Tell us about your community growing up. Looking back, how did they shape who you are now?

I grew up in Beirut, Lebanon. I loved my community growing up, where I spent the school year in Lebanon with my Arab family and spent the summers in Texas visiting my Mexican family. This unique upbringing has allowed me to bring different perspectives to the table as a lawyer today and provides me with the tools to truly understand every side of a case.

Describe your journey to law school. What motivated you to apply?

Law school never crossed my mind until my final year in college. No one in my family was a lawyer and the only exposure I had to the law were immigration attorneys who helped my family become American citizens. Just this exposure showed me how much power a legal license could have and the change someone could effectuate as a lawyer. I began to research the path I needed to take to become a lawyer and set my mind to it. After completing a rigorous LSAT program, I took the LSAT, graduated from the University of Texas at Austin, and began my law school journey at St. Mary’s University School of Law.

What was your law school experience like?

Being the first person in my family to become a lawyer, the law school experience was completely foreign to me. I had no idea what to expect. I quickly learned that I made the right decision to come to law school—because I loved every one of my classes and was so curious about every aspect of the law. At the same time, however, I learned that this was a difficult field to navigate as a first-generation law student. There were not any students or faculty who shared my background and I often questioned if I truly belonged. While this was difficult, it pushed me to be the best that I could be by always overpreparing for exams, choosing to be curious about the law, and getting involved in as much as I could. This meant trying out for the moot court team and joining the law review at my law school that was important to me—the one that focused on race and social justice issues. This law review later published a comment I wrote about the United States Supreme Court’s Masterpiece Cakeshop opinion and how it affected an adoption bill in Texas that was adversely affecting certain populations.

Did you know about appellate work in law school? If not, when and how did it first get on your radar and why were you drawn to it?

I did not learn about appellate work until I competed in the final round of my law school’s moot court competition. I am competitive and worked hard to win every round of the competition until I was at the final round—which was judged by Fourth Court of Appeals’ en banc court. The night before the round, I was researching the justices, and that was when I started to realize what appellate law really was. After this experience, I decided I wanted to learn more about appellate work and soon learned it was this prestigious world that not many could touch.

My favorite class was constitutional law and I started to research many of the appellate advocates who argued in the cases I read, and I studied the paths they took to become those appellate advocates. I quickly learned that judicial internships during law school and clerkships after graduation were something they all had in common. After the experience of arguing in the final round of the university’s moot court competition, I competed in many moot court competitions around the nation and learned that this was something I wanted to continue to do as a lawyer. My first job as a lawyer was as a briefing attorney at the Fourth Court of Appeals, where I advised the justices on complex civil and criminal appeals and original proceedings. I loved every minute of it and knew that the appellate field was exactly where I wanted to be.

Tell us about one of your appellate cases that you found particularly meaningful.

Because I graduated during the COVID-19 pandemic, I was fortunate enough to work on influential and unique appeals early in my career. One of these was an appeal where I represented the San Antonio Independent School District which was sued by the State of Texas because of its imposition of a vaccine mandate for its employees. The State moved for a temporary injunction, which was denied, and then the State filed an interlocutory appeal to the intermediate appellate court. The intermediate appellate court affirmed the trial court’s denial of the temporary injunction, and the State subsequently filed a petition for review in the Texas Supreme Court—which was when I got involved. I filed a response to the State’s petition for review, which focused on issues relating to the Governor’s ability to suspend provisions of the Texas Education Code during a disaster. After this preliminary briefing relating to the petition for review was completed, the legislature passed Senate Bill 29, which touched on some of the issues in this appeal. Because of this, the Texas Supreme Court directed the parties to address whether the issue was moot or not due to Senate Bill 29. We took the position that the issue was not moot, and the State argued that it was and that the intermediate appellate court’s opinion should be vacated. The Texas Supreme Court ultimately agreed with the State, vacated the intermediate appellate court’s opinion, and did not address the issues in the appeal relating to the Governor’s authority to suspend provisions with the Texas Education Code during a state of disaster. While we did not get the ultimate result that we wanted, the interesting issues and briefing I was able to work on in this appeal were a great experience for me.

How often do you encounter other Arab people in the appellate field? Why do you think that representation is important?

Unfortunately, I have never met another Arab person in the appellate field. I hope that changes soon because the representation of minorities is especially important in the appellate field, where many of the opinions in the appellate courts affect the rights of minorities. I also think that the appellate field is often thought of as a prestigious field that only certain people can work in—who are not first generation; who have family connections; and who look like everyone else in the field. Organizations like The Appellate Project can change this stereotype, and the change is already apparent from the diversity we are starting to see on the appellate benches across the Nation.

What advice would you give to a law student of color who aspires to be where you are now?

I would tell them that they do belong and not to be discouraged if they do not look like the others in the appellate field or do not have the family history that others may have who are in the appellate field. I would also advise them to focus on doing well in school, both by way of their grades and by being involved in extracurriculars like a law review or moot court, so that they can obtain a judicial clerkship when they graduate. Once someone has a juridical clerkship, it really opens the door to different types of careers in the appellate field. I currently coach students who compete in moot court competitions that celebrate diversity by focusing on sharpening appellate skills of diverse students. This includes the Hispanic National Bar Association Moot Court Competition, Black Law Students Association, and National Latino/a Law Student Association Moot Court Competition. These competitions will change the future of the appellate bar in a positive way by providing more individuals of color access to the appellate world.

What’s one thing law schools and/or the appellate bar can do to ensure our highest courts are representative of all our communities?

First, the appellate bar can promote diversity by mentoring students of color. This does not mean that the bar should only mentor students who express an interest in the appellate field, because I believe a lot of students of color do not even know what the appellate field really consists of and could potentially have interest in it if they were aware of what it entailed. After mentorship is encouragement. Both the appellate bar and law schools can celebrate the diversity we are beginning to see on the benches—which will then show examples to law students of how they too can do the same and provide them with the encouragement to do the same. This all begins in law school, but the mentorship and encouragement must continue afterwards.