Adaptation

Raised eyebrows. Assumptions. Being mistaken for support staff. Attorneys who have practiced law for less than a decade say they routinely struggle with misconceptions about their age.

Karishma Patel, who handles estate planning and probate matters with McDowall Cotter, took a lot of flak when she began practicing in 2019. “Clients, and sometimes other attorneys, look at you,” she says. “You’re a young woman, and they think you’re not experienced until you actually show them.”

Fortunately, for Patel and the other Rising Stars listees interviewed below, it gets better. Says employment and labor attorney Phillip Ebsworth, “I’m lucky enough to have somewhat of a baby face. When I first became an attorney, I very much recall more senior attorneys seeming to underestimate or not take me as seriously. I don’t suffer from it as much now.”

How it Started

Karishma Patel, McDowall Cotter; Estate Planning & Probate; San Mateo: It’s been a childhood dream. I was Chatty Cathy and loved to argue. Some people would say not much has changed. In my final year of law school, I took will and trusts and I really liked the subject matter. … I came to learn how much of an everyday need estate planning is—as well as the trust and estate practice in general. This practice is ever-changing, which gives way to constant learning and challenges. … But I enjoy my work in addition to being able to help people.

Phillip Ebsworth, Seyfarth Shaw; Employment & Labor; Sacramento: I’m from the UK originally. I chose law because there’s something about rules which has always appealed to me, as an eldest child who was always making sure the rules were followed by his younger siblings. One of the strengths of my practice is being able to be strategic and creative within procedural rules.

Angelica Sandoval Montenegro, Fried, Williams & Grice Conner; Real Estate; Oakland: I am a child of immigrants, and my parents made a lot of sacrifices to provide me a better life. It’s really hard to navigate this new world, so I always was that person to help bridge that gap. So [law] just felt natural. I’ve realized that this is kind of a hot topic, real estate. I focus mostly on landlord-tenant [issues]. It became my little niche.

Ian Quinn, Wanger Jones Helsley; Bankruptcy, Family Law; Fresno: I took a constitutional law class at the University of Texas, and the professor was fantastic. I got into family law initially. I had taken a bankruptcy class in law school, and an opportunity presented itself at my new practice—and I’ve taken it and run with it. There are a lot of similarities between the practices; both are dealing with people. The transition has been easier than I anticipated.

Paying Down Debt

Ebsworth: I had done my three-year law degree back home in the UK, where tuition at the time was capped drastically lower than tuition is here. When I got my master’s degree at UC Davis, I got a scholarship. My wife is a math teacher, and when we have a goal, we stick to it. So we were able to buckle down and pay off the debts that we had between us.

Quinn: I think it prolonged the period that I was renting before my now wife and I bought a home. You just can’t save as much as you would like when X percentage of your paycheck is going to student loan repayment. But I don’t want to give the impression that I have been living a rough life. I certainly walked into the student loan debt with eyes wide open.

Patel: I was fortunate enough to basically save up and then have some help. So I did not have a big amount of student debt to deal with, and it wasn’t a headache for me to pay anything off that remained.

Montenegro: I’m still paying toward it. It has been a barrier for me, but it is what it is.

Early Surprises

Montenegro: The law constantly changes. There were times—especially during the pandemic—where it felt like I knew the law one day, and then I woke up and there was a change the next day. In the landlord-tenant area, sometimes that information is publicized by the city. Sometimes it’s hard to find. Another thing that surprised me is that many clients look to attorneys not just for legal advice, but for support and comfort. It’s critical to understand that this is a big ordeal in our clients’ lives, and sometimes we just have to offer a listening ear.

Quinn: Perhaps not surprising, but humbling, is understanding that there’s a lot of on-the-job training. As a law student, you think that you’re going to go through three years being relatively practice-ready. You learn more in the first six months of being out in the real world than you did in law school—how to manage not only your time, but client relations.

Patel: Dealing with the people—clients, co-workers, other peers in the field—law school does not prepare you for that. You have some clients who are super understanding; you have some clients who expect you to be available 24/7. It takes some getting used to.

Ebsworth: I think [law] is much more adversarial here in California than it was back home. My friends from [UK] law school always love to hear some of the juicy stories, because it’s just something that really doesn’t happen back home.

The Pluses

Patel: As a new attorney, you’re eager to learn and you’re eager to get out there. For me, it worked to my advantage because I was a sponge: I absorbed everything.

Ebsworth: For the younger attorneys—both of my generation and, even more so, those who are coming out of law school now—it’s the adaptability to the ever-improving technology that we have in our field.

Montenegro: Certain software programs are meant to help you navigate multiple cases, and I think younger attorneys have the advantage of being able to learn more quickly. The sooner you learn how to use these programs and all of the different tools, the more efficient you’ll be at your job.

… And Minuses

Patel: As a young attorney who is trying to build your brand, build your name, get things done, I would say that figuring out the work-life balance is difficult. Maybe it’s more of a growing pain.

Montenegro: There are certain rules of the court, from the way you address the court to the way that you present yourself. Early on, I made the mistake of referring to the court as “you guys” [instead of “Your Honor”]. It just came out so naturally. Sometimes the millennial in me still slips out.

Ebsworth: The best attorneys learn from their mistakes. Obviously, when you’re fresh in practice you’ve had less opportunities to learn those lessons.

Memorable Cases

Montenegro: I represented an immigrant family who pooled their funds together to be able to purchase their dream home. Unfortunately for my clients, they encountered a buyer’s worst nightmare: They made all these plans, they purchased this house, escrow closed, and then they found out that the sellers changed their minds. This case was delayed for some time, but ultimately my clients have now moved into their dream home.

Ebsworth: The most meaningful one is a pro bono case I did for a charity called KIND, which stands for Kids in Need of Defense. They pair law firms with children who cross the border unaccompanied. I handled a case for a young boy who came from a very remote region of Mexico. He had fled with his sister to this country. His father and brothers were murdered by the cartel, so a lot of his remaining family fled to the United States as well. I will never forget when I went to that house for the last time to deliver the green card. As we left, the door closed behind us, and we could hear the whole family erupt into cheers and laughter and crying.

Quinn: Being able to go through a jury trial on the issues of child custody in Texas. I was very young in my career, but I got to see my boss do the voir dire and the opening and the closing to the jury. It’s definitely on my Mount Rushmore of learning moments: learning how to speak to people in a manner that they can relate to—and not come off as erudite or highbrow—while driving your point home.

Patel: In the past month, I had a client lose their son who had been dealing with cancer that came back. We got [their estate plan] done in a really short period of time just because things were moving pretty quick, and I came to learn that he passed away over the weekend. It’s nice to know that we got to help the clients in their time of need.

Navigating AI

Ebsworth: There’s obviously concern that comes with AI—all those stories you’ve seen in the legal press about AI writing briefs and coming up with fake cases and things like that. But there are certainly ways that it can be utilized to assist our practice, like summarizing vast amounts of documents or data. I think it can also teach attorneys how to structure arguments, or make them more readable or more persuasive.

Patel: I use it to help me answer questions. Obviously, I’m verifying it with my knowledge and cross-referencing it.

Montenegro: I think it’s a powerful tool. But it doesn’t replace us as attorneys. It is going to require a person to oversee its use.

Quinn: On the front end, it can smooth or round off the edges on a lot of the legal research you do. In the long run, I worry that if we cede too many substantive areas of the practice to technology, are we going to lose our sharpness? Are we going to become overreliant on the technologies? It may mean that it takes less attorneys to do the same amount of work, and that’s something that the entire profession is going to have to grapple with.

What They’d Change

Ebsworth: I’ve represented both plaintiffs and defendants, huge international companies, and businesses locally owned by single parents, and the fact that the courts are overworked and backlogged is of no advantage to anybody. The Eastern District has been asking Congress to approve additional judges for this district for about 20 years now, maybe more than that. Judges just have so many cases and they don’t have enough resources.

Quinn: Bring back in-person hearings. There’s something magical when you get folks in a room together. If I’m taking a hearing on Zoom and the opposing counsel is going to be working up until five minutes before the hearing, I don’t have time to grab them in the hallway and say, “Hey, why don’t you go talk to your client and let’s meet in the chamber next door and try and hash this out?”

Montenegro: A statistic from the Hispanic National Bar Association in May of 2024 showed that only 3% of all attorneys in the United States are Latina. If there’s something I can change in the practice of law, it is that figure. I want to see more attorneys that look like me.