This article is written by Amy Leipziger, the 2024-2025 Distinguished Practitioner in Residence with the George Barrett Social Justice Program. Amy Leipziger is the Project Director of the Free to Be Youth Project with the Urban Justice Center, and an Adjunct Professor at New York Law School. The views expressed in this article reflect the opinions of the author and not of Vanderbilt Law School or Vanderbilt University.
“When a man takes an oath, he’s holding his own self in his own hands like water, and if he opens his fingers then, he needn’t hope to find himself again.[1]”
I never imagined I’d start a reflection on community lawyering, and the path of a social justice advocate, with a quote by a white man of privilege from the 16th century. But I also never imagined a time when a presidential administration completely abandons the rule of law, and an elected official attempts to self-anoint themself a king [2]. The flurry of executive actions, memoranda, social media posts, and vitriolic attacks these last few months have bit by bit eroded people’s faith and trust in the belief of law, justice, and fairness to a degree that feels not that different than I imagine it did for Thomas Moore. It feels apt, then, to recall the oath of office that I took upon being sworn in to the practice of law so many years ago. To imagine my career path as an attorney, upholding the constitution and faithfully practicing and complying with the rule of law, with the obligations of professional practice and ethics of representation. In that moment, I was holding myself in my own hands, and imagining the integrity it would take to hold fast to my ideals and ethics in the journey to be a community lawyer.
The journey has been anything but smooth. Contrary to what I thought before starting law school – particularly in contemplating a career devoted to social justice – learning how to be a lawyer, or how to make career choices, does not run a straight line. At best, it’s an intersecting Venn diagram, with thirty-two different points and paths, messy in ways that aren’t always clear when you first map them out. In my case, it has meant re-inventing and adapting and learning and moving into new spaces, often navigating doubt along the way about what it means to truly be a community lawyer.
I initially applied to law school after completing a master’s degree in gender studies, driven by the desire to do impact litigation in reproductive rights law. I wanted to be RBG. or, Rhonda Copelon, a human rights lawyer that argued Harris v McRae[3] before the Supreme Court, and Filartiga v. Pena [4], a seminal case before the Second Circuit. She then went on to be a pivotal force in securing relief for victims of gender-based violence around the world. I was convinced that I could follow in her footsteps, if only I could get through law school.
But the initial decision to go to law school, and the steps to get there, was not a clear-cut tidy process. I struggled with the LSATs and the awkward nature of essays and applications. I applied to five law schools, and was rejected by all of them. In between licking my wounds at the sting of rejection, I found myself constantly plagued by self-doubt, wrestling with whether it was worth all the trouble – if it really was “the right choice” for me to go to law school. Once I convinced myself that it was, I set out to make myself a better candidate. I was so convinced of my mission to follow in Rhonda’s footsteps that the second time, I only applied to CUNY Law, where I knew she was running a clinic, then called the International Women’s Human Rights Clinic. I was accepted, and once there, I begged to be a part of it during my final year of law school. I was sure that was the ticket – the clear-cut path. I just had to follow her recipe for success, do what she had done, and I would be fine.
What I didn’t anticipate was that I would spend most of law school struggling to believe that I could “think like a lawyer,” or that I had what it took be successful. The lawyers that I grew up seeing, whether through family (firm lawyers), in jobs (contract law), or in pop culture, always appeared to have an innate understanding to read, write, think, talk in a way that I didn’t seem to possess. They were dispassionate, analytical, verbose, and armed with a sense of certainty of their intellect and their arguments. Stephen Wizner’s essay, Is Learning to Think Like a Lawyer Enough[5], reflects on that very disconnect in legal practice that results from an overemphasis on logic and legal reasoning. He argues that a clinical education can expose students to the nuances of legal advocacy, provide practical skills, and a sense of the moral and ethical challenges that we, as community lawyers, face in our every day practice. As a first-year law student, I believed that if logic and reasoning were the sole metrics for assessing success as an attorney, then I was doomed to fail. As I consider Wizner’s essay as an experienced attorney, I can say with certainty that my own integrity, my conviction in the oath of practicing law, and the zealous pursuit against injustice in communities is what made me a success as a lawyer.
I spent a year after law school trying to get a job as an attorney. The combination of a stock market crash, a shortage of jobs and a lack of legal experience in a specific practice area of law seemed to work against me. It took thirteen months for me to land my first staff attorney position -as a housing attorney- at Legal Services NYC in the Bronx. I knew nothing about housing law, I had never been in court, never argued in front of a judge, and despite a varied law school experience, felt completely ill-equipped to bear the responsibility of making sure that clients maintained their homes. I also wrestled with whether taking that job would stray me far from my path. What did housing have to do with gender discrimination? How was this going to get me closer to my vision of social justice lawyering? What was I going to learn from it? Was I going to be a “real lawyer” if I was working on summary proceedings in a civil court?
I still remember my first oral argument in housing court. I wrote out the points I wanted to make to the judge to defend the tenant’s failure to pay timely rent. I rehearsed them. I memorized the client’s rental history. I ran to the bathroom four times. Just before I appeared before the judge, I confessed to my boss that I was a bundle of nerves. She looked me square in the eye and said, “good, that means you’re doing something right.” She went on to say that failing to prepare was the greater sign of an inadequate attorney than a bout of nerves. Did the argument go exactly the way I imagined? No. Did it go well for what the client needed? Absolutely.
I spent the next six years realizing just how much I could learn as a lawyer in that role. For the first three years, I learned how to craft arguments, write motions, pleadings, complaints, and conduct trials. I learned how to work with clients in crisis, to conduct an intake that effectively issue spotted their needs, to push back against opposing counsel to get the best settlements for clients, and be coherent and concise in front of judges. Bronx Housing Court was trial by fire for a young attorney – forcing me to think quickly and to adapt strategies, learn how to respond to clients, and how to navigate a community lawyering practice. It was also in this space that I started to think more about the intersectionality of identity in the community I served.
Most tenants that I had, or saw, in Housing Court were predominantly women of color with children[6]. Many were Limited English Proficient or immigrants unfamiliar with the byzantine system of landlord-tenant law. They also were disproportionately more likely to lack legal representation, more likely to be navigating public benefits, multiple jobs, intimate partner violence, and a multitude of trauma and stressors. As a white female attorney, it was inevitable that I would navigate the inequitable power dynamic that often comes when working in low-income communities or communities of color. I also learned that, in that capacity, thinking like a lawyer did not rob me of my ability to empathize with a client that was struggling with a multitude of bureaucracies. I could navigate in both spaces – as a person and as a critical thinker with a sense of professional responsibility. I realized that thinking like a lawyer often required more creative analytical strategies than I initially realized.
A few years into my practice, my colleagues and I began noticing that many of our clients in public housing projects, senior citizens, and others with significant disabilities, were being forced to downsize to smaller, less accessible apartments. This push to relocate was particularly egregious given that the tenants had disclosed their need for reasonable accommodation[7]. One day, during a staff meeting, we were bemoaning how many clients were experiencing a similar fate. I asked why we were continuing to play defense and respond to each case individually, rather than take a more assertive, offensive response against the housing agency. What would happen if we collectively pooled our clients, and brought a case alleging a violation of their rights under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA)[8]? And it was that remark that would become my first foray into impact litigation.
When I think about the three years that I spent drafting, litigating, and settling that lawsuit, I remember struggling with the feeling of inadequacy, of frustration at not knowing, or remembering, particular rules of federal civil procedures, of being in negotiations with senior litigation directors that always felt humbling as I struggled to prove my mettle in a space that was so unfamiliar. Of proving to myself that not only did I belong in those rooms (despite feelings of imposter syndrome), but that my work ethic, and my ability to connect with clients and creatively problem solve issues were the very things that made a difference in those spaces. I had to confront the idea that I was no less an attorney, let alone a less competent one, than this room of seasoned white men, many of whom approached the law with a very different lens than I did as a young lawyer. That my voice was important. Ultimately, my voice was the reason we were in that space at all, because I insisted on driving the charge that would become the lawsuit, as well as the settlement that would create a systemic change for thousands of residents in public housing in NYC.
In my mind, the path of a social justice lawyer is not that different from the image Moore described, one in which we hold our value, and belief in community and the collective good tightly in our grip. It requires fortitude, and faith that there is some meaning to the idea of social justice lawyering. It also requires a willingness to brave those feelings of inadequacy as we navigate that journey, and a fervent belief and that comes from a desire to serve, to be an attorney in the service of human needs.
Endnotes
[1] Robert Bolt, A Man for All Seasons: A Play in Two Acts, xiii (1960).
[2] Benjamin Oreskes, ‘Long Live the King’: Trump Likens Himself to Royalty on Truth Social, THE NEW YORK TIMES (Feb. 19, 2025), https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/19/us/politics/trump-king-image.html
[3] Harris v. McRae, 448 US 297, 327 (1980) (finding found that the Hyde Amendment, which denies poor women on Medicare the right to abortion, did not violate the constitution).
[4] Filartitga v. Pena-Irala 630 F. 2d 876 (2d Cir. 1980)(recognizing that victims of international human rights violations may sue in U.S. federal court even if the crime was committed abroad-using Alien Tort Claims Act).
[5] Stephen Wizner, Is Learning to “Think Like a Lawyer” Enough?, 17 YALE L. AND POL’Y REV. 583 (1998).
[6] New York Area, New York, Eviction Lab (May 1, 2025), https://evictionlab.org/eviction-tracking/new-york-ny/; Urban Omnibus, Housing Brass Tracks; Ins and Outs of Housing Court, URBAN OMNIBUS (Feb. 7, 2018), https://urbanomnibus.net/2018/02/housing-court/
[7] 3 U.S.C.S. § 421; Reasonable Accommodation, NYCHA, https://www.nyc.gov/site/nycha/residents/reasonable-accomodation.page
[8] 3 U.S.C.S. § 421; Alameda et. al v. Rhea, No. 1:2012cv04217 (S.D.N.Y. May 29, 2012).
