The Constantine Cannon whistleblower team is delighted to announce the Fifth-Place Winner of the firm’s Fourth Law School Scholarship Essay Contest on the importance of whistleblowers. That award (and the $250 prize) goes to Alicia Terrero.
Alicia is an incoming 1L at NYU School of Law. Her areas of interest include civil rights and employment law.
In her essay, Alicia poignantly depicted a personal whistleblowing-related experience while working as a paralegal. She took a stand and advocated with colleagues to represent a client with strong asylum claims, following a declined intake with the initially assigned attorney.
According to Alicia: “It is easy for us to become complacent in spaces where we are taught to prioritize the voice of others above our own. However, if we do not speak up when we witness injustice, it can be at a huge expense to the most vulnerable.”
Alicia also shared how she intends to use her law degree in the future.
We will post the other winning essays in the weeks ahead. We will launch our next Scholarship Essay Contest soon, so stay tuned. In the meantime, if you’re not already a subscriber to our weekly newsletter, please sign up to catch the latest whistleblower news and developments and what the government is doing to go after fraud and misconduct.
Whistleblower Essay by Alicia Terrero
As a paralegal, I learned early on in my role that attorneys ultimately have the final say in which clients we represent and that my opinions about cases were secondary to theirs. I was frustrated in realizing that our organization could not help every client we screened, but I eventually made peace with this as I listened to my attorney colleagues explain why we accepted certain cases and not others. The justifications always made sense: we often lacked capacity for certain complex cases or the client was ineligible for a pathway to citizenship.
One day, however, I screened a client who was given a decision about representation for his case that did not make sense to me. The client had fled from his home country of Algeria after being burned alive in his sleep due to his ethnicity and political activism. I could sense the profound sadness and fear in his voice as he told me about the torture he experienced. In addition to this, the client was homeless and suffering from multiple health issues as a result of his injuries. His case sounded like it could make for a very strong asylum claim and it was clear that our team was the best fit for this client’s legal needs. In addition to this, the client was just four months away from his one-year filing deadline, but I was optimistic that we could file it on time.
After the intake, I was convinced that the attorney reviewing this case would agree that we should represent this client. That afternoon, I saw a case note from the attorney in which he called the client and told him we would not be representing him due to lack of capacity. I was shocked. At the time, we had few cases and most were very straightforward. I immediately realized this had been the second time in a couple of months that I screened someone with a very strong asylum claim and the attorney had refused to take on their case. I was frustrated because I knew he was going to refer the client out to another organization, which meant that it was unlikely that the client would find an attorney who would take his case before his one-year filing deadline. This is especially the case because most free legal service providers in a city like ours are understaffed and under-resourced. During our next meeting, I told the attorney how I was willing to put in the extra work to file this client’s case if he was unable to do it and how I thought we should represent this client. The attorney insisted that there was no time to file the case.
I decided to bring this issue up to another attorney on our team. When I told her, she got visibly angry at what happened. She even expressed a willingness to take on the case herself if my colleague was unwilling to do so. She eventually brought this issue up to my supervisor who also agreed that we should take on the client’s case and that there was plenty of time to file it. I was worried that my colleague would find out that I “ratted him out” and get angry at me but I knew that the client’s access to legal representation mattered so much more. Ultimately, the case was reassigned to the attorney I confided in about the matter. We were able to file the client’s asylum application on time, advocate for the client to get necessary medical accommodations at his shelter, and get him a work permit.
It is easy for us to become complacent in spaces where we are taught to prioritize the voice of others above our own. However, if we do not speak up when we witness injustice, it can be at a huge expense to the most vulnerable. This experience reinforced why I want to become an attorney. I want to ensure that the clients I screen, and ultimately represent, as an attorney are treated with the compassion and consideration they deserve as they navigate legal systems, such as the U.S. immigration system, that often strip them of their dignity and humanity. Ultimately, I hope to use my legal degree as a means of advocating for the rights of the most vulnerable and standing up for them when they face injustice.
Read Fifth Place Winner of Constantine Cannon’s Whistleblower Essay Contest: Alicia Terrero at constantinecannon.com
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