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Angela is a dedicated personal injury attorney at Pierce Skrabanek. She earned her Bachelor’s in International Liberal Studies from Waseda University in Tokyo, Japan, and spent a decade as a teacher, translator, and author, publishing over 12 books. Driven by a desire to help others through challenging times, she pursued a law degree at the University of Houston Law Center, excelling in Moot Court competitions and clerking at Pierce Skrabanek. Now an integral part of the firm, Angela handles high-profile cases involving commercial vehicle accidents, negligent security, and workplace injuries, maintaining clear communication to guide her clients toward recovery.
My decision was based on a combination of my interest, aptitude, and realistic concerns. Even as a child, I was always interested in helping people. I spent 10 years teaching English proficiency test prep courses, translating, interpreting, and authoring books as a way to do so. The success I enjoyed in my first career tempted me to hypothesize that my reading comprehension, analytical, and writing skills may be transferable to another career. At age 33, my career choices were limited to what required fewer years of investment yet had a reasonable earning potential. After much consideration, I concluded that law was the optimal choice with only three more years of education and potentially high-earning job prospects.
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I tried to be strategic in the process of writing and the statement itself.
While brainstorming, I divided my qualities into three categories: advantages, disadvantages, and no impact. For example, the fact that I was a non-traditional applicant with a prior academic career was an advantage; my strength in grammar and writing, in general, was an advantage; my GPA from a foreign undergrad, calculated differently from GPAs from US colleges, was probably a disadvantage; my international/ethnic background probably had no impact on my application. Then I focused on choosing aspects of my life that maximized my advantages and minimized my disadvantages.
After I chose my topic, I changed it twice. Because I had started writing three months out, I had plenty of time to revise. After finally settling on my topic, I wrote and revised it. I think I wrote 10-15 drafts. I asked my friends and family who I knew to have strong logic and writing skills to review my personal statement. Sometimes, I would let it sit for a few days then go back and look at it with a fresher set of eyes.
Unsolicited advice to applicants with fewer resources: You can still do it. Don’t let those Reddit posts about tutors and essay coaches scare you. Because I am a first-generation lawyer in my family, I didn’t have anyone who could give me advice on what would be the best way to write a personal statement. I didn’t have the money to hire a tutor or essay coach either, so I referenced free advice on the internet. I come from a non-English-speaking country, so I didn’t have a ton of people from whom to get advice on my writing. I still wrote a statement decent enough not to keep me from getting through the door because I knew (1) who I was; (2) who I was writing for; and (3) what I was writing for.
I worked on enough (about 60) practice tests to have nothing come as a surprise, but the internet cutting out for 10 minutes and the LSAC not doing anything to accommodate that loss in time was quite inconvenient.
While I was studying for the LSAT, though, I noticed that my focus would fade away when I was about two-thirds of the way through the test. It surprised me because staying concentrated for a long time had never been a problem for me. So I took two to three practice tests back-to-back to force myself to stay focused for longer periods of time for the LSAT. It was tough, especially when I took three tests in a row but helped me tremendously with the testing stamina and I was able to stay focused all the way through.
As per my responses to previous questions, I had a 10-year career as an English proficiency test prep teacher, translator, interpreter, and professional writer. In those ten years, all I did was read, write, proofread, and lecture. I was always on a tight schedule. It helped me treat the application process with multiple deadlines with little stress because it was not unlike any other projects I had worked on. Getting into the habit of checking emails every time something comes in also helped me stay on top of everything.
I applied to four schools and got rejected by two. I knew my LSAT scores were not good enough for one and I had bad phrasing in my essay in the other. I don’t think I learned anything new from those experiences, but those two rejections confirmed my belief in the importance of triple-checking everything and overpreparing.
I stumbled upon personal injury while I was job hunting for the 1L summer. Before I joined the firm as a law clerk, I liked the idea that personal injury attorneys worked with “the little guy” and helped people get compensated. I learned on the job that helping the injured is indeed rewarding. I also realized that the size of compensation that personal injury attorneys get is undeniably attractive, especially for someone in my age group. It is also a very fast-paced environment where you get a lot of first and second-hand experience as opposed to Big Law. I find all these aspects interesting and valuable, and they have thus inspired me to stay in personal injury.
If you want to pursue personal injury, be prepared to see some heart-breaking cases and understand that your first job is to “make the plaintiff whole” through monetary compensation. Being kind to clients is of course important but your most important job as their attorney is to get them the biggest compensation possible by being efficient and diligent. You will likely work on many different cases at the same time, which means efficiency may at times have to come before perfectionism.
If you want to pursue personal injury and you’re already a law student, work for at least two personal injury firms with different sizes in the summer and during the semesters to see what you like. Bigger firms tend to have a more organized system with step-by-step training and smaller firms tend to give you a lot more hands-on experiences and time spent with attorneys.
I can’t say much about emerging fields of law, but definitely pay attention to the use of AI in law. That does not mean using Chat-GPT for everything. Knowing how to appropriately use AI and other technological tools will help you save a lot of time. Also, know how to really use Micrsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint beyond just typing up a document, bolding and italicizing fonts here and there, because it will come in handy.
Time. I am somewhat of a workaholic, so I never minded having to spend a lot of time at work. However, after getting married, I felt the need for personal time with my spouse. My compromise was to go to work super early and leave at a regular time—essentially choosing extra time with my family over two or three more hours of sleep.
I didn’t mind taking the LSAT, so I wouldn’t need any money to take the LSAT again. However, to compensate for my time, I would like $300 for every hour spent preparing for and taking the test!
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