Just before law school, I served as Executive Director of the Armenian Relief Society's Glendale, California-based Earthquake Relief Fund for Armenia. The ERFA was a relief agency created to provide help to victims of the magnitude 6.9 earthquake that struck Armenia on December 7, 1988, killing at least 25,000 people and injuring untold others. I established and managed the ERFA’s offices, implemented the Executive Council’s policies and directives, coordinated with other charities, researched donation and grant sources, conducted media relations, supervised staff and volunteers and, of course, raised funds. Working with the ERFA was a blessing in that I could do good by helping a stricken people while developing specialized and valuable skills.
I attended evening courses at Southwestern Law School. Southwestern built upon the foundation laid during my undergraduate Criminal Justice and Business Administration studies at the California State University, Los Angeles.
While at Southwestern, I held employment and externships exposing me to a broad spectrum of legal knowledge and experience. During my first year of law school, I worked full-time as a Law Clerk with what is said to be "the world's largest law firm" - the Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office. My specialty was to work with criminal prosecutors and police officers to save the people of the state of California resources by sending probation violators to jail without the need for expensive trials on new charges. We did this using inexpensive but Constitutionally sound probation violation hearings. It was an interesting job that exposed me to the inner workings and realities of the criminal justice system.
While still in law school, I left the DA's Office and joined a specialized judicial research and support team, the Los Angeles County Superior Court (then Municipal Court) Planning and Research Unit. As a PRU Legal Research Assistant, I delved into issues of civil and criminal law and procedure for Los Angeles County judges and others who subscribed to the PRU's services and publications. I conducted short and long-term legal research, prepared legal memoranda for judges and staff attorneys, analyzed new legislation and helped prepare the PRU’s annual Legislative Report for publication. In short, my time at the PRU made me very good at quickly finding reliable answers to a range of legal questions.
Southwestern's curriculum also offered me the opportunity to participate in two clinical externships. The first was as a California Bar Certified Law Clerk. I was assigned to my old employer - the LADA's Office - this time at the Kenyon Juvenile Justice Center in South Central Los Angeles immediately after the 1992 LA Riots. This was a particularly important rotation for me because it opened my eyes to a world I had never experienced first hand - one of burned-out inner city neighborhoods home to a lot of good people who were being terrorized by hard, sometimes brutal...children. It was my job to represent the People in numerous arraignments, plea agreements, witness and victim interviews, and the like. I tried 14 cases while under the detached supervision of a prosecutor and won them all. According to Kenyon's Deputy-in-Charge, I did very well, but the experience left me with the realization that the juvenile justice system was badly flawed. I also realized I was hooked on being in a courtroom.
My final law school externship - also as a California Bar Certified Law Clerk - was with the Office of the City Attorney, in Glendale, California, the city where I now practice. I gained valuable civil litigation experience through drafting pleadings and motions, watching trial and appellate lawyers in action and learning to tread carefully in what Prof. Van Alstyne's has called the "mine field" of government tort claims law. The high-point of this externship was serving as a mediator and hearing officer in neighbor dispute and city code cases; there’s no substitute for experience, and when it comes to dispute resolution, this is where I started getting mine. Even now, more than a decade-and-a-half after my work with the Glendale City Attorney's Office, my tour there continues to pay dividends.
All in all, it’s been an interesting journey.
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