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RB: Let's pivot a little bit and talk about your career. How did you decide to get into law, and can you talk a little bit about your pathway into the legal profession?

PU: Well, I've always enjoyed mentoring younger people about career things. And one of the things I realized is that a lot of what happened in my career was totally random. It wasn't a result of some plan that had been laid out for me or by me when I was young, but it's just things that happened, paths that I could have gone one way or the other and it just so happens. And to give an example, when I was in college originally, I was thinking, like a lot of young students, oh, I should be a doctor, right? So I was taking a fairly science-heavy course load when I started in college. And I had done well in high school, and I've taken advanced placement like science and all that stuff. And the funny thing is, I think that was actually a bad thing for me because I placed out of some introductory level science courses because of the high school courses that I had and AP scores and so on. And then what happens, I get to college and instead of taking 101 and 102, I'm taking a one-semester 103 chemistry course and not doing so well. That's like, okay, whatever. And then the second semester, take another not introductory course, and also not doing so hot in that, and getting more involved in activities and so on. And I still remember now that the first semester of my sophomore year that my organic chemistry professor came up to me in the lab and he said, "Hey, Paul, did you not get a chance to study before the test?" Which might have been partially true that, because I was going to all these meetings and everything all the time. So, yeah, at that point I realized my grades are not going to be good enough in these science courses to get into medical school.

And so I wasn't sure what to do, so I left campus and went to an off-campus program that was in Philadelphia. And you took classes here, and you also had to do an internship. I don't know, I just ended up doing an internship at Community Legal Services, and I worked in one of their old offices and I said, "Oh, this is nice what they're doing and everything." And as I was working my way through school, the only thing I knew is I enjoyed the kind of life of being a college student, but I didn't really like the learning part of it, actually, it's like too much reading too many books. And we put in a lot of time studying and everything, and I didn't really get a lot of pleasure out of that. So I was like, whatever I'm going to do, I just need to get a job, because I need to start working and doing stuff, getting involved in other things, and I'm not interested in going to school anymore. But I had to get a job, so randomly, I'm like, oh, that internship I had when I was a sophomore was kind of cool, maybe I can get a job at a place like that as a paralegal.

So I applied for a jobs all over the country, and I only got one bite, which was a position that was supported by the VISTA program that was in Chester. So that's where I went, I went to Chester as a paralegal, and that's how I got started working in legal services, and then I ended up staying there for a long time. And then what happened is after a number of years doing that, I kind of realized, you know, I'm doing kind of the same work that the lawyers here do, except I'm not getting paid to be a lawyer. But I could be a lawyer, I just have to get a degree. So I decided to go to law school, and I went to Temple at night and kept working at Community Legal Services. And then I had a couple of jobs right out of law school, and then I went back to Legal Services, but the other jobs I had were kind of to cleanse my resume a little bit, so I wasn't just doing this Legal Services stuff, but then I went back. And so a lot of that was just not part of any plan or anything, but I enjoyed doing that kind of work, and it was valuable. Not like I was making a lot of money or anything, but it was good work. And then one day, this colleague told me I should apply for this opening in this new project that was focused on language access. And I was like, why would I apply for that? I don't know anything about that, I don't know what you're talking about. He's like, "Oh, you'd be great for this. I can help you figure it out and everything, why don't you apply?" So I applied for the job, I got that job, and it was dramatically different from all the work that I had done before that. It was different in terms of what the focus was, and kind of legal hooks. But it was also different in terms of who I was representing. Because then my client demographic changed to being largely immigrants and refugees. Which was really very fascinating to me because they related to me in a totally different way as an attorney. It was kind of a lesson in itself about how they would relate to, as a professional versus how your so-called American clients related to it and the value they put on your service and just kind of a social relationship, so it was kind of fascinating. And the work was really kind of pathbreaking legal work at the time, I mean, this was 2000, it was pretty much a new thing.

So I got pretty good at that and got involved not only with things in the city, but also statewide, and I started getting involved in national advocacy work and helped found an organization of other advocates that were doing that kind of work, which was all relatively new area of work by people in different places, so it was really important to be able to share information and train each other and things like that. So that kind of gave me this expertise that was pretty noteworthy nationally, which put me in a good position to get hired by the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division, to do basically a similar kind of work but from an enforcement side, and also dealing with helping the federal government improve the way it provides services to people who don't speak English well. And so, same thing, I was able to have a positive impact on the way in which work was done in my office, some of the issues that were taken up, and really helped push the work forward there from Washington. So that's kind of how... it's a long story, but it's pretty random when you think about it. So I felt pretty fortunate that because I kind of started out working almost with what my father had told me years ago, like, well, "Nobody said you were going to have fun. You're not entitled to have fun, you have to make money, you got to support your family and stuff like that, that's what your job is for." You know, to be in a position where it was fulfilling and you're able to have an impact and accomplish things. So I was very fortunate in that regard. I never made a lot of money, my mother used to tease me that, "Why don't you get a job like Dennis Morikawa?" who was a partner in a big law firm, and it was like, "Mom, what do you want to make a lot of money for? You and Dad never wanted to make a lot of money. You want to accomplish something good, not make a lot of money." So I never made a lot of money, but it's not like we were starving or couldn't take care of the kids or anything like that. It all turned out well.

<End Segment 10> - Copyright © 2023 JACL Philadelphia. All Rights Reserved.