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S4E01: The Importance of Visibility, with US Attorney Jacqueline Romero RLAW'96
14 Plays2 years ago
US Attorney Jacqueline Romero RLAW'96 sits down with Co-Dean Kimberly Mutcherson to discuss her appointment as US Attorney for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. She also shares about her role as the first woman, Latina, and openly queer person to be in this position.
The Power of Attorney is produced by Rutgers Law School. With two locations minutes from Philadelphia and New York City, Rutgers Law offers the prestige and reputation of a large, nationally known university combined with a personal, small campus experience. Learn more by visiting law.rutgers.edu.
Production Manager: Shanida Carter
Series Producer & Editor: Nate Nakao
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Transcript
Introduction and Guest Welcome
00:00:04
Speaker
My name is Kim Mutcherson. I am the co-dean of Rutgers Law School and this is the power of attorney. So some of the episodes that we get to do are particularly delightful and I am going to say that before we even started recording this one because we have a really wonderful guest. Her name is Jacqueline Romero and she is the
00:00:25
Speaker
U.S. attorney down here where we are in Philadelphia. And it's incredibly exciting to have you here. So thank you so much for taking the time to talk with us.
Path to Law and Government Service
00:00:34
Speaker
Thanks for having me, Kim. I'm excited to chat with you all.
00:00:37
Speaker
Excellent. And obviously, we'll talk about the fact that you are that you are one of our own. So we will definitely get into that pretty quickly. But I want to open our conversation the way I open our conversations with all of our guests, which is there were so many things that you could have chosen to do with your life. And yet you chose to become a lawyer and not just a lawyer, but a lawyer who's really committed your committed herself to government service for a very long time. So let's first start with the lawyer part. What was it that made you decide that law was where you wanted to go?
00:01:08
Speaker
I think I felt growing up that lawyers seemed like the kind of people who were actually making changes and actually helping folks. And they kind of had that power to go into court and fight for pizza for lack of a better term. And I really enjoy helping people and I enjoy
00:01:32
Speaker
going after bullies. When people are being bullies, it really gets under my skin. And being able to represent folks and effectually change is just a wonderful thing. Yeah, I think a lot of us go into law with very similar sort of thoughts about how you can use the law as a tool for fairness.
00:01:51
Speaker
and justice and equality. But my understanding is that you are not somebody who grew up with a bunch of lawyers in your family, which isn't unusual for folks who go to Rutgers Law. I think our entering class this year, about 60% of our entering class is folks who are first gen to law school, which is just amazing. And I'm glad that we were able to do that for so many folks. But you were also a first gen student.
Support and Community in Law School
00:02:18
Speaker
So, you know, I think that that journey can be really difficult sometimes when you don't have people in your life who can say, this is what law school is like, or this is what you should expect, or this is how you sort of make it through. So what was it like for you to do that transition from college to law school and sort of find your way there? Yeah, I always liken it to
00:02:40
Speaker
you know, landing in a foreign country than analogy. You don't know the language, the cultural norms seem strange to you, the food is a little bit different, and you're kind of jet lagged. That's what law school felt like for me, for sure. I had the advantage of being part of the minority student program at Rutgers,
00:03:07
Speaker
And I can't say enough about the support that they gave us, the help in creating a roadmap for studying, and creating study groups, and that sort of extracurriculars should you be involved in, and just helping illuminate all of the strangeness of law school. The minority student program really played a huge part in my success.
00:03:37
Speaker
Yeah. And for those who are listening who don't know about our MSP program, it is a program that's been in place for over 50 years at our Newark location, has been in our Camden location for about six years now. And it's a really wonderful way, as you say, to allow people who may be coming to law school having had various sorts of challenges or not having folks in their family
00:03:59
Speaker
who can sort of guide them to not give them a leg up, but actually to make it an even playing field. And one of the things that I have experienced with folks who were MSP is sort of the
00:04:14
Speaker
the tight-knit community that MSP allows people to form, both when they're in law school and after law school. Was that your experience as an MSP student? Yeah, it felt like you were walking into some kind of family reunion. And from day one, honestly, it was a lot of support and love and work here to be folks that you can talk to and bounce ideas off of.
00:04:43
Speaker
Some of my best friends in the world are folks I met through MSB. We still stay in touch and text each other every once in a while, and a lot of them will be at my investiture next month because those are lifelong friendships.
Discovering the Role of AUSA
00:05:00
Speaker
Absolutely. It just helped you feel a little bit more at ease while you're in law school. I think it's a difficult experience for everyone. Yeah, absolutely.
00:05:11
Speaker
Um, so once you just, I mean, you knew that you wanted to be a lawyer. Um, and I think I read you were, you were really little, maybe like five years old or something. Um, when you decided that, that law was going to be for you. Um, I was 10 when I decided that law was going to be for me. So I respect that kind of.
00:05:26
Speaker
drive and focus from a very young age. But once you got to law school, did you have a sense of what you wanted to do with that degree? I mean, you knew you wanted to be somebody who was helping folks, but how did you figure out where you wanted to do that and how you wanted to do that? I had not a clue, and I often advise law students now, don't stress out about, you don't know who you want to be when you drop a kind of lawyer or whatever.
00:05:56
Speaker
take it all in and do a little bit of everything. If you can get some internships or intern during the school year,
00:06:03
Speaker
In different areas of law, I remember working at a law firm one summer and they had me doing real estate and estate planning law. And I actually found that really fascinating. Tax law, estate planning, helping people kind of restructure their assets in a way that's going to be beneficial to their family after they pass.
00:06:26
Speaker
It's feel good work and the family loves you because you're doing something wonderful. So you'll be surprised at the areas that speak to you as you're going along and the area that spoke to me.
00:06:40
Speaker
I mean, to answer your question, like when did I sort of figure it out? I had an inclination during law school, probably it was second year of law school, I want to say. There's a judge in New Jersey, Alberto Rivas, who's an MSP graduate. And he came in to do one of the typical career day things where they sit down, they do mock interviews.
00:07:04
Speaker
kind of critique you and give you advice. And he spoke to our group about his life as an assistant US attorney. And I didn't even know what an assistant US attorney was at that point in time. And I just remember being wide eyed and
00:07:20
Speaker
It was like I was listening to a superhero, the way that she talked about his job, the passion, clearly the love that he had, not just for the work, but for his colleagues within the office, what a family they were. And he talked about prosecutorial discretion, the discretion to bring a case under the right circumstances and also the
00:07:42
Speaker
the discretion to not run a case and say, this is not the right thing to do in these circumstances. And everything that he said that day just rang true with me. And I knew eventually, someday, I don't know how I'm getting there, but I want to be an AUSA. That's the job for me. But how I was going to get there, I had no idea. I knew that I would likely work for a law firm.
00:08:09
Speaker
when I graduated because I was paying my way through college and through law school and I needed money. Yeah and I think that's actually a really good lesson for students as well. I think sometimes students feel like what you do as soon as you get out of law school is where you're going to be for the rest of your life.
00:08:29
Speaker
And there are lots of people who say, I'm going to do X thing. Often we're going to law firm and pay down my loans, and then I'm going to go off and do something else. And that is always a possibility. So you knew you wanted to be, or you saw somebody. And I want to talk about representation as well in our conversation today, because those moments of seeing somebody who looks like you or sounds like you or may have had your background in some way.
00:08:55
Speaker
can be incredibly powerful for all of us, right? But especially for students in law school. So once you identified, okay, I think this AUSA thing is what I want to do, but I'm not going to do it right out of law school. So you went to a law firm, but you already knew where you wanted to end up, right?
Building Trial Experience through Pro Bono Work
00:09:14
Speaker
So what was the kind of path that you took? You know, you did whatever number of years in a law firm and then wanted to move into the government. How did you do that switch?
00:09:23
Speaker
So it was very fortunate for me that I worked for Loan Sign Samuels, the law firm. They were very generous with billable hours and you could take on pro bono cases. And, you know, we can't afford your billable hires. And so I, early on, I knew I wanted to be a trial lawyer. If I was going to be in a USA, I got into their,
00:09:51
Speaker
litigation section and also knew that being a young attorney at a firm, you're not going to get much trial experience. So I use the pro bono cases as a way to get into court. And I specifically identified the termination of parental rights matters that came into the time as the ones that I wanted to grab because if you
00:10:14
Speaker
If you're handling one of those cases, inevitably the stakes are very high. Parents might lose their children and you're representing one of those parents. It's very emotional and you really have to learn your interviewing skills and how to have a soft touch and sit down with these parents and talk about some really horrible things that happened and why they are in court right now, possibly going to lose their children.
00:10:42
Speaker
You have to interview expert psychologists who are going to testify as experts at court. You're likely going to have to prosecute them in police officers who arrived at a scene and things were happening. They're very complex trials. There's expert witnesses, Dauber motions, all of the difficult things that go into putting on a complex trial.
00:11:07
Speaker
And that for me was the perfect sort of thing where I could run with the case, I'm gonna do opening arguments, closing arguments, handle expert witnesses, cross-examine employee lease officers, so that after I've done a couple of these, I might be able to interview with the Department of Justice.
Trial Skills and Emotional Well-being
00:11:28
Speaker
I mean, it worked out well for me. I was only two years out of law school when I interviewed with the Department of Justice, which is unheard of.
00:11:35
Speaker
The only people who get jobs two years out are folks who've gone through the Justice Honors Program, which I did.
00:11:43
Speaker
And they kind of called my bluff. I went in for the interview and we just had a fantastic discussion about everything trial related. And they couldn't believe the amount of experience I had had in my short two years at a firm that I had had a couple of trials under my belt, knew how to cross examine witnesses to direct examinations, open and closing arguments.
00:12:06
Speaker
And all expert witnesses cross-examined, you know, police officers. And they called my bluff and made me an offer. So there I was at, you know, the early 20s working at the Department of Justice in Washington, handling very big litigation matters. It was fantastic.
00:12:25
Speaker
That is amazing. There are so many things in there that I want to pick apart a little bit. So the first thing is, how did you realize that using pro bono cases was a way for you to build your resume, right? I think a lot of times people, when students at least are thinking about doing pro bono, they're thinking, oh, this is a good way for me to sort of give back, which it is, absolutely, right? But you were also using it as a tool in a really, really smart way.
00:12:55
Speaker
I think I knew that the Department of Justice, if I ever got an interview, was going to ask me about my trial experience, because that's what we do. And so I can't remember if someone at the firm coached me, to be honest with you. I just knew that working my regular cases, I'm going to be in the library doing a lot of research and a lot of writing, and I'm going to be preparing more senior people to go into Ford.
00:13:24
Speaker
And chances are I'm not going to get to do oral arguments and be the face of the firm because there are clients paying a lot of money to have a partner represent and that's who's going to go into court on on those high paying matters.
00:13:39
Speaker
But I knew that the pro bono matters, the firm was happy to let us run with them, happy to let us handle them. I didn't have to hand it over to a more senior counsel and that I would get an opportunity to go to court and actually do oral arguments, go to a Rule 16 conference, argue a motion to dismiss all the things that you want to be able to speak to when you walk into an interview at the Department of Justice.
00:14:10
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, that's just so, so smart. The other thing that I wanted to tease out from what we were just talking about is sometimes when I talk to students, they say, well, I definitely can't be a trial lawyer. I just don't have the personality for it or I don't have the skill set for it.
00:14:27
Speaker
And generally my response to that is it can be built, right? You don't necessarily have to be the most, you know, the person who likes to argue the most in order to be somebody who's going to be a good trial lawyer. Is that your experience as well, that a good trial lawyer can be made and not just born? Absolutely. And I tell people, so I for years was teaching through the National Institute of Child Advocacy.
00:14:53
Speaker
and specifically their trial advocacy program. And you sit and kind of critique people on their techniques and how they approached a witness or how they approached oral arguments or opening arguments and things like that. And I would constantly tell people, know your style. You have a very subtle style. And if you tried to do the Jacqueline Romero flair in court, it's not gonna come off right. You're not gonna be able to pull that off.
00:15:21
Speaker
But your style is maybe a little bit underspoken, wide, reserved. There's a way that you can be so powerful with a jury.
00:15:33
Speaker
using that particular spot. So you don't have to be the big flamboyant attorney who's shouting and throwing your hands and whatever, not to say that that's my style, but you can be understated and quiet and as powerful as a hurricane using that kind of style. So don't self-select and say, I can't be a trial attorney because you're picturing it's something that you saw on TV that was loud and big and all this kind of stuff.
00:16:03
Speaker
Now, you come in and be authentically you, the skill set you can learn. You can learn how to do a really well-crafted opening argument, a closing argument, a cross-examination. Those are skill sets and if you do it enough, you will be good at those things. In terms of the style, don't worry about it if you don't see yourself as what you think a trial attorney should be. You can do it.
00:16:29
Speaker
Love that piece of advice, especially for a lot of our women students who think that there's a very particular way in order to do this kind of work. The last piece that I want to tease out from the conversation about your pro bono work was that you were working on termination of parental rights cases.
00:16:47
Speaker
And when I was in law school, the clinic that I did in law school was a clinic where we did family law. And one of the cases that I carried with my partner was a termination of parental rights case. And I was, what, 22 or 23 or something. And here's this woman.
00:17:04
Speaker
She's incarcerated and she's basically going to lose her rights to her child. And one of the things that I thought was so incredibly important about that experience, besides the fact that the things I learned about family court that I still carry with me and not all of them good, but how that the relationship between an attorney and a client is obviously a professional relationship.
00:17:30
Speaker
But there's a lot that goes into, particularly when you're working with somebody who in a very, very high stakes way, which is of course true in a termination of a parental rights proceeding, but also true when you're working with someone who say it's been a victim of a crime. So how do you figure out how to sort of walk that line, right? It's a professional relationship, but you're dealing with people in really difficult personal
00:17:56
Speaker
circumstances and not just how you deal with them, but how you deal with not taking other people's pain home with you at the end of the day. It is difficult. You have to connect with your client, right? And so what I like to do is give them time to talk. A lot of times people just need to be heard.
00:18:16
Speaker
and let them go on. Sometimes someone will just run on and on and on and on and trying to tell you everything that happened. Let them do it. You could go back and ask them more pointed questions later. And sometimes you have to acknowledge and say things like, that must have been really difficult for you.
00:18:34
Speaker
And you don't have to become their best friend in doing that, but you find ways to allow them to open up and know that you're human too, and that you feel their pain in some ways, right? And there are certain phrases like that, like that must have been difficult for you, that cue to them that you're a human being too. And in answer to the second part of your question,
00:19:00
Speaker
constantly deal with trauma as lawyers and our own trauma in witnessing some of the cases that we handle. If you're handling, let's say, a child exploitation matter, you're going to experience your own trauma. You're viewing sometimes pictures that are horrific
00:19:20
Speaker
And you've got to process those pictures and put them together as exhibits and question witnesses about them. And you take that home at the end of the day, whether you like it or not. And so we're, in my office, very keen on talking, particularly with our attorneys that deal with violent crimes and child exploitation and gun violence, talking through some of that and checking in with them and saying, how are you doing?
00:19:47
Speaker
and really giving them an avenue to say, I'm overloaded and it's affecting me. And sometimes we need to switch our attorneys out of certain units and maybe they start doing economic times for a while or something else because it's a lot. And as attorneys, we've got to own that. Sometimes we're bringing home trauma and it's our own trauma in terms of what we've witnessed. And counseling is not a bad thing. We have an employee assistance program here
00:20:14
Speaker
That we refer people to all the time and say, look, it's okay to go and talk about some of the stuff that's building up for you. And we want you to do that. We don't want you going home and using alcohol as a way to cope or other coping mechanisms.
Role of an Assistant U.S. Attorney
00:20:29
Speaker
This needs to be healthy and good for you. And you should be enjoying what you're doing for a living and not
00:20:36
Speaker
always taking home a really heavy burden. And it's one of the things that obviously we talk about in law school a lot more now, certainly than when I was in law school, which is wellness. And how do you practice your profession in a way that allows you to still be a happy and healthy person? And we all hear the stories about the rates of substance use disorder in lawyers or unhappiness. So it's really refreshing to hear you talking about
00:21:05
Speaker
acknowledging that this is really hard work. It's work that can be taxing emotionally and mentally. And we should be talking about that, right? There's nothing shameful about hurting and there's nothing shameful about needing help. So that's great. Yeah.
00:21:22
Speaker
So I want to switch gears now and talk about first your work as an AUSA and then transition into talking about being the top dog, which is amazing. So for the folks who are listening, maybe for some of our prospective students who are listening, we've just been throwing around the term AUSA. Can you explain to folks what that is and what AUSAs do? Yeah, so AUSA stands for Assistant U.S. Attorney.
00:21:51
Speaker
They're called assistants because I'm the US attorney and my power kind of goes down through the office to people who can go out and prosecute cases. They're assisting me, you know, so they're assistant US attorneys.
00:22:05
Speaker
We have in our office, roughly 150, let's say, assistant US attorneys. And they do, there's two divisions, they do both civil and criminal work. So our civil division is probably roughly around 30, assistant US attorneys, and they handle
00:22:27
Speaker
Anything that where we have federal jurisdiction on civil law. So it might be the, you know, uh, settle for claim act and where people get injured on federal property. They can sue the federal government. There's jurisdiction there to sue us. Um, and they're defending the federal government in those lawsuits could be immigration matters. We've got various immigration laws where people can challenge decisions that are made by immigration officials and
00:22:55
Speaker
We defend the government's decisions in those matters. Could be employment disputes. So there's the various employment laws and regulations, federal employees have employment rights and they sometimes sue the federal government saying that they were discriminated against and we defend the federal government in those lawsuits.
00:23:18
Speaker
The civil side also has a lot of what we call affirmative not defensive cases where they're going after people for bad behavior But it's civil in nature. We're looking typically for monetary penalties for the bad behavior or injunctive believe that they stop the bad behavior and I would say the largest chunk of what we do on the affirmative side and the civil side is It's
00:23:44
Speaker
Health care for people that are defrauding the Medicare system. It could also be just general program fraud. We've got lots of federal programs where sometimes they work at all. Typically, it's health care for.
00:24:00
Speaker
And we also have civil rights on the civil side, and so that's a lot of the affirmative stuff that we do there. We also have a criminal division, and it's divided into two areas. One is the violent and organized crime area, and then the other side is white-collar crime. And we've got various units that address the criminal laws on both of those sides, whether it's
00:24:29
Speaker
you know, white collar or more divine kind of stuff. So that's how we're divided up. And the assistant U.S. attorney is sort of in all those various capacities that are coming along. So when somebody comes in, and this might differ from from office to office. So I'll just be asking you specifically about about your own office.
00:24:52
Speaker
So if you are somebody who has been a few years out of law school and you are able to get into the AUSA's office, are you sort of moved around to different parts or do you apply for a specific part and that's where you stay? How does that work typically? Yeah, people typically apply either to the civil division or the criminal division.
00:25:14
Speaker
depending on their interests, their past experience, where they want to be. So if you come into our civil division, you're considered a generalist and you handle all of the matters that I mentioned, determinative and defensive. That's how we are structured and the people seem to like that because you get a whole variety
00:25:36
Speaker
of experiences and you could be handling anything on any given day, whether it's an employment case, a tort case, immigration, it could be a challenge to some administrative action of an agency, so you could be working at HUD or Social Security or whomever.
00:25:53
Speaker
On the criminal side, you would apply generally, and when you come in, you come into a particular unit. Maybe it's the violent crime unit. Maybe it's national security, you know, one of our other units. And even though you're in a unit, like let's say I'm in the corruption,
00:26:14
Speaker
You have the ability though to take on cases from other units because cases are structured very differently. The way that we build a corruption case is going to be very different from the way that we build a violent crime case involving firearms and potentially murder or whatever. And so we like for attorneys who are in units to be able to get experience in other units because
00:26:41
Speaker
It makes you a better lawyer. You have to think a little bit differently handling a firearm and drug case than you would.
00:26:47
Speaker
handling a child exploitation case. And there are going to be different issues in terms of experts. And so you get to really flex all those muscles and develop as in a time. So you would come into the criminal division, you would be in a particular unit, but you would be given the opportunity to take on other types of matters and train differently. So that, let's say you've been in the corruption unit for a couple of years and you want to switch out and go over to violent crimes.
00:27:15
Speaker
there's the ability to do that because you flex different muscles and you've got different skill sets that would translate nicely to making that switch. Students would be upset with me if I didn't ask this question, which is if you are in law school and you think that a career as an AUSA is where you want to go, what are some of the things that you would recommend that students do in order to prepare themselves ultimately to make that application?
00:27:42
Speaker
Well, in law school, definitely take some of the subject matter classes. You're going to want evidence and criminal procedure and all the general subject matter classes. I would say if you get the opportunity while you're in law school to intern at the U.S. Attorney's Office, definitely do it. We look favorably on folks who have interned in our office.
00:28:03
Speaker
gone elsewhere to get more experience as a lawyer and then want to come back. We say, oh, that was one of our interns. We're a big family here. And so that goes a long way if you've actually interned in our office. And we know that you've proven that you want to be here because you interned here.
00:28:20
Speaker
But beyond law school, I would say look for those kinds of places that will give you the opportunities to develop some skills. Whether you're at a law firm, as I said, it's hard being at a firm, getting to get into court, but you can find ways. You can volunteer for pro bono stuff and get some pro se person who needs help and it's feel good work and it'll likely get you into court.
00:28:49
Speaker
When you've come to interview in an office like mine, we want to know that you've had some experience and you're not just observing things, but maybe you've had some senior level experience requesting discovery, organizing discovery, getting that discovery review.
00:29:09
Speaker
Maybe you've had some senior level experience arguing some motions that you, even if it's a piece of a summary judgment motion that a partner let you argue in court, that's a big deal that you actually have a moral argument. Depositions, have you only defended depositions or have you had the ability to actually take a deposition?
00:29:30
Speaker
We're going to ask you about all of those kinds of things. And on the criminal side, it's harder because unless you're at a DA's office, you're not going to probably get actual criminal experience in court. It's really hard on a white collar case in a law firm for the firm to let you go in because the stakes are high. They're typically representing a large corporation.
00:29:57
Speaker
And probably you're not going to get the in court experience, but you can distinguish yourself again by handling the internal investigation that has to take place in representing that kind of appliance. You can talk about how you went about formulating a plan for the internal investigation, who you chose to interview in that internal investigation.
00:30:20
Speaker
how, what kind of documents you compiled and got from your client, how you organize those documents, how you handle handing those documents over to the government, the privilege review that you did, how you helped choose the experts that were going to represent the corporation and trial.
00:30:39
Speaker
prepare those experts, maybe you worked on the Dow-Burm motion, all of that is going to impress us. If you come in the door and you took a high level role in helping that client on that particular white collar investigation.
00:30:54
Speaker
So you've all heard it here. This is how you set yourself up to get this job.
Historic Appointment and Representation
00:31:00
Speaker
So I want to transition to talking about where you are now and the really historic position that you are in as the first woman and also just the first woman of color to have the U.S. attorney role here.
00:31:14
Speaker
And so first I wanna talk about the history part of it, only from the perspective of, as I said, I think that representation matters a great deal, that it's often hard for people to be what they can't see. And so it's really fabulous when we have these first that are happening. I was a first in my role as the Dean here, but there's also a sort of flip side to that, right? Which I think is that there can be this sort of
00:31:40
Speaker
enormous hyper visibility that comes with being a first.
00:31:45
Speaker
and the burden sometimes of expectations because you're the first person, the first woman, the first woman of color to have this role. How do you kind of break through that noise, right? Because at the end of the day, you're there to do a job, right? And yet you still have, I think, these sometimes outside, but maybe even sometimes internal pressures based really on the history-making role, but also based on your identity categories.
00:32:12
Speaker
It's a lot. I'm not going to lie on that. The first few months on the job has been a lot of interviews about my background and what I represent. And you know what? That's all fair. This office that I sit in here has been in existence since the days of George Washington, the Congress of the 1989 Judiciary Act that established the U.S. Attorney's Office in Philadelphia.
00:32:37
Speaker
Um, 233 years, there has never been a woman, um, a person of color, uh, I shouldn't say person of color, but a woman, a Latina, uh, or an openly gay individual appointed by the president to this position.
00:32:53
Speaker
That's heavy and people are processing that, people are celebrating it, and that's all there. So you can call it noise, but I think it's appropriate celebration and people want to talk about it. And I'm happy to talk with people about that because it is historic and you have to recognize that it means so much. I can't tell you how many times I have just walked down the street and strangers have come up and wanted to hug me. I mean, literally hugged me on the street.
00:33:24
Speaker
That's amazing. And I respect that. And I respect what it means to people. I'm at events. I have parents come up to me who have children who are trans or gay and just want to hug me and ask, will you talk to my kid? They want to go to law school. Absolutely, I'll talk to them.
00:33:43
Speaker
or just Latinas who are thinking about law school and want to come and talk to me. I always make time for people. It's a lot and it does take up a lot of my time right now, but I feel like this first probably six months has to be a lot of that. And there's plenty of time for the work. I'm doing all sorts of work here and I'm up late nights doing the work.
00:34:10
Speaker
And that's fine. I convinced myself early on that the first six months of this job was going to be very heavy, a lot of work, and a good portion of it was going to be dealing with the historic nature of disappointment. And that's all fair game as far as I'm concerned. So yeah.
00:34:27
Speaker
That's I'm just dealing with it. I'm putting in extra hours and I'm OK. You know, as I said, I was I was pretty much the first in the same three categories that you just described when I became the dean, the first woman, the first person of color at all, and the first black person and the first queer person to have the job. And so a much smaller scale than what you are experiencing. But there is something really amazing about having interactions with people who say,
00:34:56
Speaker
Um, I can, I can now see myself in a particular role because I see you in that particular role. That's incredibly, incredibly powerful. Um, and it's, and it's great when people are able to embrace that. Yeah. One of my big things I've always said is visibility saves lives. Yes.
00:35:13
Speaker
and you have to be authentically you because you don't know who that is going to resonate with. And it's important to just be yourself and be out there and do the things that you do because it does resonate with people and it's important.
Vision for Community Trust and Engagement
00:35:28
Speaker
So it's so many things. Absolutely. There are so many of our students, many of them MSP students, but not all lots of our first gen students, students of color who say, I never, I never met a lawyer who looked like me.
00:35:42
Speaker
until I came to law school and I started to meet folks. So if we can get more people to see folks who look like them in these roles earlier in life, I think we could also diversify our profession a lot more than it traditionally has been. So I just wanna ask a few more questions before I let you go here.
00:36:02
Speaker
We're in what I would consider to be a really interesting and complicated time in terms of our criminal justice system. So there are lots of controversial things that are part of our criminal justice system and the relationship between low-income communities of color and police officers and our criminal justice system. But we're also in this space where we have these
00:36:28
Speaker
You know, quote unquote progressive prosecutors, Larry Kazner, of course, in in Philadelphia is a great example of that. And there's this interesting tension and I feel like it's been a tension for a really long time. I remember it from when I was in law school where there are those who say.
00:36:43
Speaker
you know, if you recognize that there are deep flaws in the system, then you should never be a prosecutor, right? Because then you're just, you're undergirding the system and you're giving it legitimacy. But there's so much power in the role. So I wonder how you think about prosecutors and their role in a criminal justice system and how we understand
00:37:11
Speaker
How do we create a system that feels like there's more emphasis on the justice part of it? I think prosecutors have to be leaders in a lot of ways and use their power to convene. I have a very strong power to convene. My federal law enforcement partners, if I want to have a meeting with FBI, ATF, yeah, get them all unaware and talk, I can do that.
00:37:37
Speaker
I can also bring to that meeting our local law enforcement, our Philadelphia Police Department and other police departments and get them in there. I can also get the DAs from the various counties. I can also get community leaders, faith-based leaders, the community elders who are out there on the streets and who know who the crime drivers are in that way.
00:38:02
Speaker
And the more that we do that and bring all of the entities together, the more trust we create in the community. For me, community engagement is a big thing.
00:38:11
Speaker
I've hired the first ever executive assistant U.S. attorney for community engagement in our office and her role is entirely outward facing. Her job is to identify the communities, the neighborhoods, the schools. Where do we need to be as law enforcement?
00:38:33
Speaker
So that we are familiar face, we're trusted and that the community we serve understands that we serve them. They're not waging war on their neighborhood. We are serving them. We're doing what we do so that they feel safe. Their kids feel like they can go to the park and play safely. That their streets are not riddled with needles and and guns and
00:38:58
Speaker
People are not walking around with things like lock switches and just spray painting bullets everywhere that we are here to serve them when we're doing law enforcement and that we can't do it alone without a partner.
00:39:11
Speaker
and do this thing together. And the more that we convene and the more that we have this dialogue, I'm convinced the more that communities will trust law enforcement and prosecutors are in unique positions who can be. And that's a big part of what I will be doing as long as I'm in this office. So the last question that I want to ask you is potentially an unfair question because you were so early
00:39:38
Speaker
in your tenure, so I don't want to lock you into anything, but as you sort of think about, and you're somebody who really rose up from the ranks, so you really sort of understand this office, I think, and understand this role probably in a pretty unique way as compared to some of your predecessors.
00:39:57
Speaker
So when you look back whatever number of years from now, after you're done with this particular role, what do you think you want your legacy to be, right? What do you think you want people to say about, you know, U.S. Attorney Romero and what the office was like under your guidance and leadership?
00:40:16
Speaker
I think, you know, I went to Rutgers because it was the people's electric law school, right? The energy was, you could just steal it in the air. It really was electricity. The intentions of everyone there were pure and
00:40:38
Speaker
People really were there to do the right thing for the right reasons. And I would love for people to look back and see me as the people's electric US attorney or the people's US attorney. If I have a legacy of
00:40:54
Speaker
being out there in the community and really opening up dialogue and opening up the ties and the trust with the communities that we serve. I've done a fantastic job. If I have, if I'm accessible to my own employees within this building from the people who vacuum these carpets that we get to walk on to the assistant US attorneys who are litigating the cases.
00:41:20
Speaker
If I am connected to everyone in this building and I'm treating them well and letting them know that they are heard, that there is a trajectory for them to advance, to grow in their career, I've done my job internally. And so I would love one day that people look back and say, she was the people's US apart. You did all right. Perfect. Well, I have faith in you and I'm really looking forward to watching you as you do your work going forward. And I'm also looking forward to
00:41:50
Speaker
sending lots of Rutgers Law students your way. Yay! I welcome it. I welcome it. Thank you. Absolutely. Thank you so much. It was such a pleasure to meet you and such a pleasure to speak with you. A pleasure was all mine, Ken. Thank you. Absolutely.
00:42:06
Speaker
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