Episode 110: Theresa Harris
Program Director of the American Association For The Advancement Of Science, Human Rights and Law Program
01:02:33
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Show Notes
Theresa Harris, the Program Director of the AAAS Scientific Responsibility, Human Rights and Law Program, sits down with host M.C. Sungaila to discuss her organization's role in connecting scientists with human rights concerns, and her career path from more traditional human rights law leadership to her current role, where she manages projects that include a volunteer referral service that provides technical support for human rights organizations, activities that promote greater understanding of the human right to science, and a new project on artificial intelligence and human rights. This is an inspiring episode for lawyers who want to explore the many ways they can make a difference with their law degree.
This episode is powered by Infinite Global.
Relevant episode links:
American Association For The Advancement Of Science, SEA Change, Science and Human Rights Coalition, On-Call Scientists
About Theresa Harris:
Theresa Harris
Theresa Harris is the Program Director of the AAAS Scientific Responsibility, Human Rights and Law Program. She manages the Program's projects on science and human rights, including Oncall Scientists, a volunteer referral service that provides technical support for human rights organizations, activities that promote greater understanding of the human right to science, and a new project on artificial intelligence and human rights. She also serves as coordinator of the AAAS Science and Human Rights Coalition, a network of scientific, engineering, and health associations that recognize the role of science and technology in human rights.Prior to joining AAAS, Ms. Harris represented survivors of human rights violations before United States courts, the Inter-American human rights system, and United Nations human rights mechanisms. She has served on the Board of Directors of Amnesty International USA and is a member of the governing body of the World Organization Against Torture. Ms. Harris holds degrees in anthropology, land use planning, and law and is a Fellow of the American Bar Foundation.
Transcript
In this program, I'm very pleased to welcome a collaborator over many years in both her current position and previous organization, and an amazing non-profit leader, Theresa Harris, who is now in the position of Director at the American Association For The Advancement Of Science of many different programs involving human rights, scientific responsibility, and the law. Welcome, Theresa.
Thank you much for inviting me to be here.
You have an interesting career both at a human rights organization that was a little more broadly based than your current organization and such an interesting career trajectory and important work. I'm interested in highlighting that for law students who might be wondering where they might find their place in the world, but also for lawyers and others who might want to support your work in some way, whether it's through pro bono work or other aspects. Also that this exists. Your current organization and connecting scientists with the law and human rights concerns is a unique venture that I don't know how many people know about it. I'm looking forward to sharing what you do with others.
I love to talk about what I do. Thank you much.
We are interested in your career journey so that hopefully others can be inspired by it and also not be too concerned if there are bumps in the road to know that they will come out fine too on the other side of things. To that end, first, how did you come to the law? What inspired you? Is the work you're doing right now part of that inspiration or was it something you discovered along the way?
It is very much something I discovered along the way. It's one of those things that in retrospect, I look back and say, “That all makes sense, the way it unfolded,” but it was not the path I started down. I started toward a very different career. I have a degree in Anthropology and then started in graduate school toward Archeology and ended up going into Urban Planning.
Part of that was because Anthropology and Archeology were becoming more and more academic. I felt like that wasn't a good fit for me. I wanted to do something to make the world a better place. How is this making the world better? Now I know better. I don't want any of the academic scientists I work with to be concerned about that.
I went into urban planning, which at least in school, in my Master's degree, was very focused on making the world a better place, creating jobs, affordable housing, economic development, making the streets better, and protecting the environment. I found my home. I was very at home in that. I got my degree and went into that field. I worked in urban planning land use, zoning, environmental impacts, and transportation impacts. I could explain how the engineers come up with how decisions about highways and things like that. I did that for eight years in Florida.
Somewhere along the way, I got discouraged because at the same time through that, I was a human rights activist. I started in high school with the Amnesty International chapter. I was involved in that in college. I was volunteering with a refugee resettlement group in Florida while I was working in planning. I felt like there was this huge disconnect between what I was doing nights and weekends and what I was doing during the day.
These were all issues, “Where do the schools go? Where is affordable housing?” and whether there's affordable housing. These are all human rights decisions, but human rights weren't part of it. I was discouraged by that and I thought, “How can I connect all of this? How can I make this click?” Two people I knew in the world were lawyers at the time and they were both working very much in public interest law. They both said, “Go to law school but make sure you get clinical experience. Make sure you go to a school where you have a lot of experiential learning and those things because of what you want to do, strong public interest program.”
That's what I looked for. I went to American University. I did all the human rights things I could because I felt like it was this big do over in my life. From there into exactly what people think a human rights lawyer is, I joke, “What you think Amal Clooney does probably is what I did.” I did human rights litigation. I was at the World Organization for Human Rights USA. We did impact litigation on four survivors of torture and human trafficking. We were doing asylum for survivors of forced marriage. We were establishing trafficking and forced marriage as grounds for asylum. We were working in that space.
These were some free speech issues and important cases for that I got an incredible amount of experience, but I left all that other stuff behind. I was invited to speak at AAAS at the first Science and Human Rights Coalition meeting on a panel that was called She Speaks Science, He Speaks Human Rights. The point of the panel was to bring together human rights activists and scientists who had worked across those communities and talk about what had happened, how that worked, what the pitfalls were, and what worked well.
It was incredibly inspiring to be part of that which we had used scientific evidence in several of our cases. I felt, “This is what I want to do. I can finally connect what I was doing before law school with the law,” then a position opened up and I was offered the job. Here I am. The program I'm in now was scientific responsibility, human rights, and law.
It's been around in different modes and in different forms for 50 years. It came out of protests in the ‘60s and ‘70s insisting that scientists be more aware of their social responsibilities and their responsibilities for human rights. That they take that into account in what they do and that professional societies have a responsibility for human rights.
That history, legacy, and all the work that's evolved out of it spoke to me as somebody who came out of public interest law. The opportunity to not only continue to work in human rights in a way that was meaningful to me is meaningful to me. Also, to think about how do we build and continue to build a public interest science career track and opportunities in ways that public interest law has and is still building as opportunities, pathways, and ways to make an impact with the law. It's very winding.
At one point, I remember early when I was still in law school, a mentor told us about her career pathway and said, “You can't get typecast. There's always a next, a pivot, and an open door. Don't worry about making a choice that is going to, “You'll be doing that forever.” It never happens. That's been the case for me coming from all these different backgrounds.
That's common. That's either people are conscious of it or after they describe their journey, they'll say, “That was winding. Although in retrospect, it makes sense, given where my interests were and the various skills that I had.” Looking back, this seems like the natural next step, but at the time when you're doing it and making the decisions, maybe not much.
That's encouraging because sometimes people think, “Everybody has such a well-laid-planned path. They knew exactly where they were going to end up, each decision they made,” and that's not true. At your prior organization, World Organization for Human Rights, you were in a leadership position quite early there, which was a unique opportunity and that's where we met where we were working on various cases together.
I learned a lot about appellate lawyering from you there and also about leadership. I was lucky to have that opportunity early on in my career in a way that at a small organization, you have to do everything, but that's a tremendous learning experience to do all that.
That's what I was thinking of you. In choosing your opportunities, there are different pros and cons of each. Not only in a very established organization but the one that had 60 people or whatever, when you're coming in, you wouldn't have the variety of roles that you were called upon to have. There's a lot more ladder in leadership. That would take more time to get to the level that you were at. That was a good choice for those kinds of skills, although at the time could be a little bit overwhelming when you're wearing several different hats and doing several different things.
When the recession hit, it was not a good time to be the leader of a small organization, but learning.
You've had different roles within AAAS since you've been there. Maybe when you're talking about the different roles, you can also talk about the different programs and the various things. As you outlined, the origins of the organization and its mission have evolved over time in response to the changing world and the changing recognition of the role of science and human rights and science itself as a human right. There's a good education there on how an organization evolves to respond to growing awareness and also changes in the world.
AAAS, as an organization, was established in 1848. It was one of the first US scientific member organizations and publishes in the Journal of Science. Lots of people know Science Magazine, but we are a three-part organization. There's the publication science in the Science Family of Journals. We have a membership. The component that is important. We have 120,000 scientists who are members of AAAS.
That's continued since 1848, then we have a program component. That is a little bit newer than 1848. That came out of a recognition that both from the membership and also from the scientific community more broadly that scientists needed to be more directly engaged in policy and in society that our motto is, “The service of science, the service of society.”
In the late ‘60s or ‘70s said, “We're going to create some programs to make that real.” The Science and Human Rights program was created. The Scientific Freedom and Responsibility program were created. That eventually moved into recognizing the need for science to get involved in the law. That was in the ‘80s and ‘90s when junk science was becoming recognized and we had Supreme Court cases going through AAAS and the National Academies of Science were on an amicus brief in the Dover case. That was where that part of the work came from. We are one program now, Scientific Responsibility, Human Rights, and Law of seven programs within AAAS.
There's also the Science Diplomacy program that places scientists in Federal agencies, congressional offices, and fellowships so that those offices, the legislature, and the executive branch can learn from scientists. The scientists can learn how government works to better improve how they do their science. We also have a program that puts students into mass media fellowships. That's part of the fellowship program. We’re training students who want to be science journalists. We have a large program that is focused on increasing opportunities in science, education, and careers to make the community more inclusive.
We have a diversity, equity, and inclusion program. That includes a project called SEA Change that's working in scientific departments and universities to think about gender, disability, and race as how can the department itself be more inclusive, looking at the systems that are in place that are maybe preventing that, thinking about attrition, retention, and things like that. It’s going from top to bottom in the culture of the organization. It's based on a similar program called Athena SWAN in the UK, but it's a fascinating project by itself. We have diversity, equity, and inclusion science education projects.
We have a project called Sideline that connects scientists with journalists. It’s a fantastic project and program. One called Epicenter is creating and making scientific evidence available to policymakers at the Federal state and local levels to make sure they have access to information to make decisions. They don't advocate for any particular policy but make sure that the decisions that are made are based on evidence that the evidence is available and accessible.
If there's any theme, it's like bridging science and scientific work which might otherwise be somewhat cloistered or stay within the discipline and bridging that, putting it out into the world to be considered, and be part of whatever decisions are made policy-wise or society-wise.
Making scientific information accessible to influential people, including our program, judges, human rights practitioners, law schools, and groups like that, but also making creating opportunities for scientists to engage in that work. Often what we hear is that scientists want to be involved. They want to have influence. They don't know where to get started. They don't know how to do it. It's a two-way bridge.
It’s like a clearing house for scientists to find ways to engage and bridge.
Get the training to do it too because you don't intuitively necessarily know how to do that. That's one of the things that when I look back on my career, I feel was a gift that made me well-positioned to be able to do this work. I did have technical training and I worked with scientists and engineers in my previous life, my pre-law career, and had to learn how to translate what they were saying into public policy.
As a human rights lawyer, I was trying to translate scientific evidence into our briefs and the work we were doing. It is almost like being a translator or an interpreter to be able to get people to sit together and explain, “The word trial is such a good example. It means something completely different. It’s very different in science than it does in law. If you have a scientist at a judge and you start talking about trials, they think you're talking about something completely different.” As basic as that, having people who can sit in the middle of that and say, “Explain because we might not all understand each other in this discussion.”
It's cross-cultural communication in a way you have exposure to both cultures so you can understand, “We might be using a word in a different way, in a different sense, and then everything from there is going to go downhill. Let's get straight what we're talking about here in each contact.”
One of the things I've learned has particularly come up in the human rights work that I've been doing, and you had asked me to start with the position. When I was first hired, I was hired to manage two projects within the program. One is the Science and Human Rights Coalition, which is a network of scientific organizations, professional organizations like the American Chemical Society and American Anthropological Association, or groups like that that are working to mainstream human rights in their professional associations, bring the work of their disciplines of those fields to human rights and make it more accessible. It’s thinking about the connections between psychology or statistics with human rights.
That's one piece of what I have been doing for many years. The other is On-Call Scientists, which is a volunteer program for scientists to volunteer with human rights organizations. Human rights organizations can request technical assistance and scientific support. We match them. We have 1500 volunteers across every ology you can think of, social, behavioral, physical, environmental sciences, medical, and clinical. It covers 72 different countries. We are the matchmakers on that.
One of the things that we've learned is how there's this initial connection to be made, but then that translation, interpretation, and building understanding has to happen over time. It's not a one-off. You can answer a question in a one-off. A scientist can explain it in a way that the human rights practitioner, who are often lawyers in our work understand it. They know the answer. They can go with the community. Their clients create solutions based on that information and develop advocacy around it. To do something longer term take takes a lot more back and forth. We have seen that come up in some of the cases that eventually go to litigation.
It's all the way through to, “How do I as a human rights lawyer explain this particular scientific phenomenon, the change that's happening? What's going to happen when this pollutant gets into the water, for example? What are the implications of it?” We've had it come up in questions about climate change, climate science, and things like that. It's one thing to ask a question about some evidence that's going into your brief. It's another to be trying to explain it to a judge or to a regulatory official who is making decisions. That requires a longer-term relationship built on trust. Trust is a lot harder to build than some of figuring out the jargon.
You're working not just on one discreet project. You're working on a longer-term project in that way and ongoing. You want to have that. You can develop trust over that or not, implode and maybe create more issues.
The reality is that in many communities if there are human rights concerns, there's a good chance that the community has very good reasons not to trust scientists. Many communities have been exploited in the past. I've heard it more than once, “We know there are a lot of PhDs out in our village, town, refugee camp, or whatever it is because of surveys they've done of us, but we've never heard any of the results or been able to benefit from that information.”
“Good for them that they're PhDs now, but what's in it for us?” When I talk about scientific responsibility, that's a big part of what we're thinking about is how can we get away from that and think about the responsibilities that are part of public interest science and how you relate with people that way and think of them as not as data points.
In terms of the things that I know of human rights work and discreet things with regard to cases, having experts on particular points and helping to advocate that way to the human rights courts, but there's a lot more involved in that too, although I think about it in terms of how important scientific experts are to a lot of the human rights cases.
I think about some of the war crimes situations where you need to get some pretty good analysis as early as you can before things are wiped away or no longer can be accessed. You would need to have quick access to good scientists who could participate in that. That certainly is something that I think of as your organization facilitating.
That particular issue is something that we have something of a niche in. I don't want to overstate it. We had the opportunity to work with several scientists on a report, some guidelines that we put together a few years ago. The point of the report was to put together recommendations on the use of satellite imagery and other forms of geospatial technologies for international human rights litigation. Looking at satellite imagery as a form of scientific evidence. The big thing that I saw as somebody who works in this field and also has legal training was that you have to think about both common law and civil law when you're talking about international human rights litigation.
That misunderstanding of satellite imagery analysis can lead you to some very incorrect conclusions about that type of evidence. Part of the project was me going through every case that the International Criminal Court has heard that involves satellite imagery and reading the transcripts of the questioning across of the expert witness, the scientific expert who was brought in to admit that evidence, and how it was handled.
Looking at the decision and how the court weighed that particular type of evidence because that's a blended court where they're using a mix of different laws. What came out was this because looking at that evidence of mass graves or it came out of the ICTY, the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. Those were aerial photos and satellite photos, but they weren't digital. What we have now is digital evidence that can be analyzed through many different platforms. You can use different types of light lots of different filters and things as part of the analysis. That's all part of the science behind it. It's not playing with it. It's not Photoshop.
That somebody would think doing that would be somehow altering it or doing something inappropriate, but that's one of the ways you analyze it.
What you're admitting is a scientific report. It's an outcome and an analysis, not a photograph. Most lawyers will know. Those are very different types of evidence that are admitted and questioned differently and have different probative values. Looking even in that very specific circumstance of the International Criminal Court the Inter-American Court for Human Rights, the Human Rights Commission, and the European Courts.
There are a few enough cases that I could look at the transcripts and read them all. It didn't take five years, but it's enough that there needs to be more understanding of what this even is that's in front of you. Scientists need to know how to present it to the court in a way that's clear, how to use it, what it says and what it doesn't say. In that particular report, you might tell by the way I'm talking about it. Intellectually, I was committed to it. I feel like it was a worthwhile project for us to delve into.
There are portions of it that are written by scientists that are very technical. I would read them and say, “This doesn't make any sense. I have questions.” Other people who aren't scientists are going to have questions, then I would write the legal analysis and they would look at it and say, “You have to explain probative values. I don't know what that means.” The outcome is something that we think is very useful to human rights practitioners, lawyers, and courts themselves. We've been able to turn it into some things that are more practical even now with the conflict in Ukraine.
There is so much information coming out of the satellites, less than daily because there are many more sensors out there now that now those recommendations are incredibly practical. Analysts are looking at that information all the time, and there are more mechanisms out there now in order to hold perpetrators accountable that are looking at that evidence. We haven't looked at that particular niche. That experience was very helpful in the project that we worked on.
I can only use the royal “we” on it as the program director now, but several other people in the program did to create materials for judges on artificial intelligence. Every piece of it was written by scientists, lawyers, and a couple of cases, judges. We had judges involved as co-authors. There's, “What is artificial intelligence? What do the technical terms mean in plain language?” AI as evidence. What are the different iterations with that, algorithmic bias, and some of the concerns that can raise for the courts and the use of AI in the courtroom?
Thinking about things like geometrics, how it's being used for that, and whether that’s an appropriate use of artificial intelligence. That same was a similar project of bringing people together to co-author and co-create those materials. It's something that's very satisfying to pull the wisdom out of, “Get the wisdom of the group and put it into something that's new that serves both sides of that.”
It is very satisfying to pull the wisdom out of the group and put it into something that's new and serves both sides.
Even before you talked about that project, I was thinking there was a huge potential for judicial education in this. There's a thirst for that. I remember when the reference manual on scientific evidence came out. Courts and judges were grateful for that because boiling things down and explaining it in a way that you need to understand if you're admitting or excluding evidence. That’s something very different than just pure science and the questions you might have as the scientist or the expert in the case. This would be valuable in that context also.
The reference manual is being updated. The National Academies and the Committee on Science, Technology, and Law are working on it. We know that there's going to be a new section on artificial intelligence. We are looking forward to seeing that. It's either late 2023. It's still a little while for it. It has to expand.
I was thinking, “That was a long time ago when the reference manual came out.”
We're on the 3rd edition now, and this will be the 4th. The Public Committee Meeting so far has identified that there are a number of new issues that new chapters are needed in that manual. Some of the other ones need to be updated because the science is updated. One of the biggest things is that this is not limited to lawyers or the law. The way that we're taught science as kids and all the way through school, most of us who were in law didn't have a science. We don't have PhDs. People in Silicon Valley, the startup lawyers do. We learned it as facts that you have to learn and memorize, but that's not what science is, and that's not how it's brought to the courts.
Now people say, “Yesterday you told me it wasn't healthy to drink coffee and now it is healthy to drink coffee. What am I supposed to do?” The idea of science evolving and how that happens is something that lawyers should learn in law school about science. We don't need to learn how to sample for certain days. We need to know what that is so that we could be good consumers of it.
It’s knowing how the scientific process works, what peer review is, and what a peer review journal publication means. It's held up as this gold standard, but what does it mean? That's what I wish more people in the law knew from me sitting in this position because it helps you get a better sense of how to question it when facts are put in front of you and, “This is the science.” “What process did you use? What is this based on? Is this something brand new or is this something that's based on 500 years of evolving research?” You just say, “This is the science,” but you don't really know.
When I read in cases different scientific studies of things, there's always the follow-up at the end, which is, “This is very helpful. This is very interesting, but here are new areas of research, and here is where we need to evolve the analysis and discussion,” which always in from a lawyer's view is, “You don't have the final answer. That's somehow indicative of the value of the overall study that you presented as being incomplete or something that we shouldn't rely on as heavily because you've identified all these additional things.”
Part of the scientific culture is to identify additional things. I feel like that's an intersection of two different cultures where we're looking for a clear answer, a defined answer, a fact like, “Once and for all, what am I dealing with factually? We want to be right when we're talking about the law itself. That whole culture against one that uses a backdrop of evolution in understanding, being open to that, and acknowledging that even in the current work, even if it reveals some definitive statement on one small part of the issue, there's something larger to look at.
I've always thought that was a conflict or a misunderstanding of what scientists are talking about when they write that in their papers. Thank you much for sharing all the different things that you're doing. I think of it as the core of engaging and bridging the experts with the actual human rights litigation in cases, but there's much more to what you do. It's interesting and also how the need has evolved from a policy standpoint and also an interest in being more involved in things from the scientific side.
You're using both your skills in your career prior to going to law school and your legal skills in these different settings, even if you're not directly litigating cases. You're using your legal skills to translate back and forth to the scientists and your understanding of science to do the same. How do you use your legal training and how do you translate the use of the skills that you may have used outright in human rights litigation now in a more policy context?
There's a lot of thinking about building a case of, “I need to be mindful of how the human rights practitioners I work with are doing that on their side,” because that's the reason that they would come to us for a scientist volunteer or some of the other resources we have. It's often because they what they'll come to us with is not a research question. It's, “This thing is happening and we need to prove that the water is polluted and it's this mine's fault. This is happening and we need the data to prove that this is happening to this particular community. They're being discriminated against.”
In my position, I'm able to help them think of it more in terms of a research question and that you're not fishing for the data that's going to prove your case because you might be wrong. That might not be the cause of it. What your client wants to know is the cause of it then develop solutions. A lot of times it is not litigation that they're looking for. They are doing advocacy for changes in the policy, regulations, or a particular action from a local government. It isn't always litigation, but you don't know what to ask for if you don't know the cause and if you've jumped to conclusions based on what you think is the answer.
Bringing that approach but understanding and respecting that you want to make this case to the research. That has been a helpful approach because I've been in that position before and sometimes you're not asking the right question of the evidence in order to know the truth. Even though I'm sitting in a different role to understand persuasive writing and how to make technical information understandable to the people who need it in order to make decisions, that's important as well. Also, understanding the legal system, “What are the places in the process of pre-trial appellate? Where would that be used and how is that different?”
Sometimes, you're just not asking the right question of the evidence in order to know the truth.
That's something that I've been able to have found myself able to explain. For example, the difference between a criminal tribunal at the international level and the European Court of Human Rights. It’s very different in the stages, process, and jurisdiction and what they can and can't hear. Explaining that to scientists when they're like, “What am I getting myself into? What does it mean to be a witness in this case? How's the evidence going to be used?” That's another way that I've been able to apply it in the human rights work that I've done.
I asked that because it's not your typical sense of what you think you would be doing as a lawyer in law school. Some other guests on the show have gone to even not legal non-profit work, just non-profit work where they're doing good for the community in other ways that they've said that their training has helped them.
The legal training helped them, whether it was persuading people, telling a good fundraising story for their nonprofit, understanding how to convene different groups like you're doing, who have different interests and different backgrounds, getting them to work together, communicating well with each other, and supporting the organization or even from a management standpoint or a leadership standpoint within the organization that you use your critical thinking and other skills to also manage and lead.
In the position I'm in now, even small things like contracts for catering for conferences, and things like that, I am looking at those things and thinking about some of those. That helps too. There's a certain amount of systems thinking that I picked up in law school. You think about the process, how the law works, how lawmaking at the legislative or the regulatory stamp position works in that phase, and then how the law is applied and interpreted.
Thinking about the system of governance is something that I've applied a lot in my work and thinking about how decisions get made and what needs to be included in that policy decision. That's part of it too. I keep coming back over and over again in the work I've been doing to this idea of the culture of public interest in law. I hear that said in some of the scientific organizations where we want to create a culture of public interest.
I don't mean this to be diminishing, but there's so much experience for other areas, other sectors, in my case, science, to learn from the successes of the public interest law movement and what that means to have a professional obligation to ensure access to justice that culture isn't just we have public defenders, we're done.
It's the awards that pro bono projects get. It's law firms promoting their pro bono work and making it possible for lawyers to do it on projects that might be risky or might seem risky, but turning that into a PR success when they do good work. Some of the law schools have public interest tracks, loan forgiveness, and thinking about career pathways. There are these fellowships now when you have immediate postgraduate fellowships and then there are career opportunities.
There isn't the same culture in science. Younger scientists now who are in school are hungry for that. They want that. There are big movers and shakers. I give full credit to the Ford Foundation, which interestingly enough was involved in the origins of the public interest law movement and was a big force for that. They're looking at it now, “What did we learn from that? How can we apply that to public interest technology?” Similarly, they are trying to build the infrastructure for a culture of public interest technology at universities, government, public sector, and private sector, and what that looks like.
To be part of that right now in the thinking about how we build that and being able to say, “I'm a product of the public interest law movement and all of the cultures that were created. I can tell you exactly what we do in law and what's worked and what hasn't,” felt very satisfying to me to be able to apply that and see something like that grow in another sector.
When you're talking about access to justice and the technical aspects, there's a lot of talk and founders who are starting technology interfaces. Essentially, they call them justice tech. I spoke to Noella Sudbury, the Founder of Rasa which started in Utah about making it easier for people who are legally able to expunge their convictions, have access to do that, find out how to do that, and do it themselves without access perhaps to a lawyer, which many of them can't afford. Integrating that with public interest service. That's one sense of thinking about tech. I also think you might be meaning more than that, which is also thinking about the private sector to some degree in terms of what kind of responsibility do we have from a tech standpoint.
There are a lot of things built into that. The other thing that caught me was when you said systems thinking from the legal standpoint. As someone who's also a lifelong learner interested in different things, that struck me as, “Theresa doesn't even know that she's cross-talking with scientific language too.” That's certainly like, “Where have I heard that?” I'm like, “I've heard that in complexity science and that arena,” which has significant value for how we think about legal problems. There are aspects of various aspects of complexity to the problems we're trying to solve and then figuring out what our solution is, whether it's the right solution for the right problem.
Complexity science is helpful for that. When you said systems thinking, I was like, “There she is. You don't even know it. You don't even know you're doing it now.” That's a way of thinking about it. With the environmental work, the biological aspects of complexity when you're talking about emergent properties that come from there may be two things that are co-occurring and then the properties that come from them together are something that is separate and different from something that could have happened with each of them individually. There are additional properties beyond that.
I think about that especially if you're going to apply this to an environmental realm. You want to think about that, “Am I doing the right solution?” When we're looking at the problem, are we recognizing not only what each of these two discrete actors can do but then what is possible together? Is there something that emerges from two of them acting together that is either more effective or a problem we should have considered but we didn't? I wanted to point out that you're very fluent in all kinds of speech. I noticed that.
It's one of the things that happens in being versed in it all day.
I wanted to touch on two things. I'll start first with you had mentioned mentors who helped you and gave you some advice along the way. I wonder if you could talk about that a little bit. That's especially important when you're working in an arena where there is no clear path toward where you are and the work that you've done. It would seem the advice of those who have come before or who have a little more experience would be may be of heightened importance in that setting.
Maybe if I had more mentors, I would've gone in a completely different direction because I found a way that made sense to me. The mentors that have been most valuable to me in my career have been people who have helped me make better understand my values and what a successful career looks like to me and to make good decisions based on that.
For example, one of my mentors is the toughest plaintiff trial lawyer I know and is incredibly successful. The thing I always remember that she told me is, “Life is too short to work with people who aren't nice.” That has nothing to do with the law. Coming from somebody an effective trial lawyer as she is, when she said it, I was like, “Why do you care about people being nice? That's got nothing to do with the law. What are you talking about?” That has been the truest, the guidepost of many decisions in my career. It's very oversimplified, but if there have been these points where I've thought, “How do I resolve this personal issue? Do I take this client on? Do I say yes to this project?”
At the end of it, that has always been the thing that has made it worthwhile or not. If people are going to be difficult and take out their personal problems, it's not worth it to deal with that. In some cases, there might, but it is so much easier to work with people who are the product and ends up being successful when people have shared values and have shared goals for the project. I am a first-generation college student. Neither of my parents went to university and I didn't know a lot of people, growing up, who had college degrees.
The product ends up being really successful when people have shared values and have shared goals for the project.
Those kinds of things have been important. Anybody who was able to help me navigate the academic system and law school help me understand what to take seriously and what not to take seriously and also when to protect myself and in nonprofits especially. The human rights world is notorious for a martyr complex. These people don't get a vacation. I can't take a vacation. There are no vacations from human rights violations. That's not helpful to anybody. You can't serve the world if you're exhausted and burned out. Those kinds of things have been the most helpful to me as a professional, even more than anything about the law.
There are many things that are important and impactful. When people think about mentoring, they don't think about that quality of life and working not just how would you move to the next position, but something more important about you can intentionally choose what kind of environment you want to work in and helps you blossom in the best way possible. Also, that those who provide the mentoring may not be in unique positions.
You might get great wisdom from some places that you're surprised by. You don't think kind when you think of a trial lawyer generally. You're thinking, “What?” What you are saying is, “We can go into battle and we can do all of this in court, but at the end of the day when I come back, I want to be my team. I want to be working with kind people,” because that makes a difference.
Because in public law, nonprofit, and human rights law, there isn't a clear pathway. It isn't clear what the next step is. This is the latter. You do this so that you can get to this stage. You do have to make those personal decisions to figure out, “Where am I going to be able to do what I want to do? Where am I going to be able to make the contributions I want to make to the world?” You do have to make those decisions when you're carving out a path for yourself.
In general, you're thinking about the highest and best use like, “What is my highest and best use of my particular skills and what I can contribute to people individually or to the greater good as it were?” It's not clear what that is. In a way by having a little more open-mindedness and not a clear ladder, if you approach it with more holistic wisdom that you have, there's more freedom in that in a way.
Sometimes when you have like very clear ladders, “I'm supposed to want this next.” What if you don't want that? What do you do? You're like, “I'm a failure. I don't want that. That's the next step.” If you look at it more broadly and in terms of, “What kind of life do I want to have? What do I want to be contributing? How do I want to feel when I'm doing this too?”
It is the point you mentioned about kind people. It's basic but so fundamental. It can impact your life in many ways that you don't even think about. When people think about mentoring, they think about, “It's someone who's with me from cradle to grave and they're giving me advice and key junctures.” That can certainly be true, but there are also others who will say the perfect thing at the perfect time that sticks with you and you carry that forward and it impacts how you make all of your decisions. That's an important point too because a lot of people think, “I know what a mentor is and what a mentor looks like. They're doing exactly what I might want to be doing and they're with me the whole part of my life.”
It's true, but it can be other things too. Look for those moments when you can get some helpful guideposts for your decision-making down the line. That leads to the next question I had. If someone thinks they might be interested in some public interest work, whether it's in human rights or in your very interesting hybrid policy area that you're in now, what should they do? What should they think about doing both to explore it, figure out whether that's what they want to do, or what are good skills to build for those roles?
Internships are very important in this area in a different way from how they're important If you are planning to go into a private practice law firm.
Explain that. What do you mean by that?
It's important to find out if you are a litigation person, a policy person, or a researcher and to figure that out early on. Another piece of advice I was getting pretty early on is, “You can always switch from litigation to policy, but it's hard to switch from policy to litigation.” That is true. Once you're out of litigation, it can be hard to get back in unless you have a very particular area of expertise, and then you are part of teams contributing to that area of expertise. What I have advised law students to do is to try to find ways to get that experience and the subject matter isn't quite as important. A lot of students feel like they have to come out of law school with that expertise in environmental law or in a particular subject.
You can always switch from litigation to policy, but it's really hard to switch from policy to litigation.
The new concentrations have created that. You're coming out of law school with some kind of substantive expertise already.
Some because some of those environmental laws are incredibly different from criminal law and they're different processes.
It doesn't mean you're pigeonholing too much in a particular area too soon.
It’s because there are environmental crimes.
Remain open-minded about other things.
Learning the skills of professionalism, writing, developing strategies, strategic thinking, those kinds of things, but also getting a sense of which of those appeals to you more and what is important during law school, more so than interning in the litigation department of this environmental organization. I was on the policy side of this human rights organization and doing defense in domestic violence cases. You learned great skills. The subject matter is should be something you're interested in.
Don't go into something that you're totally not interested in. It's about getting those skills and seeing where your talents and personality fit best into that because those are such different roles in the legal field. When I had interns in the litigation group, the difference in a resume where a student has taken advantage of the opportunities available. Leadership positions, for nonprofits, it doesn't have to be law review.
It's not the same, but leadership is what did you do instead of law review? What did you do with that time when everybody else was blue-booking law review articles? If you didn't do anything with that, I want to know why. That's something that can be on the resume because you were working on this other project, but if you weren't doing anything with that time or you were, but it's not evident, that's a sign to me about what commitment you're going to make in the job.
Not every minute needs to be dedicated to work and advancement, but it's, “Did you take advantage of the opportunities that were available to you?” Often I see resumes from law students who did summer internships, but then there's nothing. In the second year during the semester, you weren't involved in any clubs. You didn't write anything.
You didn't volunteer for doing pro bono work somewhere as a second-year law student. Those things are important when you're trying to get that first position because you're going to be up against students who were involved in as many things as they could fit, hopefully reasonably with self-care, into those three years. The differences are stark when you see them on a resume.
It does say a little bit about a certain level of curiosity, growth, and a lot of different things that go into that.
It shows that you're interested. Other people might say something different. To me, it doesn't have to paint a picture of you as someone who is 100% dedicated, and you have built your career to this job and this career pathway. That's not what I think is necessary for a successful resume. I went in and my resume was 100% humanized all the things.
I applied for internships in doing other things. I was more successful because I'd had that past experience with getting the internships and things like that that were in human rights. It's the exploration. Are you interested in learning different things? In most law jobs, you're going to have to learn lots of things you had no idea you were going to learn.
Curiosity is important because, in most law jobs, you'll have to learn lots of things you had no idea you would have to learn.
One of the skills as appellate lawyers that we have to be particularly good at is digesting a new area of the law or part of an area of the law in a very holistic way. Not just this case, but let me understand where the law has been, where it's going, why, and what the reasons for that are. Putting this case in the context of all of that. We have to also understand the industry and all other things that are going on, but we have to digest that, put it all together, and then come up with a game plan like very quickly.
That skill is important in that context. It's important in other contexts too. I agree with you about the skill-building part. I wish I could have you come talk to some of my associates and reinforce what I've told them. At this point, it's very important for you to develop core skills, whether you end up being a litigator, appellate lawyer, or whatever else.
These skills are going to take you wherever you want to go, even if you along the way discern, “This isn't my thing. I'd rather do something else.” I'm fine with that because, in any event, you've got core things that will help you succeed and whatever else you want to do. You need to do that so you can figure out what it is you enjoy doing also.
Nobody expects you to have your first job be your dream job. Nobody who's hiring you expects that and nobody expects that you're going to be there forever. Everybody knows it's your first job. It's fine. Learn what you need to learn and then figure out from there what's next.
Nobody expects you to have your first job be your dream job.
A lot of us enjoy being part of that journey for people. We're like, “We like to see you spread your wings and find what it is that you enjoy doing. To have been a part of that and help prepare you for that opportunity is rewarding.” Thank you much for sitting down, having this chat, being willing to join the show, and sharing your wisdom.
You said a lot of helpful things for law students in particular. I hope they read carefully and take to heart some of the things you talked about in terms of law school, externships, first jobs, and things like that. Usually, before I close, we'll ask a couple of lightning-round questions. The first one is, which talent would you most like to have, but don't?
I wish I could play a musical instrument. I don't. It doesn't matter which one even. I wish I had the ability to play a musical instrument well.
It's also related to Science and Math. Those who are interested in that have that interest or are good musicians also. Who is your hero in real life?
This is going to sound cliché, but my husband. He also works in human rights, and he is a person I look up to for many reasons.
That's another good decision, another good partnership decision that you made. If you can say that, that's good. Who would you invite to a dinner party if you could invite anyone?
Yo-Yo Ma. He's such an amazing person, human being, genius brain, and also musician.
What is your motto if you have one?
“We can't stop the waves, but we can learn to surf.”
That applies in many different ways. That could be helpful to me. I'm thinking about various challenges. Particularly in this age when the waves seem to keep breaking and there doesn't seem to be much of a pause, that's, “Go surf.” Thank you so much. I appreciate this conversation and your willingness to join the show and share all of the interesting and exciting things that your organization is doing and honestly how your mind works, which is a unique instrument in itself.
That's kind. This has been fun. Thank you so much.