A successful case

Young lawyer returns home to practice, as pre-law program intends

By California State University, Bakersfield

January 6^th, 2022

Fatima Rodriguez has been selected as the 2022 Alumni Rising ` Runner for the School of Social Sciences and Education. Each spring during Homecoming Week, the Rising Runner program recognizes CSUB alumni of the last 10 years who are already making an impact in their career and community.

Fatima Rodriguez was interested in a criminal defense career from an early age. Seeing friends with backgrounds similar to hers end up in the justice system – and thinking that could have been her – she recognized the need for strong representation of people like them.

But not until she took classes with CSUB Associate Professor Jeanine Kraybill and joined the university’s Pre-Law Society did Rodriguez actually see a plausible path to a legal career. Through Kraybill’s lectures, Rodriguez saw how a woman could command a room. Through the Pre-Law Society, she was introduced to law school recruiters and local attorneys who became mentors.

It all made possible what Rodriguez is doing today: serving on the Kern County Indigent Defense Panel. She represents people who cannot afford their own attorney and can’t be represented by the Public Defender’s office because it has a conflict of interest.

“I am here today because of everyone who has been helping me throughout my path,” Rodriguez said.

Kraybill says Rodriguez has done exactly what CSUB’s Pre-Law Society, and its umbrella Pre-Law Program, intends: Home-grow attorneys who will stay in or return to Kern County after law school to practice, whether criminal, civil, public interest, immigration or any other kind of law.

A whole host of people makes the Pre-Law Program possible: Faculty, staff, alumni, donors, volunteers and members of the CSUB Pre-Law Advisory Committee who give their time and money to the program. Kraybill couldn’t be prouder of Rodriguez’s rise.

“We need more women practicing law, more people of color practicing law,” Kraybill said. “Look at our students, look at our community, look at our state. We’re a majority-minority state and for people to have trust in the legal system, we need to have people who come from their backgrounds representing them.”

Jeanine Kraybill, associate professor in political science and director of the Pre-Law Program at CSUB.

The biggest lessons

Rodriguez grew up on the east side of Bakersfield where her parents settled because the table grape season was longer here than in the other communities where they’d worked since coming to the United States from Mexico. Spanish was her first language.

Her mother only made it to fifth or sixth grade. Her dad only to eighth. So they weren’t much help scholastically as she got older.

“But they taught me all the biggest lessons in life, to work hard and just keep going,” Rodriguez said.

When she got to CSUB, Rodriguez battled imposter syndrome before quickly learning “there’s no reason why you should fail at Cal State.” She took advantage of the many campus resources available to her including the writing center, which helped her with grammar and citations, and the computer lab where she could print documents for free.

“And the professors were very approachable,” said Rodriguez, a frequent visitor to office hours. “They really wanted students to succeed.”

The first of seven classes Rodriguez took with Kraybill was political inquiry, and the passion with which Kraybill made an argument began to rub off on her. When Kraybill sent out an email suggesting creation of a Pre-Law Society in 2016, Rodriguez eagerly signed up.

Home-growing legal minds

The Pre-Law Society is a component of CSUB’s Pre-Law Program, which helps students plan for a legal career by, for example, connecting them with internship opportunities, introducing them to legal professionals for mentoring, and setting up law school admissions workshops.

CSUB pre-law students attend a speed networking event to help prepare for a legal career.

This past year the program has grown to include the CSUB Legal Information and Support Clinic, an internship program where students work alongside attorneys in the community, providing no- and low-cost legal services to individuals who need assistance navigating the legal system.

The clinic has brought together a network of community partners such as the law firms of H.A. Sala, Torres | Torres-Stallings, Vanessa Sanchez, Xochitl Garcia, and public agencies such as the Kern County District Attorney and Public Defender’s offices, as well as nonprofit organizations like Greater Bakersfield Legal Assistance.

Local judges and attorneys are invaluable partners. They participate in speed mentoring events, provide internships, serve as guest speakers and fund scholarships so students can focus on learning.

These activities not only help prepare students for a legal career but plant in their minds the idea of staying in or returning to Kern County after law school to practice law and mentor future generations of attorneys, Kraybill said.

“I don’t think you’ll find that a lot of other Bar Associations in the state are as community-oriented, volunteer their time, are as committed to education,” she said of Kern County’s bar.

“We perpetuate that by opening up the idea to students to ‘Consider us after you go to law school. We’d love to have you back in the community, it just betters our community.’”

CSUB pre-law students attend a law school fair in Los Angeles.

Bakersfield attorney Cathy Bennett couldn’t agree more. She’s also trying to home grow attorneys as a professor and associate dean at the Kern County College of Law.

Kern County struggles to attract and retain lawyers in large part because law school is very expensive and earning enough money to pay back student loans often requires working at large firms in large cities, said Bennett, who was inducted into the CSUB Alumni Hall of Fame in 2015.

The implications of that include lack of access to specialty attorneys such as intellectual property ones who can serve software developers and those serving Kern’s large population of low- and moderate-income residents such as grandparents needing legal services to adequately care for their grandchildren, she said.

Kern County also needs more lawyers who can serve its diverse population, Bennett said, such as Hispanic ones who speak fluent Spanish and Sikh ones who relate well to the large local Sikh community.

“The bigger we get, the more diverse our population gets and the more large-scale businesses that come to town, the more we’re going to need certain types of legal services,” she said.

Learning a new language

Kraybill and the Pre-Law Society opened all kinds of doors for Rodriguez. She learned from a lawyer and psychology professor how faulty memory can lead to a wrongful conviction. She met a Santa Clara University recruiter who explained how to get into law school.

She was introduced to one of the best defense attorneys in town, H.A. Sala, who let her shadow him and introduced her to then-Public Defender Elizabet Rodriguez, now a Kern County Superior Court judge and her mentor. And she landed an internship with Greater Bakersfield Legal Assistance preparing guardianship petitions for people assuming custody of children.

Rodriguez and Kraybill pose for a photo together in Rodriguez’s office in downtown Bakersfield.

With no law school in town when she graduated from CSUB in 2017, Rodriguez chose to attend the Thomas Jefferson School of Law in San Diego. While a full-time law student, she interned in the San Diego Public Defender’s office filing motions to dismiss cases, conducting research, reviewing discovery material and accompanying public defenders to court.

“It exposed me to things you’re supposed to say in court but nobody teaches you,” Rodriguez said. “I like to say I speak English, Spanish and legalese because it is a whole different language.”

One of her most memorable cases involved a homeless woman accused of assaulting a parks worker with a deadly weapon (a small razor blade) in a public park. It turned out the woman had once been raped and suffered from schizophrenia, and so felt threatened when the parks worker approached her.

Rodriguez got to know the woman during jail visits and filed a successful motion to get her treatment instead of more incarceration.

“I realized that a lot of people in jail are actually suffering from mental health issues, they’re not out there trying to commit crimes,” she said.

On her own terms

Rodriguez in her office in downtown Bakersfield.

Rodriguez returned home after graduating from Thomas Jefferson and worked as a law clerk for the Kern County Public Defender’s office after taking the bar exam. Studying for the exam required her to master 13 topics without knowing which ones she’d be tested on, a grueling process.

Her hard work paid off. Rodriguez passed the bar on her first try.

She thought the Public Defender’s office would hire her as a public defender, but that didn’t work out. So she did the next best thing for her: joined the Indigent Defense Panel.

“I’m still serving the same community,” Rodriguez said. “Just on my own terms.”

The work Rodriguez is doing is important because the right to an attorney when the government accuses someone of a crime “is fundamental to our constitutional democracy and has been part of our constitutional democracy since its founding,” Bennett said.

As we’ve seen in recent years, she said, police are not infallible and the government can be heavy-handed, so it’s crucial to have criminal defense attorneys ensuring officials are doing their jobs.

“Imagine if someone accused you of doing something and you didn’t do it or you didn’t do exactly what they claim you did,” Bennett said. “You would want someone to be willing to take on your cause and try to prove you didn’t do it or show what you did was not what the government said you did.