I am an Illinois-licensed attorney and communications consultant with over two decades of experience as an appellate and trial lawyer. Throughout, I have persuaded diverse decision-makers, both inside and outside the courtroom.
After graduating from the University of Illinois College of Law, I spent over six years in the Office of the Illinois Appellate Defender, representing indigent clients in criminal appeals. To be effective, I mastered state and federal jurisprudence across a vast spectrum—from constitutional issues around the Fourth Amendment, Fifth, and Sixth Amendments to discussions of statutory construction. I handled over 100 appeals and have 20 published decisions in judicial reporters.
I strove to calibrate my message for the audience: using rhetoric and precision before reviewing courts while maintaining simplicity and clarity with pro se defendants.
As a Cook County Public Defender for over three years, mostly in juvenile abuse court but also in domestic violence court, I used different tools. In the high-pressure environment of juvenile court, I often leaned into storytelling, discussing the often-Herculean struggles of poor parents to find work, housing, and services that would allow them to reunify with their children. I had to use a more direct, clear style in staffing meetings with the state agencies entrusted with caring for minor children.
Particularly in domestic violence court, I witnessed how language barriers often left Spanish-speaking defendants isolated and effectively unrepresented. Driven to help, I moved to Costa Rica for two years to achieve C2-level fluency. Later, this helped me give top-flight representation to both English and Spanish-speaking clients. This, combined with my later work as an ESL teacher, gave me great insight into the tools that the speaker or writer can use to make their message persuasive.
Upon returning to the U.S., I dedicated myself to public interest law, handling home foreclosures in Illinois and managing a legal non-profit in eastern Oregon. I remain deeply active in the law, committed to providing high-level advocacy and counsel during these volatile times.
In re DD, 728 N.E.2d 119 (Ill. App. Ct 2000) (reviewing court considers the power of a trial court to order specific placement in of a delinquent minor).
People v. Davis, 730 N.E.2d 518 (Ill. App. Ct 2000) (reversal of conviction based on the trial court’s failure to give the presumption of innocence instruction to the jury and because the prosecutor impeached the defendant with his Fifth Amendment invocation of silence).
People v. Lopez, 766 N.E.2d 329 (Ill. S. Ct. 2002) (in sex offense prosecution, the defendant had a Fourteenth Amendment due process right to request the physical examination of the complainant where the prosecution wanted to introduce evidence coming from its own examining physician).
People v. Vue, 818 N.E.2d 1252 (Ill. App. Ct. 2005) (defendant’s conviction for armed violence was vacated because the armed violence statute could not include a metal flashlight as a dangerous weapon).
People v. Ferral, 921 N.E.2d (Ill. App. Ct. 2009) (even absent a warrant and exigent circumstances, the police could without a warrant enter a home under the emergency exception where the police had reasonable grounds to believe that the defendant was burglarizing the residence.).
