While many landmark Supreme Court cases dictate the lives of LGBTQ+ Americans, less than three percent of legal professionals representing them are LGBTQ+, according to the National Association for Law Placement.
Last Saturday, the Northeastern University School of Law hosted their first annual Reach(OUT) conference, where LGBTQ+ law students could network and hear current LGBTQ+ lawyers speak about their experiences.
The event began with a panel called “Being Your Authentic Self” about how to feel more comfortable being open in the workplace and being prepared for discomfort and exhaustion.
Many times, panelists said, the assumptions that people make about their gender or sexuality are what pushes them closer to burning out.
Heron Greenesmith, a policy attorney for LGBTQ+ people, once spent all day with someone working on a Pride event who still, at the end of the day, made wrong assumptions about their sexual orientation. “You didn’t once look at me,” they said.
“You don’t really know what to replenish,” said Hema Sarang-Sieminski, a senior attorney at the Victim’s Rights Law Center, after talking about times where she’s been assumed to be a client or been asked to translate for clients.
Panelists said many people, especially in the workplace, will see them as the face of an entire group, and will put them in a position where they will have to speak on behalf the entire LGBTQ+ community.
“The more times where you’re the only one, the more opportunities there will be where you walk away feeling bruised and unheard,” said Nima Eshghi, the assistant dean for NUSL.
Jess Acosta, an assistant Attorney General honor’s fellow in the Attorney General’s office, described the feeling as similar to being a caregiver. The way to combat this?
“The word no,” Acosta said, on dealing with invasive coworker questions. “Let it sit, understand it — it’s an important word to use.”
After the panel, there were two breakout sessions: “Gender Expression and Identity in the Workplace” and “How to Navigate Applying to and Working for Firms.” Stefanie Fisher, an immigration lawyer for Arujo & Fisher and a panelist, worked for a lesbian health organization before attending law school, where she moved into immigration policy.
“I think that LGBTQ+ people are constantly making their own assessments about their safety, security, and comfort, whether they are on the job or not,” Fisher told The Daily Free Press.
Sitraka St. Michael, an openly gay first year at NUSL, is still learning the ins and outs of law. “It’s almost a recharging station that I needed and [I] wanted to hear from people who are on the other side of being through what I’m entering right now,” St. Michael said.
The event’s keynote speaker, Ivan Espinoza-Madrigal, an openly gay and Latino immigrant, works as the executive director of Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights and Economic Justice.
Espinoza-Madrigal said his family is what pushed him to be a lawyer.
“I wanted to be a lawyer so I could protect my family,” he said in an interview with The Daily Free Press. “So I could know what the landlord could or couldn’t do to us, so I could know what cops could or couldn’t do to us when they pulled us over.”
For Espinoza-Madrigal, it’s often difficult to distinguish between realities faced by his clients and those potentially faced by family members.
“I see my family reflected in every case I file,” he said. “That’s because the clients I have represented over my career could easily have been my cousins or my neighbors. The problems tend to be universal.”
Poverty and discrimination are issues inherently tied to identity, Espinoza-Madrigal said. He said that these issues are faced by all minority groups, across the lines of race and sexuality.
“It’s not always easy,” he continued. “But I think it’s critical that we make deliberate and intentional efforts to advance an intersectional agenda that allows people from across communities and movements to feel included and protected.”
Above all, Espinoza-Madrigal said, it’s important that LGBTQ+ individuals, along with members of other minority groups, speak out about toxic work environments.
“You should not suffer in silence if your work environment is toxic to you,” Fisher said. “None of us can do our best when we cannot be ourselves.”
