Episode 40: Camila Maturana
Supervising attorney with the Northwest Immigrant Rights Project
00:47:47
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Show Notes
Immigration law is an important yet often overlooked area of law, but it is one that affects a significant population in the country. Here to discuss the ins and outs of practicing immigration law in the nonprofit sector is Camila Maturana. Camila is a supervising attorney with the Northwest Immigrant Rights Project (NWIRP) Tacoma and South Unit. In this episode, she opens up to MC Sungaila on how her family history and experience led her to study law and ultimately pursue work helping undocumented citizens. Learn more about the field and get helpful tips by tuning in.
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Relevant episode links:
Northwest Immigrant Rights Project, Open Veins of Latin America
About Camila Maturana:
Camila Maturana
Camila Maturana is a supervising attorney with the Northwest Immigrant Rights Project (NWIRP) Tacoma and South Unit. She has worked with NWIRP since 2015, beginning as a staff attorney in Wenatchee, Washington.
Currently her caseload consists primarily of asylum seekers, special immigrant juvenile status, and U & T nonimmigrant visas. Ms. Maturana received her JD from Washington University in St. Louis. Originally from Arizona, she currently resides in Washington with her husband, toddler, and her husband's cat.
Transcript
In this episode, I'm pleased to have on the show someone that I've worked with on cases and I respect greatly, Camila Maturana. She is a supervising attorney at the Northwest Immigrant Rights Project. Welcome, Camila.
Thank you, MC.
Thank you so much for joining. One of the goals and interests that I have in the show is making sure that people, especially law students, know the range of practice areas you can practice and the array of possible settings. Law schools are very good at letting people know about law firms to go to or even government work but with nonprofit work and even specialized areas like immigration law that you're involved with, we don't get as much information about that.
I thought, “I'll go to the source and talk to someone who knows what she's doing in this area of the law and can share that with people who may think they might be interested in it or don't even know what's involved in doing immigration.” First, I wanted to talk to you about your journey to the law itself and how you decided that you wanted to go to law school or be a lawyer.
First off, it's an honor to be on your show. Thank you for inviting me and it's also been wonderful working with you. It's been a learning experience for me. What probably crystallized my decision to go into the law was after my undergrad, I began working as an advocate for sexual assault survivors. I saw a lot of people who didn't have documentation. In that job, I was in Tucson, Arizona, which is where I'm from. There were quite a few people who are undocumented and were concerned about reporting to the police.
I learned there that there were some avenues for victims of crime and immigration avenues. I started getting a little more interested in the justice system, both criminal and immigration, as opposed to medical school, which is, “You’re a first-generation kid. Your option is usually medical school or law school. I jive much more with the legal than the medical. On a personal level, my father is Chilean and he came to the United States as an exile in 1976. He came after the Pinochet coup in 1973. He was very apolitical at the time of the coup but he became politicized.
In 1975, he was arrested and tortured by the Pinochet dictatorship. He was held for about six months without trial. It was never fully explained to me as a child so I started learning a lot more as a grownup. There was some agreement between the US government and the Pinochet government in 1976 for the United States government to accept a certain number of political prisoners as parolees.
I always grew up thinking, “My father had asylum,” but this was before the asylum law went into effect in the United States. He was paroled into the United States and was allowed to become a lawful permanent resident through his parole status. I learned about this in law school because that's when I started investigating a little bit more about my father's story. I've always been told bits and pieces about it but I hadn't asked him many questions because it was very painful for him to talk about it.
I started asking a little bit more like, “Did you have asylee status when you came to the United States? How did you get here?” He was like, “No. I was a parolee.” I'm like, “Parolee? I thought those were criminals.” I started learning a little bit more. Parole status is a form of immigration status that will allow you to work and stay in the United States but isn't always a direct path to citizenship. That combination of professional and personal experience led me to want to practice the law and specifically immigration law.
That is unexpected, Camila. I had no idea that was in your family story as well. I can feel in your work that there's a very personal commitment to each of your clients. I can see that coming through because of your family experience and that it is very emotionally connected as well as intellectually interested in that area of the law. It is interesting. A lot of stories, especially immigrant families are told different things or pieces of things but not the whole story or it gets passed down and it's some version of the story but it might not be 100% what happened.
When you go to law school, you at least have the terms to ask about. You're like, “I'm armed with. I know what to ask in terms of asylum and things like that.” That's how you found out more information. Being armed with some understanding of the law and being able to ask it in those terms opened it up for you.
If I didn't have the language to ask the question before I started law school, I would say no.
I can understand how you became interested in that area although there is an intersection between your previous work with survivors as well because there is some relief for that intersection between that and immigration law. That must be helpful to have that background to use in the immigration context as well.
As an advocate for survivors of sexual assault, I did see much more clearly than I had before how scary it was to go to the police and talk about what had happened for a bunch of different reasons. It's scary if you have citizenship status and then to add the extra layer of, “I don't have status. I've been afraid my whole time here in the United States that I'd be caught by the police or immigration. I'm supposed to go report what happened.” It’s very difficult. I'm glad that we have a system in place that supports undocumented survivors, as well as those who have normal citizenship status.
There are a lot of vulnerabilities in whether you're a citizen or not. It's layered on with the other concerns for those who aren't US citizens but you're very good with clients who are vulnerable and with strategy and thinking ahead for them in a system that's quite complicated.
That has come mostly from experience, particularly with detained clients. I learned that you have to do everything for the client because they can't do much themselves. If they don't have much contact with their family, it's very difficult sometimes for the family to do things as well. Another issue with detained clients is that they can be deported immediately after receiving a final deportation order in their cases. You have to be on the ball, engaged and researching to anticipate everything that might go wrong in that case because otherwise, you're looking at immediate deportation with no recourse.
My perspective is from the appellate perspective in terms of the Ninth Circuit with regard to asylum petitions and things like that but there are so many other moving parts to it that are different from other kinds of law or cases too because you could have an appeal in the Ninth Circuit but there could be another proceeding related to the same client happening in the immigration court system or some other entity. The US government could be involved in all of these various moving parts together. It's mind-numbing and trying to anticipate all of those things is very challenging.
You can have a U visa pending, for example, with US Citizenship and Immigration Services, which is managed by the Department of Homeland Security ICE but the person's ICE officer might have no idea what the status of the U visa application is. They will probably not communicate that to the Ninth Circuit office of an immigration litigation attorney. It can be very complicated because you manage multiple different agencies that don't always communicate with each other. There are a lot of moving parts in it.
Failure sometimes is a step to evaluating what you need to do differently and improving on what you've done in the past.
I don't know that people expect that and you're talking about agency adjudications and then there's court review of those. You have several different procedural rules and things you need to keep track of. There are so many other different elements of the government that are also involved at various points. Being the point person for all of that, especially when someone or your client is detained is mind-boggling. I don't know that people realize how procedurally complicated immigration work is in addition to the substantive aspect of it. The consequences are quite dire if people cannot stay in this country. Their whole lives are turned upside down. I don't know if people appreciate how complex it is.
It does get very complicated very quickly. There's quite a bit of case law out of the Ninth Circuit on immigration law. The Ninth Circuit has been turning them out. Immigration stood out a lot. As far as the law goes, my immigration law professor and I don't know how accurate this is but he said that the INA is second only to the tax code in terms of length and complexity. That is the Immigration and Nationality Act, which hasn't been changed since 1990.
There are a lot of intricacies to it. When you decided that you wanted to focus on immigration law, did you decide you wanted to work for a nonprofit in that setting? You're at a very well-regarded nonprofit that focuses on immigration laws. Is that where you went right afterwards?
When I was in law school, I decided pretty early on that I was mostly interested in non-profit work. I considered working for the federal government or the government in a public defender setting but I ultimately decided that I was more interested in immigration and human rights work although there are lots of human rights issues in the carceral system. I had a clinic in law school and in that clinic, I worked for an immigration nonprofit. I enjoyed the work. It was very interesting to me the kind of research that I was doing.
I was doing research into criminal and immigration issues. We have to apply the carceral approach and that was intellectually stimulating. I'm like, “Immigration is a very interesting field and there is, in practice, a lot of overlap with criminal law, family law or civil rights law.” You can pursue different subspecialties within the immigration law. It's not just paper-pushing, although that is part of the job.
That law clinic helped me decide, “This is what I want to do,” but I did not pass the bar after law school. I failed the bar the first time around and did a fellowship for about seven months and feel it, which was great. It was an environmental law fellowship. I came back and I'm like, “I have a law degree but I don't have a license and a job.” I started working as an advocate for domestic violence victims. While I was doing that, I started studying again for the bar and eventually, passed the bar in 2014.
I had decided to go to Seattle because, in Chile, we were close to the sea and the mountains, the Cordillera. I was like, “I want to be in a place where I can be near the ocean and the mountains. The Pacific Northwest embodied that. I moved up here not knowing anyone but I had a friend in law school who had interned at the Northwest Immigrant Rights Project and he loved it. He speaks too highly about it. I was like, “I want to do immigration law.” This is the most prominent immigration nonprofit in the Seattle area. I looked into it because right after I passed the bar, they hadn't been hiring for many years. They started hiring a bunch of attorneys right after I passed.
They were hiring, I applied twice to the Tacoma and Wenatchee office. I was accepted into the Wenatchee office. I've always wanted to serve the community I came from. I did come from Southern Arizona and grew up with many people who were the sons and daughters of immigrants or who were immigrants themselves. I grew up in a working-class household but I never fully realized how working-class or household was because I was surrounded by kids who were in more difficult situations than I was.
I felt like I was going to dedicate 40 hours of my week to doing one thing and helping people in some way, whether through my legal work because that's what lawyers do. We represent people. I wanted it to be people who would not be able to have help if not for the nonprofits and who would not be able to be in a position where they could get their status normalized without help. The concept of solidarity was very important to my family. Have solidarity with people who were part of your community and with others in your community, regardless of where they came from and make sure we were helping each other. I do see this job as us helping each other
There’s one thing I would observe from your story. It's not a happy thing when we want to pass the bar the first time and if we have to take it over again but it seems to me that in some ways, the timing of that helped you because the organization had not been hiring for many years. If you had applied, the initial get-go when you had passed the bar the first time, there wouldn't have been anything to apply to so sometimes things work out.
I was talking to a former intern who I have supervised and she also hadn't passed the bar her first time around. I told her, “Sometimes you need to have a little bit of distance from law school and a bit of time. Sometimes things work out the way they do for a reason. I don't think I would be at this organization if I had passed the bar the first time.”
Further down the road, in retrospect, you can say, “That seemed a bit of suffering that I didn't want to endure at that point in time but in the future, it opened up other opportunities that wouldn't have been there and maybe put me in a position of having a little bit more humility too.” I’m humbled by some of these things that might happen but that's a good quality to have.
As I've gotten older, I have gotten more comfortable with the idea of failing as not necessarily being a failure or the end. Failure sometimes is a step to evaluating what you need to do differently and improving on what you've done in the past that we all have to go through at some point or another.
That’s an important lesson in resilience, grit and all of that stuff. I'm glad that you ended up being with the Northwest Immigrant Rights Project. I know you can't talk about details of anything but what does your day or week look like in terms of what kinds of work you're doing and what that role is or what it looks like to do the work of the nonprofit?
I supervised the Tacoma South Unit. Our unit takes a variety of different cases. We are grant-restricted so we primarily take cases for people who are either the victims of a crime or seeking release in immigration court. We also have a lot of cases for clients who are under the age of 21 and who have been abandoned, neglected or abused by at least one of their parents in their home country so it's not in their best interest to go back to their home country. Those types of cases, for example, involve coordination with family law attorneys because we need to get a petition in a family law court. We use that petition to file an application before the immigration agencies, the USCIS.
There's a lot of coordination with pro bono and I'm not directly in charge of that. Another person in our organization or within our unit is. She's on sabbatical so I do some of that but she's primarily in charge when she's in the office. Most of my clients are either asylum seekers or on U visas. They are people who have been a victim of crime in the United States and reported it to law enforcement. It has to be a certain type of qualifying crime. Domestic violence is a qualifying crime, for example.
They have to report to law enforcement and law enforcement has to certify that this person was helpful in the investigation. We have to send a request to law enforcement to certify and there's been a lot of advocacy from our Seattle office in terms of making sure that the Washington State legislature facilitates that process a little bit. We have a new law on the books that says these police agencies have to at least respond to the request for certification within 90 days, even if it's a denial. We were having a lot of problems with sending out certifications that we are going into an abyss.
An asylum, during the Trump administration, became a word that was on the tip of everyone's tongue in this country. It's interesting. It became such a huge unexpected issue for me but we are still dealing with some of the remnants of the laws that were put in place under the Trump administration. Biden intended to overturn some of them and he was successful to some extent but there were injunctions put into place.
We have clients who are in such different places in life and sometimes we do get this overinflated perspective of our work. Each case is the end-all to the world.
The status of immigration law is a little bit more complicated than it was before. Although it has gotten a little bit better. Most of our asylum clients from our unit are from Central America. They're from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador. We also have a few clients from Eastern Africa. We get a handful of clients from South America like Venezuela, Columbia and Mexico. We do have a pretty good mix of clients but the majority are from Latin America.
Just day-to-day work, we have a huge intake waitlist unfortunately but we receive calls from our community. We have a desert volunteer who manages the intake and we have attorneys. We do the intakes, although hopefully, we'll be getting an intake coordinator in the future. We assess whether or not a case is viable and then reach out to the client if it's a viable case. If they're in removal proceedings and they have to appear in immigration court, we also have to assess whether we have the internal capacity to take the case right away or whether we want to try to refer to pro bono. That’s an okay summary of my work.
That's an overview of so much that you do. That’s why I wanted to get a sense of the range of it because there's a lot that you're involved in terms of the process. What kind of advice would you give to law students or those who might be interested in doing the kind of work that you're doing? How could they prepare for that? What kinds of things should they consider before applying for positions like yours?
Try to do a clinic. Having a hands-on experience was eye-opening to me. Take the class in immigration law but also try to see what it's like to try to apply that law to a client's case.
Clinics are such a great resource in law schools generally but a clinic in a substantive area and an area that you might want to do work in is so valuable because you can study the law theoretically in immigration law. What does that look like? What does it mean that I'm going to be doing day-to-day and do I like that?
Those are big questions because depending on the type of immigration law that you do, there might be a lot of filling out forms and appearing in front of immigration courts. Those are probably separate. There might be a lot of filling out forms to send to the USCIS. In which case, you get a lot of client contact but it gets tedious filling up the same type of form we're in over again. If you do litigate in immigration courts, be prepared for some very uncooperative opposing counsel. You don't have a cozy relationship with your opposing counsel. Under the Biden administration, it depends a lot on the trial attorney. Some of them are much more open to stipulations and things like that.
Some of them are holding on to the sentiment that was generated during the Trump administration which they would not stipulate anything and agree to anything. They opposed every reasonable request by counsels. They were very obstructionist. In most trial work, there is at least a degree of admiration on both sides. Many immigration attorneys don't have a lot of respect or admiration for trial attorneys because part of the restrictive policies that were put in place during the Trump administration prevented trial attorneys from negotiating or agreeing to anything. I have asked trial attorneys to join open and shut cases and have been told that they weren’t allowed to join them. They could non-op them and then they were later told they shouldn't have non-opped this case.
I would think it's challenging for the courts to agree where you can’t agree but that's a question of policy on the prosecutor's side, generally. If there is a policy on anything, then there's such reduced discretion by individual prosecutors.
One nice thing under the Biden administration is that they have increased the latitude that individual trial attorneys and OPLA attorneys have on issuing their discretion in cases. If we hadn't experienced some of these, we need to strong-arm out a little bit into getting them to agree to join a motion. That's one consideration if you are considering going into immigration law to practice in front of the immigration court in the removal of defense cases.
Another consideration is that trial attorneys are often very under-prepared compared to the immigration attorney and that often doesn't matter. Sometimes it does but it also depends a lot on the judge. In the detained context, the judges and the trial attorneys know each other very well. They see each other multiple times a day. The judge can often act as a trial attorney when the trial attorney is not doing an adequate job. Many judges are former OPLA attorneys. They used to work for ICE. They have certain questions in mind that they want to ask and that can be difficult as well.
It's not always easy but on the plus side, there is no feeling like winning a grant in immigration court. You and your client are ecstatic. Oftentimes, the judge is very pleased to do it. Your client’s family is usually so relieved that their loved one is able to stay in the United States and have status. They have a more secure future. When he thinks that their father is going to be deported when he's the primary breadwinner in the family, for example, is such a scary experience for everyone in the family.
It’s not just because they're the primary breadwinner but probably because they provide a lot. They’re your father. You don't want to see your father deported to a country that you maybe have never been to yourself. On that end of the spectrum, it is very rewarding to win cases. I've never had a win where I felt shady or weird about it. It's always been great. It’s also very interesting to learn from different clients about their histories, lives and what they've been through. Their perspectives are always surprising and revelatory. That part of the job, the client interaction for me personally and for most of my colleagues is important. It makes up for all the stress and the nonsense that comes with the job.
You said that their perspectives are surprising or revealing. In what way are they surprising?
I've fallen into the trap of feeling like I'm never doing enough for my client, which most of us do fall into the trap of at some point. Sometimes when you lose a case, I always expect the client to be bitterly disappointed in me and usually, they're not. They understand that you did your best and the stacks are against them. That's always a little bit surprising to me. I don't know why but it always is.
It gives you a little bit of energy to overcome the loss because it's always a hit emotionally. You have to take some time to overcome it when you do lose a case. It helps, not always but most of the time, that the client is very understanding and appreciates that you've been there with them even if you weren't able to win.
If you're competitive at all, which we both are, you don't like to lose it all. When you're advocating for someone who you believe in their case, you’d prefer to win than not. Some judges say some of the same things in terms of we’re on the bench, making sure that at least everyone feels that the process has been fair, their concerns have been heard and at least the system is working in that regard.
The outcome may not be what they want but at least we can say we were fully and fairly heard at the very least. There is some benefit to that and appreciation by litigants even if it isn't the results that they wanted or you hoped for as their advocate. There's a benefit to that so that might be the part that they're responding to. You fought very hard for them and they appreciate that.
You have clients who are in such different places in life and sometimes we do get this overinflated perspective of our work. It's the end-all to everything. Each case is the end-all to the world. As attorneys, we tend to catastrophize what we're doing and most of the time, my clients are appreciative and grateful for what we're doing but this is not the most important thing on their list. You're like, “I'm glad to hear that.” I'm also surprised a lot of times that people are way more excited. This is a little mundane but they're much more excited to get their work permit.
It's important to be thrown into a completely new environment and see how you’d do. Learn from it and learn about yourself and become a little more self-sufficient.
It's funny because the work permit, which is maybe a 15 or 20-minute application for me, changes people's lives. It makes them so happy that they can work and pay their taxes. They have status and are allowed to stay here. That sometimes is a little bit of tech to me to like, “This is my client's reality.” Their primary concern is, “I can't remember their name.” It’s like a pyramid of needs. They are meeting with this need and I’m like, “I’m up here.”
They're at a more fundamental need like working, feeding my family and things like that.
It’s always important to hear that because, on a larger level, the work we do does help them feed their family. It gives them the ability to travel, which is important to them too so that makes them come home to their family, in some cases. It is a little bit of a check sometimes like, “I need to come down from the clouds.”
Have you had any mentors or folks who have helped you out on your journey so far?
One thing I appreciate about working for NWIRP is there's a lot of deep knowledge about immigration law. There is a philosophy that we should be asking and answering questions or talking to each other as much as possible. When I was starting at NWIRP, I had my direct supervisors who were helpful but I also had colleagues who I could always turn to for silly questions that you have when you're starting. Everyone was very supportive. Nobody made me feel foolish. We still have that environment many years later, which I appreciate because we have expanded a lot as an organization. We're over twice as large as we were when I started working.
There have been some growing pains but there's still this attitude like, “You need to ask questions and we will answer those questions.” I'm trying to think if I've had a traditional mentor. When I started doing detained work, I had a closer supervisory relationship with my supervisor in the detained unit. He gave me very good guidance in terms of what to do in court because I was new to court work and it's not an area of professional strength for me. It's something that I'm still working on and developing but that was very helpful. I've had a few colleagues who I've asked to review my briefs because I respect their writing ability and have searched for feedback on how to improve my writing.
That has been important to me professionally. It's been a mix of different people. My law school clinic professor was awesome. She was the right mix of giving good pointed guidance, depending on who you were and letting you learn. She struck a good balance. Karen Tokarz is at the Washington University. She is the only professor who I've stayed in touch with. She also helped me get a fellowship in Chile which was very important for me.
It's important to be thrown into a new environment and see how you do, learn from it, learn about yourself and become a little more self-sufficient. That's what happened when I was in Chile. I learned a lot more Spanish. My Spanish improved exponentially. It was important for me personally and career-wise. She encouraged me to take that fellowship and be in the clinic. She was a good mentor for me.
It’s yet another reason to be involved in a clinic and in that school. It's much more individualized. There are fewer people in the clinics and much more ability to be one-on-one to learn much more quickly in a practical way in the clinics. I'm a big proponent of those. I wished that there had been more when I was in law school. I'm glad that there are so many and students can take a clinic in an area to see if that's something as a practical matter or something that they're interested in even if theoretically, it seems like something they might be. Doing it can be very different from the academic approach to things. It's important to have that. I'm going to wrap up with a little lightning round of questions. The first question would be, which talent would you like to have but you don't?
I would like to have the talent of speaking quickly and articulately in response to government attorneys.
Who are your favorite writers?
I have one favorite author. She's a mystery author. Her name was Elizabeth Peters and she wrote a ton of mysteries involving Egyptologists. She's been my favorite author for a long time. I still enjoy re-reading some of her books. I'm reading a book by Eduardo Galeano called the Open Veins of Latin America, which I've tried to read in Spanish a few times and I'm trying again. I have read English and it's beautiful but I want to read it in Spanish.
It's very different. I studied French in high school and college and there were some novels that we would read in French. Having read them in English, it was so different to read them in that original language. You get a lot more nuances but you also have to bring your language skills up to be able to do that too. It's a fun dual challenge in reading that but there are different nuances from the original language that you get.
You have to look up the words and decide which of the multiple meanings.
A friend of mine had friends who are multi-lingual so which language do they communicate in for different purposes? They were not native English speakers but they used English for more precise things. That was interesting because I thought, “That's true because some of the beauty of other languages is the multiple potential meanings.” On the other hand, it isn't as precise as English might be. I thought that was an interesting observation.
When you see a paragraph that's been translated from English and Spanish, the English paragraph is invariably three lines shorter.
I remember one time I was working on a brief in the Inter-American Court on Human Rights in Costa Rica. We submitted the brief in English but because the case was against Mexico so they asked us to also submit it in Spanish. I'm like, “This is a whole other level.” It had to be high formal Spanish. Talking about 2 or 3 lines of English would be 8 or 9 lines on the Spanish for the brief because we have to talk around it a lot more when it's more formal. It was eye-opening. I'm like, “It takes a long time to say the same thing.” Who is your hero in real life?
I love this journalist named Amy Goodman who has been reporting on things for many years. It's so interesting watching her reporting because the style of reporting hasn't changed in a few years but in the United States, it has changed so dramatically in those years. I remember how broadcasters were in the ‘90s versus in the ‘70s when things are so opinionated. It's a very different style. It contributed, maybe it’s a reflection of or both, some of the contentious nature that our nation prides itself on.
I wouldn't call her necessarily a peacemaker but she does strive to find the facts even when they don't necessarily fit her narratives. She's always looked for what is happening with people who are struggling, whose voices are not being heard and whose voices are not making it into the mainstream and highlighting those voices. I admire her a lot. I wouldn't call her a perfect journalist. She doesn't always ask questions that are nice and concise but she does excellent work and is continuing to do it.
The idea of fighting a good fight is important.
Given the choice of anyone in the world, who would you invite to a dinner party?
Is it anyone alive or dead?
It could be a mix. Time has no meaning.
How many people can I invite?
As many as you want.
I'd love to speak to both of my grandmothers who unfortunately passed away. I want to see them again. I had a very close relationship with my American grandmother but she passed away in 2018, which was before I got married, had a child and started this whole new chapter in my life. I'd love to see her again and talk with her. I never got to see my Chilean grandmother very much. I have so many questions for her. I discovered this when I was working as an attorney with NWIRP.
My uncle found that she had filed a habeas petition for my father when he was being detained without a trial. I was like, “You were this miner's wife with limited education. You were in Northern Chile and decided to make an eighteen-hour trip to Santiago to file a habeas petition during a dictatorship. That must have taken some nerves.” As far as historical figures, that's a difficult question. I'd like to hear from Gabriela Mistral who is a poet in Chile to learn about her life. Some of her poems set the tone for a lot of Chilean cultures. I'd like to know what inspired some of her poetry.
The last question is what is your motto if you have one?
There is a quote by Nelson Mandela but I can't remember it. It's a beautiful quote but it's not my motto.
An inspiring quote or something that animates your perspective on life. That's good too.
For me, the idea of fighting a good fight is important. Regardless of where you are in that fight, whether you're on the losing side or the winning side, it’s the thought process that you've put into it. The fact that you're fighting for your philosophy and community, regardless of what the outcome of that fight is a good fight. You're doing good work and you are where you need to be. Even if it feels like this insurmountable mountain, you're still doing what needs to be done.
You would do a little bit of that every day yourself, Camila. Thank you so much for joining me in the show and sharing a little bit of what you do and how you came to do it. Hopefully, you’ve given people some insight into that if they'd like to do it themselves.
Thank you, MC. It has been a pleasure working with you. You are such an inspiring attorney. Watching you navigate the whole Ninth Circuit mediation and reading your submission to the Ninth Circuit have been inspiring as well. It's a big honor to be on your show.
Thanks so much for joining. I do think that it will be hopefully helpful and eye-opening for those who might think they want to become involved in the kind of work you do. Maybe they don't know that but through you, they will be inspired to do it themselves. I appreciate you being so open and sharing your journey.