of his stu­dents came in to talk about an upcom­ing paper on Con­sti­tu­tional the­ory, as well as to update Pro­fes­sor Flem­ing on the duties she had com­pleted as his research assis­tant for his upcom­ing book. This meet­ing touched upon three of Pro­fes­sor Fleming’s roles at BU Law — a pro­fes­sor of Con­sti­tu­tional Law (a first year class) and Con­sti­tu­tional The­ory (an upper level sem­i­nar), an author of esteemed aca­d­e­mic lit­er­a­ture (his most recent book is about to go to press, and was co-authored by his wife Linda McClain, who is also a pro­fes­sor at BU), and the fac­ulty advi­sor for the BU Law Review. After this meet­ing, we got the chance to meet two pro­fes­sors spe­cial­iz­ing in Health Law and Inter­na­tional Law. Finally, at 2 pm we headed to Pro­fes­sor Fleming’s two hour lec­ture on Con­sti­tu­tional Law.

Day Two:

Dr. Flem­ing and his Princeterns

 

We started the day with another meet­ing between Pro­fes­sor Flem­ing and oneof his students/research assis­tants. After this, we sat in on his meet­ing with the Dean of BU Law, get­ting the chance to see how a law school works from the admin­is­tra­tion side, such as con­ver­sa­tions about how to give fund­ing to pro­fes­sors for research, the topic for the next big col­lo­quium Pro­fes­sor Flem­ing is orga­niz­ing, main­tain­ing a bal­ance between a the­o­ret­i­cal and a prac­ti­cal law edu­ca­tion, and select­ing new pro­fes­sors for tenure. We ate lunch at a fac­ulty paper work­shop where a vis­it­ing pro­fes­sor pre­sented his paper on the applic­a­bil­ity of for­eign laws in the U.S., and after­wards took ques­tions and feed­back from his col­leagues. We ended the day by sit­ting in on Pro­fes­sor Fleming’s sec­ond class — his upper level Con­sti­tu­tional The­ory sem­i­nar. Thank you Pro­fes­sor Flem­ing for being such a ded­i­cated host and giv­ing us a fas­ci­nat­ing two day oppor­tu­nity to glimpse the life of a law pro­fes­sor! I really was able to put myself in the shoes of a law stu­dent and get expo­sure to a vari­ety of top­ics within the aca­d­e­mic branch of law.

 

Samantha Batel ’13, Boston University School of Law

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Dur­ing my two-day Princetern­ship expe­ri­ence, I shad­owed Pro­fes­sor James Flem­ing, the Asso­ciate Dean for Research and Intel­lec­tual Life at Boston Uni­ver­sity Law School. Along with two other stu­dents, I sat in on Pro­fes­sor Fleming’s meet­ings with research assis­tants, par­tic­i­pated in a fac­ulty work­shop, and attended two of Pro­fes­sor Fleming’s classes. In between these activ­i­ties, Pro­fes­sor Flem­ing spent a con­sid­er­able amount of time field­ing our ques­tions about both law school and law as a future pro­fes­sion. He was extremely open to dis­cussing what­ever top­ics we brought up and was excited to show us around his office.

On the first day, after going through intro­duc­tory infor­ma­tion, we met one of Pro­fes­sor Fleming’s research assis­tants who was help­ing to fact check his upcom­ing book’s foot­notes. She also came to dis­cuss a paper topic for one of the professor’s classes, Con­sti­tu­tional The­ory. This meet­ing was inter­est­ing because we were able to hear about law school from the per­spec­tive of a cur­rent stu­dent. Later that day, we sat in on the professor’s other course, Con­sti­tu­tional Law. It was very sim­i­lar to classes here at Prince­ton, such as Civil Lib­er­ties, and I enjoyed lis­ten­ing to the mate­r­ial from the view­point of a law school course. Other encoun­ters through­out the day included con­ver­sa­tions with fac­ulty mem­bers who were excited to share pieces of their work with us.

On the sec­ond day, after meet­ing with another research assis­tant, we attended a fac­ulty work­shop where a vis­it­ing assis­tant pro­fes­sor pre­sented a draft of his paper to his col­leagues. Those at the work­shop gave the pro­fes­sor help­ful feed­back and sup­ported a lively dis­cus­sion of his work. Later, we attended Pro­fes­sor Fleming’s Con­sti­tu­tional The­ory class, a course very sim­i­lar to sem­i­nars at Prince­ton. Later that evening, we enjoyed a din­ner with Pro­fes­sor Flem­ing and his fam­ily at his home in Brook­line, Mass­a­chu­setts. His fam­ily was wel­com­ing and inter­ested in learn­ing about our dif­fer­ent backgrounds.

Dr. Flem­ing and his Princeterns

Over­all, I found this Princetern­ship to be extremely valu­able because it enabled me to see both the inner work­ings of a law school and the law stu­dent point of view. Every­one there was eager to share their expe­ri­ences and aca­d­e­mic inter­ests and I found the atmos­phere to be very sup­port­ive. I would rec­om­mend this shad­ow­ing oppor­tu­nity to stu­dents as a great way to spend two days with other like-minded Prince­ton stu­dents in an inter­est­ing new environment.

Kristen Kruger ’14, Maryland Disability Law Center

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Day 1:

My first day at the Mary­land Dis­abil­ity Law Cen­ter with man­ag­ing attor­ney Leslie Mar­go­lis began at 8:30 am. After meet­ing Leslie, we drove to the Nancy Gras­mick State Depart­ment of Edu­ca­tion for a meet­ing on a 28-year law­suit with the state assis­tant super­in­ten­dent for edu­ca­tion, an attor­ney from the state attor­ney general’s office, the set­tle­ment agree­ment liai­son, and other staff from the Mary­land Depart­ment of Edu­ca­tion and the MDLC. This was a fas­ci­nat­ing meet­ing focused on mon­i­tor­ing the Bal­ti­more County Pub­lic Schools’. It was amaz­ing to see the com­mit­ment of all involved to improv­ing spe­cial edu­ca­tion in the state, per­se­ver­ing through a decades-long law­suit. Fol­low­ing this meet­ing, we headed back to the MDLC for a lunch meet­ing with Mary­land Spe­cial Edu­ca­tion Lawyers (MDSEL). This is a group of spe­cial edu­ca­tion lawyers who meet every two months to dis­cuss advo­cacy issues in the field of spe­cial edu­ca­tion based on their case­loads, cur­rent leg­is­la­tion being con­sid­ered, and the actions of major play­ers in the field. I was most struck by this uni­fi­ca­tion of the pub­lic and pri­vate sec­tors in the pur­suit of progress on behalf of chil­dren with dis­abil­i­ties, with ground-level expe­ri­ences and faces to influ­ence sys­temic pol­icy to make it as effec­tive as pos­si­ble. Finally, the last meet­ing was again at the MDLC, this time with the Edu­ca­tion Advo­cacy Coali­tion. This group of major play­ers in spe­cial edu­ca­tion advo­cacy brain­stormed about how to use its con­sid­er­able weight and expe­ri­ence col­lec­tively and in coor­di­na­tion to make a dif­fer­ence. At the end of the day, once this meet­ing was over, Leslie and I were able to talk about all kinds of things—Princeton, majors, careers, leg­is­la­tion, lawyers, advo­cacy. On my first day of this Princetern­ship, I entered a whole new and excit­ing world of peo­ple truly advo­cat­ing on behalf of chil­dren with disabilities.

Day 2:

My sec­ond day began at 6:30 am at Leslie’s house. We drove to a hotel just out­side of Bal­ti­more for a 7:30–3:30 meet­ing. It was quite the oppor­tu­nity to learn about the suc­cess­ful man­age­ment of a non­profit. This meet­ing was with the National Board of the Epilepsy Foun­da­tion. The in-depth dis­cus­sions of long-term vision, goals, and the imple­men­ta­tion of these in day-to-day oper­a­tions pro­vided a remark­able chance to learn extremely valu­able lessons about non­profit impact and saliency in the future. In par­tic­u­lar, I appre­ci­ated learn­ing from so many board mem­bers’ exten­sive expe­ri­ence, insight, and wis­dom. I appre­ci­ated the struc­ture of the meet­ing as well—outlining the plan for the day, set­ting the tone, artic­u­lat­ing dif­fer­ent visions and rec­on­cil­ing them, and work­ing out strate­gies for imple­men­ta­tion. All in all, it was an extremely edi­fy­ing day.

Kris­ten and Leslie Margolis

Day 3:

The day began with a morn­ing meet­ing about the mod­i­fied and alter­na­tive ver­sions of Maryland’s state-wide test­ing, includ­ing dis­cus­sion of the man­ual regard­ing the admin­is­tra­tion of these tests. Fol­low­ing this, Leslie and I headed back to the MDLC. Upon our arrival, Leslie intro­duced me to Tacha Mar­shall, the per­son in charge of spe­cial edu­ca­tion intake for the MDLC. Her role is to take calls from par­ents who are hav­ing a prob­lem with the spe­cial edu­ca­tion of their child and obtain the facts and details of the case. At this point, she informs the par­ents of any rel­e­vant knowl­edge and deter­mines whether the case will be passed on to the MDLC attor­neys or pro-bono pri­vate attor­neys, or per­haps not taken on at all. Tacha allowed me to sit in with her as she took a call from a fam­ily whose daugh­ter was not receiv­ing the spe­cial edu­ca­tion ser­vices required by the law. It was a remark­able insight into the strug­gles of these fam­i­lies and their chil­dren. Finally, Leslie and her col­league Bob Berlow kindly took me to lunch, and we were able to dis­cuss some of the devel­op­ments of the day.

All in all, I learned about all the dif­fer­ent play­ers involved in the legal realm of spe­cial edu­ca­tion and advo­cacy and each of their roles. In addi­tion, it became clear just how nec­es­sary advo­cacy is on these issues and the truly awful cir­cum­stances that many stu­dents often suf­fer as a result of being in spe­cial edu­ca­tion. This expe­ri­ence made me seri­ously con­sider law school, but also, it opened my eyes to many other pos­si­ble ways to make a dif­fer­ence in a pop­u­la­tion in need, from leg­isla­tive advo­cacy to polit­i­cal office to man­ag­ing a foun­da­tion that offers ser­vices to those in need. This Princetern­ship is a fas­ci­nat­ing insight into pub­lic sec­tor and pri­vate sec­tor attor­neys, broad advo­cacy and indi­vid­ual cases, the pol­i­tics of leg­is­la­tion, and the truly sys­temic fail­ures present and change nec­es­sary in the area of spe­cial education.

Ray Chao ’15, Los Angeles City Attorney’s Office

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Through Prince­ton Career Ser­vices, I was for­tu­nate to receive the oppor­tu­nity to com­plete my Princetern­ship with the LA City Attorney’s Office. I grew up in Los Ange­les, so it was great to head back to my (sunny and warm) home­town to gain some work expe­ri­ence and a bet­ter under­stand­ing of pub­lic ser­vice civil law.

My host, Mar­cia Gonzales-Kimbrough, is a 1975 Prince­ton grad­u­ate. She told me that she was the first Mexican-American woman to ever attend Prince­ton, and told me amaz­ing sto­ries about her expe­ri­ence in a new envi­ron­ment (and sto­ries about now-Supreme Court Jus­tice Sonia Sotomayor who was one grade below her). Ms. Gonzales-Kimbrough is a Deputy City Attor­ney, and the Gen­eral Coun­sel for the LA for Kids pro­gram, where she is in charge of allo­cat­ing over $200 mil­lion dol­lars in fund­ing for the acqui­si­tion, devel­op­ment, and main­te­nance of parks and recre­ation cen­ters around Los Angeles.

After pass­ing back­ground checks and get­ting fin­ger­printed, Ms. Gonzales-Kimbrough intro­duced me to every­body in her office. Each of them served as a gen­eral coun­sel to some var­i­ous project under­taken by the City of Los Ange­les, and they all had very inter­est­ing sto­ries to tell. After meet­ing every­body in the office, we attended a Con­tin­u­ing Edu­ca­tion Sem­i­nar hosted by an LA City Coun­cil­man. He dis­cussed var­i­ous issues that the City of LA faced includ­ing med­ical mar­i­juana dis­pen­saries and lia­bil­ity for bro­ken side­walks. I never real­ized how com­pli­cated and inter­est­ing the issue of side­walks could be. The city did not know what to do about bro­ken side­walks because they had no money to fix them, but some­body had to fix them or else the city would con­tinue to face lawsuits.

After lunch, we pro­ceeded to a meet­ing with an engi­neer who was propos­ing a plan to ren­o­vate a golf dri­ving range. Ms. Gonzales-Kimbrough’s job was to over­see the legal­ity of the project, and ensure the ful­fill­ment of con­trac­tual oblig­a­tions. It was inter­est­ing to see how nuanced the devel­op­ment process for build­ing a dri­ving range is when it seems so simple.

For the rest of the day, I reviewed files, reports, and tran­scripts related to var­i­ous devel­op­ment projects around the city. The biggest les­son? Lawyers have to deal with a lot of paper!

The sec­ond day of my Princetern­ship started off with another meet­ing with engi­neers look­ing to develop a new park. Fol­low­ing that small meet­ing, we pro­ceeded to a large staff meet­ing with engi­neers, project man­agers, and lawyers dis­cussing sev­eral projects from a macro per­spec­tive. They looked over bud­getary and logis­ti­cal con­cerns, and debated the via­bil­ity of cer­tain projects. We walked to the his­toric dis­trict of down­town to have authen­tic Mex­i­can food for lunch, and Ms. Gonzales-Kimbrough described the his­tory of the city, and also dis­cussed her own expe­ri­ences at Prince­ton. It was fas­ci­nat­ing to hear about her tran­si­tion from a small town in New Mex­ico to a for­eign envi­ron­ment, and I heard many enter­tain­ing sto­ries! Fol­low­ing a post-lunch meet­ing with more engi­neers, Ms. Gonzales-Kimbrough con­tin­ued to describe her Prince­ton expe­ri­ence, and also showed us a pic­ture of some of the peo­ple in her class. She went person-by-person across the pic­ture, and told us what they were doing now. Their pro­fes­sions ranged from renowned authors, to Fed­eral Appel­late judges, to entre­pre­neurs, show­ing just how strong the Prince­ton alumni net­work is.

The final day of my Princetern­ship started

Ray and Mar­cia Gonzales-Kimbrough

off with a panel dis­cus­sion with some polit­i­cal con­sul­tants about the 2012 Pres­i­den­tial race. Fol­low­ing that talk, we attended a City Coun­cil meet­ing in the spec­tac­u­lar Los Ange­les City Coun­cil Cham­bers. Ms. Gonzales-Kimbrough arranged a lunch with two other recent Prince­ton grad­u­ates at Home­girl Café– a restau­rant devoted to help­ing at-risk and for­merly gang-involved youth find employ­ment oppor­tu­ni­ties. They grad­u­ated in 2010 and 2011 respec­tively, and talked about their own Prince­ton expe­ri­ences as well as their career aspi­ra­tions. We then toured City Hall, and got the chance to go to the top floor of City Hall where we had a 360 degree panoramic view of the city from the 32th floor!  Ms. Gonzales-Kimbrough ended the day by shar­ing more Prince­ton sto­ries, ask­ing about our aspi­ra­tions, and shar­ing advice she had for us.

The Princetern­ship ended quickly; I didn’t real­ize how short it was! It really gave me a deeper under­stand­ing about pub­lic ser­vice and civil law, and helped me nar­row my career choices. I know that law is def­i­nitely some­thing I want to seri­ously con­sider pur­su­ing in the future, and this expe­ri­ence helped me solid­ify that notion.

My host was also an excep­tion­ally impor­tant part of my expe­ri­ence, and she is def­i­nitely an inspi­ra­tion. I am so grate­ful for her won­der­ful hos­pi­tal­ity, and my Princetern­ship could not have been the same with­out her. I had an eye-opening Princetern­ship expe­ri­ence, and I am so thank­ful to Prince­ton, Career Ser­vices, and Ms. Gon­za­les Kim­brough for the amaz­ing opportunity.

Silvia Lundgren ’15, Los Angeles City Attorney’s Office

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Mon­day, March 19th

On the first day of the Princetern­ship, I arrived at the office at around 9 am. Since I live in the sub­urbs of Los Ange­les, each day I was able to drive to and from the L.A. City Attor­ney office, which is located in the heart of Down­town L.A. The office is under a lot of secu­rity, so I couldn’t just walk in and meet my host. After get­ting past the guards, I had to go hand in my paper­work to a sec­re­tary. The sec­re­tary looked at my paper­work and then sent me to get fin­ger­printed at an off-site loca­tion. After com­ing back, I was finally able to meet Mar­cia Gonzales-Kimbrough ‘75, my host. She was sit­ting in her office talk­ing to Sebastien, another Prince­ton stu­dent, who would be par­tic­i­pat­ing in the Princetern­ship with me.
 
Mar­cia talked to us for a cou­ple of hours in her office, telling us how she ended up where she is now. It was fas­ci­nat­ing to hear about her Prince­ton expe­ri­ence. She grew up in New Mex­ico and was one of the first Latina women to attend Prince­ton.. She recalled liv­ing in newly built Spell­man, which was so “in vogue” back then. She also told us about how Sonia Sotomayor was in the class below her, and that every­one at school had always known that Sonia would end up on the Supreme Court. After talk­ing about her life, she told us about her job. As a munic­i­pal advi­sor for the Deputy City Attor­ney, she spends a lot of time advis­ing on actions that politi­cians and var­i­ous other offi­cials should take, often regard­ing “Propo­si­tion K,” an impor­tant law in L.A.

Mar­cia then took us to lunch on Olvera Street where we ate great authen­tic Mex­i­can food and walked around the Down­town area, includ­ing beau­ti­ful Union Sta­tion. Next we went to City Hall, which is across the street from the City Attorney’s Office but con­nected to it by a bridge on the third floor. City Hall was beau­ti­ful, and we were able to go all the way to the top of the build­ing, where we could see a 360-degree view of the LA basin – it was amaz­ing! Mar­cia knows so much about the his­tory of L.A., so it was really valu­able to hear every­thing she had to say. On the way down from the top, we ran into one of Marcia’s cowork­ers, another fel­low Prince­ton alum! He grad­u­ated in ’88, and was a proud mem­ber of Tower Club.

Back in Marcia’s office, we met Phil, another of her col­leagues. His work cen­ters on intel­lec­tual prop­erty, and it was fun to talk to him about an area of law that is becom­ing increas­ingly impor­tant in the Inter­net Age. At the end of the day, Mar­cia went over the agenda for the Coun­cil Meet­ing we would be attend­ing the next day.

Tues­day, March 20th

Sil­via, fel­low Princetern Sebastien, and Mar­cia Gonzales-Kimbrough

On Tues­day, we spent the morn­ing watch­ing the City Coun­cil Meet­ing. This hap­pens every week, and each of the City Coun­cilmem­bers of L.A. hears and approves or dis­ap­proves var­i­ous mea­sures. I was also able to sit in on a press meet­ing for the L.A. Fire Department.

 For lunch, Mar­cia took Sebastien and I to eat sushi in Lit­tle Tokyo. As we were eat­ing in Marcia’s favorite restau­rant, we ran into one of her good friends, Char­lie. Char­lie is a crim­i­nal defense attor­ney who deals with death penalty cases. He is an extremely out­go­ing man, and he loves Prince­ton because his daugh­ter went there. Char­lie told us of his expe­ri­ence grow­ing up African Amer­i­can in a poor area of Texas. Nei­ther of his par­ents had been edu­cated past ele­men­tary school in the seg­re­gated area they grew up in, so he had pushed many bar­ri­ers when he went to UCLA and later law school. Char­lie was so pas­sion­ate about his job and excited to talk to us. For the rest of the after­noon, Char­lie took us to sit in on some mur­der tri­als in the L.A. Crim­i­nal Court. This was extremely fas­ci­nat­ing. Char­lie seemed to know every­one in the court build­ing – the secu­rity guards, the lawyers, the judges, the law clerks. He intro­duced us to every­one he knew and told us about how every­thing worked in the court­rooms. I was so glad that we ran into him ear­lier that day!

Wednes­day, March 21st

On Wednes­day morn­ing, Mar­cia went over  sev­eral doc­u­ments with Sebastien and I. The doc­u­ments dealt with var­i­ous mea­sures regard­ing pub­lic projects and parks, and she explained them all to us. For lunch, Mar­cia took us to the Police Acad­emy of L.A. The Police Acad­emy is located near Dodger Sta­dium, in Elysian Park. At the Police Acad­emy there was an old-fashioned diner, where we ate a really good lunch. In the diner there were a lot of old pic­tures on the walls, which Mar­cia talked about in great detail. A lot of her pre­vi­ous work dealt with the Police Depart­ment, so she was really informed.

After lunch, Sebastien and I went back to the Crim­i­nal Court House to sit in on some other cases. We were able to see a ver­dict being issued in a mur­der trial, which was fas­ci­nat­ing. At the end of the day, Mar­cia took us to a cel­e­bra­tion for Lati­nos in the City Attorney’s Office. The cel­e­bra­tion was at the top of City Hall, where we had been on Mon­day. It was really fun to see dif­fer­ent employ­ees rec­og­nized for their hard work, and there was really good authen­tic Mex­i­can food served! It was a great end­ing to the whole experience.

Over­all, I think the Princetern­ship was really ben­e­fi­cial on both a pro­fes­sional and per­sonal level. It was really inter­est­ing to be in a pro­fes­sional law envi­ron­ment for the first time, and to see what being an “attor­ney” really entails! On a per­sonal level, it felt awe­some to meet so many Prince­ton alums, and see how Prince­ton pre­pared them and inspired them to do great things in the world. As a Los Ange­les res­i­dent, the his­tor­i­cal enrich­ment I got out of the expe­ri­ence was extremely valu­able. Mar­cia knows so much about L.A. and was so enthu­si­as­tic about telling us all she knew. I am so grate­ful for the oppor­tu­nity I was given in this Princetern­ship, and I want to thank Mar­cia and every­one else that helped me along the way!