Ocean Mottley / Louis Goodman – Transcript

Louis Goodman / Ocean Mottley – Transcript

https://www.lovethylawyer.com/ocean-mottley-uc-law-sf/

[00:00:00] Louis Goodman: Welcome to the Alameda County Bar Association and the Love Thy Lawyer podcast, where we talk to attorneys under the auspices of the ACBA. I’m Louis Goodman. Today we welcome Ocean Mottley to the podcast. Mr. Mottley is currently a staff attorney for Bay Area Legal Aid, where he works on employment, housing, tax, and family law matters.

He also has substantial prior experience in the fields of labor relations and criminal defense. Mr. Mottley is an active member of the Alameda County Bar Association and a frequent contributor to this podcast. Ocean Mottley, welcome to the Alameda County Bar Association and the Love Thy Lawyer podcast.

[00:00:49] Ocean Mottley: Thank you, Louis. It’s a pleasure to be here. I’ve really enjoyed a lot of your other podcasts, and it was honored to be asked to do it.

[00:00:54] Louis Goodman: Well, I’m very happy that you’re here as our primary guest today, and I do appreciate your being on the podcast and your contributions in the past. Where are you speaking to us from right now?

[00:01:06] Ocean Mottley: I’m at home in Oakland, California.

[00:01:09] Louis Goodman: And where is your office located?

00:01:11] Ocean Mottley: That’s in Richmond, Contra Costa County.

[00:01:14] Louis Goodman: Can you describe briefly, the kind of practice that you’re involved in right now?

[00:01:21] Ocean Mottley: Yes. I work in what we call our reentry unit and a reentry practice. There’s many different organizations to do reentry work.

It may or may not be, well, legal services, but it’s about helping people transitioning from incarceration population back into civilian life, navigating a lot of the barriers to reentry that a criminal conviction poses on them in terms of their work and their housing and ability to get benefits and licensing. So, we’re doing a legal aspect of that transition process.

[00:01:49] Louis Goodman: How long have you been doing that sort of work?

[00:01:53] Ocean Mottley: I’ve been with Bay Area Legal Aid almost four years, I think in November. I did expungement work on the side as I was developing my career throughout my career from the very beginning. So for the last 14 years, I’ve been doing that on and off.

[00:02:07] Louis Goodman: Where are you from originally?

[00:02:09] Ocean Mottley: Richmond, Virginia.

[00:02:11] Louis Goodman: And is that where you went to high school?

[00:02:13] Ocean Mottley: Partly, but the first two years of high school I was at, I did go to Douglas Freeman in Richmond, Virginia. And then I moved to Oregon where I had my last two years of high school.

[00:02:23] Louis Goodman: After you got out of high school, where’d you go to college and law school? And can you take us a little bit through that set of transitions? Because I know for you, it was very nontraditional.

[00:02:35] Ocean Mottley: Yes. I moved down to the Bay area when I was 18. So, I’ve been in Oakland in or around Oakland since I was 18. And that was 31 years ago. And I. Took a while figuring out what I wanted to do, do with my life.

I went to a community college for more years than I’d like to admit, but I went to a lot of really great schools, Laney college, City College San Francisco, Chabot, I found that that was actually a really good experience for two reasons. One, it was a lot less expensive. And two, I got a lot more personal attention from teachers because the class sizes are like 30 people.

You could talk directly with the teachers. And then once I transferred into UC Berkeley as an upper division student, I felt a lot more well prepared, and I heard some other people talking about being in classes with 200 people, 250 people, you never get to talk to the teacher, and then they have a huge debt already.

So that was a great experience, and then I did go to UC Berkeley, I transferred there as a junior. I later went on to, the AFL CIO has a school called the George Meany Labor Center. And I went through their master’s program in legal and ethical studies, but it was mostly about working for unions and organizing the business aspect of unions before I went to what is now called UC Law in San Francisco.

Yeah, it took me probably 15 years to get through that whole process. I didn’t become an attorney until I was about 35.

[00:03:50] Louis Goodman: What were those experiences like for you being in college, being in law school? How did you find that experience in terms of growing up?

[00:04:01] Ocean Mottley: I was definitely challenging. I worked my way through school.

So I was working full time alongside of going to school. When I was going to community college, that wasn’t as hard because I was going part time. But once I got into, to Berkeley, into the upper division kind of graduate programs, it was a lot harder trying to work full time and go to school full time.

So I feel like I missed out on a lot of the social aspect, particularly on law school, you know, I just didn’t have the time to really engage and work with other people, but I’m still very lucky to be at Barrier Legal Aid. And I feel like I’m getting that experience now. It’s a very collegial experience.

We’ve got about 150 attorneys and we’re constantly working together to help each other on our cases. So I feel grateful to have that experience now.

[00:04:41] Louis Goodman: When did you first start thinking about being a lawyer and then kind of a related question? When did you actually decide, I’m going to apply to law school and I’m really going to be a lawyer?

[00:04:56] Ocean Mottley: Good question. I think probably sitting in a jail cell, I had a lot of time on my hands and figuring out what I wanted to do with my life. I actually went to jail back in the 1990s for drug related offenses. And I had been selling drugs because I had lost my job for trying to organize a union. I didn’t know at the time the laws around how to do that.

And I got fired by a major company for trying to organize a union at my work and felt pretty disgruntled about that. And, you know, made other choices about how to try to survive. And I just felt like I’d kind of been beaten up by the system, both in terms of the work world and the criminal justice world, and I was like, there’s got to be more to this. I want to figure out how to protect myself and the people that I care about. And now I think that was a big motivation for me and wanting to go to law school.

When I decided, I think I really had to take one day at a time and just, you know, get the community college and then I’ll try to get to the next step and I get through, get my undergraduate degree and then think about the next step.

So I don’t know if I was sure I was going to go to law school until. The first day I showed up and I knew that because of my criminal history was a possibility that I would never get my license because of the moral character application. But I really believe that the legal profession is a great one because it’s so versatile.

So many people go to law school and then go on to do other careers, which you can’t do with a lot of other degrees. And I felt like it was a tools and skills that I could take and have with me, regardless of whether I got to become an attorney.

[00:06:22] Louis Goodman: Before we actually started recording, you and I had discussed the fact that you’d been in jail and whether that was something that was appropriate to discuss on the podcast.

And you gave me permission to ask you about it. So I’d like to know what that experience in jail was like for you.

[00:06:40] Ocean Mottley: Sure. You know, um, gosh, what’s the best way to describe it? I had a lot of time on my hands. Yeah, I think it was helpful for me to see that side of the world. I mean, you know, we watch movies, intelligence shows about people being in jail all the time.

It’s a very different experience once you’re there, it’s very dehumanizing. You really are just a number really treated like an animal in many ways. So you really have no very few rights at all and are really at the mercy of people who are in positions of power in that, in those institutions that we’re in.

I think it definitely gave me a lot of empathy for people in those situations. I recognize that I have a lot of, you know, power and privilege just from being white and being a man, it’s a lot easier to hide that background. And I’ve had a lot more opportunities that I’ve been able to turn my life around that other people don’t.

So I still feel incredibly empathetic for anyone in that situation.

[00:07:34] Louis Goodman: You’ve been practicing law for quite some time now. What is it that you really like about practicing law that’s kept you in the profession?

[00:07:43] Ocean Mottley: Really the people, the clients, it’s just, it’s huge when people feel like they’re up against the impossible and they really want or need something that’s important to them and able to help them navigate this mysterious system that feels really daunting and scary.

And the connections that I make with people going through that process has been very meaningful and it really keeps me going.

[00:08:03] Louis Goodman: Would you recommend it to a young person just coming out of law school as a career? Legal Aid? Well, being a lawyer in general and perhaps Legal Aid specifically.

[00:08:14] Ocean Mottley: It’s a tough, I mean, I would definitely have a hard talk with anybody who wants to be a lawyer.

You know, I think It’s important to think about the motivations, why people want to be a lawyer, because it can be very overwhelming. I mean, it’s incredibly expensive, even more so than when, you know, I was going to law school, you know, just the amount of debt that people are taking on is, it’s just unbelievable.

So I think it’s really important for people to really know why they want to do it, what their motivation is, like, do they think like, Oh, I’ve seen lawyers on TV that looks fun or, Oh, I’m going to make a bunch of money. I would be careful to talk to them about why they want to do it. But yeah, I think it’s still a viable career, but I would definitely warn people about going in.

In terms of Legal Aid, I really wish I had heard of Legal Aid when I was in law school, it really wasn’t something that was on my radar, but it’s been a great experience for me, the organization that I’m at. I see a lot of new people right out of law school coming in. So it’s a great first step for, for many people to transition into other, other areas of practice or into the firm life.

But like I said, it’s incredibly collegial in a way that I had not been able to experience in law school. And there’s a big upside to having your student loans forgiven. You know, it’s the potential of having student loans forgiven in 10 years. If I’d known this, I would have been, you know, got the Legal Aid right off the bat and would have had my loans paid upward.

[00:09:26] Louis Goodman: You’ve also been active in the Alameda County Bar Association. Can you tell us a little bit about your experience with Alameda County Bar?

[00:09:35] Ocean Mottley: Sure. I’m on the executive board for the labor or in employment law section. That’s been a great experience. Just getting to know other folks who like doing what I’m doing.

Like I’m a big nerd in that sense. I really like labor law. I really like employment law, criminal law. All of those things are really important to me. And I enjoy being around other people that that’s what they’re doing. It’s nice to learn folks from the local area, beginning to network as well and also develop trainings for other people. That was a good experience for me as well.

[00:10:03] Louis Goodman: I have a two-part question. What do you think is the best advice you’ve ever received? And what advice would you give to a young attorney who is just starting out?

[00:10:14] Ocean Mottley: This isn’t necessarily for the law career, but I think the best advice I ever heard from anyone about work in general was do what you love, and the money will follow.

I think a lot of times I get caught up in worrying about the money and am I going to be able to do this or that with the money, but just focusing on what’s important to me and doing that and letting the rest figure itself out. I feel like that’s good advice for me to hear a lot of people as well. But in terms of being a lawyer, like I said, I think it’s really important to check motivations.

You know, why are you doing this? Because it’s an incredibly difficult career. It can be, you know, you’re dealing with people who are in really dire streets often, whatever it is, even if it’s like a major financial merger or anything else. I heard somebody say, you know, as a lawyer, the people that we’re dealing with, whatever I’m doing for them is often the most important thing that’s going on in their life at that time.

So just, you know, recognizing the amount of emotional labor that’s involved. And yeah, just making sure that I have the reason why I’m doing it is going to be a strong enough to get me through the difficult times.

[00:11:13] Louis Goodman: Do you think the legal system is fair?

[00:11:15] Ocean Mottley: Well, if I had to say yes or no, I would probably say no.

I think there’s a lot of benefits that can be gotten from the legal system, and I’m grateful for opportunities like Legal Aid. To help people who are indigent and can’t afford legal services to get legal services. I think that that’s great. But I think the, in general, the system in this country is stacked, you know, with the class system and the nature of capitalism, the way it is people in power tend to stay in power.

And people who are tend to not, you know, there’s always a few exceptions that kind of make it seem like, Oh, we won the lottery. It’s a fair system. But I think the deck is stacked, you know, and that’s the challenge, but there’s, there’s ways to try to help people, you know, 1 percent at a time. And I think there are, there are possibilities for that in the legal system.

[00:11:58] Louis Goodman: Going to shift gears here a little bit, what’s your family life like, and how has the practice of law fit into that, and the family fit into the practice of law?

[00:12:09] Ocean Mottley: I don’t have any children myself, I’m not married. In some ways. I don’t know how people do it. You know, I see people who are lawyers, full time lawyers and their parents, and they’re doing all the things. I just don’t know how they could pull it together. It’s, it’s definitely a lot. I sacrificed a lot in terms of my relationships and my career, you know, sometimes needing to move for work.

Or just the number of hours you have to put in just to get to and through law school, much less, you know, the earlier years of being an attorney, it can be very devastating on relationships. I think I’m finally at a point in my life where I found a lot more work life balance. And I can focus on the people in my life that are important to me and maintain those relationships.

But there’s definitely another warning that I would give people. If there’s a lot of people in your life that you care about, you’re not going to be seeing much of them, particularly going through law school in the early years of being a lawyer.

[00:12:59] Louis Goodman: What sort of recreational pursuits do you have to kind of get your mind off of the practice of law every once in a while?

[00:13:05] Ocean Mottley: Exercise has always been a big one for me, but definitely is a great stress reliever, helping with mental health in general. I play judo. And I like to run and swim and go to the gym. It’s like every day I try to do a little bit of something to kind of clear out all that stuff that the mind just starts to kind of go around and around.

Particularly with legal work, it’s easy to become, to over intellectualize my experience with the world. So kind of just getting back in my body has been a real help.

[00:13:33] Louis Goodman: What mistakes do you think lawyers make?

[00:13:36] Ocean Mottley: Well, I know for myself as a lawyer, many of the mistakes I’ve made, and I see my colleagues make is being overly argumentative, overly defensive. I think particularly early in our careers, we’re so worried about making mistakes or looking bad that we’re like overly cautious about things. And I think it’s, you know, 90 plus percent of cases and in my experience, and also in the sociology of law, talk about cases are settled and that takes relationship building and working with the other side, taking chances, being willing to give information that you don’t necessarily have to give in order to get people on board to bring them together to get those settlements. I think that’s, that’s a big part of it. And it just comes with time. I mean, I think, I don’t know if law school makes people this way or law school attracts people who are already this way, but you know, what do we do in law? You know, like everything’s about somebody else’s fault.

I don’t, you know, it’s not me to deny everything, blame somebody else. And I think that’s just a terrible way to have relationships. And it really leads to a lot of unfortunate circumstances, even in legal cases. So, I think really reengineering that back way, like how do we focus on the humanity of the other people on the other side?

I don’t agree with you. We are in conflict. That doesn’t mean that I’m a bad person or you’re a bad person. Like, how can we find areas where we can come together? I think that’s the biggest struggle for myself as an attorney and what I see for those around me.

[00:14:52] Louis Goodman: How do you define success?

[00:14:55] Ocean Mottley: I think for me, success is reducing suffering.

And if at the very least not making more, it’s same thing, kind of going back to how we practice law is so we’re so worried about getting from A to B and objectifying people along the process, like forgetting how to treat other people. And I think even whether I win or lose a case, you know, when I have clients afterwards, just say, thank you for being there for me.

I felt like you were on my side. I’ve never had that before. I think that for me is a big part of what feels like success.

[00:15:25] Louis Goodman: Is there somebody that you’d like to meet, someone living or someone out of the historical past who you’d like to meet?

[00:15:34] Ocean Mottley: Malcolm X has always been a hero of mine since childhood. I think I read his autobiography in middle school, and I’ve always been a huge admirer of him, just what he’s gone through in his life and just his incredible intelligence in the way to see the world has been very inspiring for me.

[00:15:50] Louis Goodman: What sort of things keep you up at night?

[00:15:53] Ocean Mottley: Probably PTSD. Just, you know, all the trauma from my own life and for my clients’ lives. There’s a lot of vicarious trauma dealing with clients. They’re going through hard times and just, you know, sometimes it’s hard to turn it off. That’s been one of my biggest struggles throughout my career.

I’ve never had a hard time working or getting work done or doing things. It’s like, how do I turn it off at the end of the day, turn off all the noise and allow myself to kind of recenter and be able to sleep. And that’s always been a challenge and continues to be.

[00:16:21] Louis Goodman: Let’s say you came into some real money, three or four billion dollars. What, if anything, would you do differently in your life?

[00:16:29] Ocean Mottley: You know, before I went to law school, the, let me just put it this way. The amount of debt that I accrued when I was in law school was more money that I’d ever seen or heard of in my life. It was incredibly daunting to imagine even just paying that off.

So I, you know, I’m not from a money background, so I wouldn’t know what to do with a bunch of money. I think the thing that really sticks out for me is I once heard somebody say, being rich is better than being poor. But it’s not as good as being just okay. And at this point in my life, I’m just okay.

I have all of my needs met. I have a home, I have food, I have all the things that I need. And I think in our sort of individualized culture, we always think about that lottery winner, who’s going to change everything in their lives. And then they end up broke somehow, even though they have a bunch of money.

To me, I would rather see everyone else have what they need. And for me to have everything I want, I think that would actually be more helpful for me and for everyone else. If everyone’s, you know, has at least their basic needs met. And me having 3 billion dollars isn’t going to make that much of a difference.

And with more money comes more problems, really.

[00:17:27] Louis Goodman: Let’s say you had a magic wand. There was one thing you could change in the world, the legal world, or otherwise. What would that be?

[00:17:34] Ocean Mottley: I’d be thinking a lot about what I just talked about in terms of at least having everyone having their basic needs met, but it’s just a tragedy to see how much money and productivity that we were able to create in a capitalist system.

I guess the benefit of capitalism is being able to create wealth, but we’re just not doing a good job of distributing that. And if there was a way that I could find to, you know, make sure that everyone’s at least getting their basic needs met, housing, education, healthcare, I think that would be, I can wave a magic wand.

It would be that.

[00:18:04] Louis Goodman: Let’s say someone gave you 60 seconds on the Super Bowl, one-minute Super Bowl ad, where you could speak to a really large audience. What message would you want to put out there?

[00:18:16] Ocean Mottley: I think a wise man once said nothing. If I could just make everybody sit still, quietly and breathe together for 60 seconds, that would be better than anything that I could say.

[00:18:27] Louis Goodman: So like a one minute meditation for the entire country? Ocean, we have some other people on this call with us. I’d like to bring them in now. David Parnell, could you unmute and join us and have a question or a comment for Mr. Mottley?

[00:18:50] David Parnell: Yes. Speaking of law school, how I wasn’t expecting that until you made your announcement, Louis. So I do curse you just a little bit.

[00:18:58] Louis Goodman: Go ahead. When people want to be mad at me, I just say, that’s okay. Get in line.

[00:19:04] David Parnell: Yeah. It’s, this is really interesting to me. And so, I have a couple of questions. I was an older law student as well. And so I’m just curious, like going to law school as an older student, did you ever feel like you kind of found a community in law school or was that something that just kind of bypassed you?

[00:19:28] Ocean Mottley: No, I definitely found it. And I think the school that I went to UC Law did a good job of having a program for non-traditionally aged students. They specifically brought us together so we could learn the other people who are a little bit older. And I think just naturally in classes, people that I find were older, even if I didn’t know that they were, we tend to come together.

Just having some life experience, hearing the way people talk brings us together. So yeah, I felt it was, I did not feel alone.

[00:19:55] Louis Goodman: You had another question, David?

[00:19:57] David Parnell: Yeah, I do. And I do. And I mean, this is kind of like the bigger question for me. So like with regard to the jail time. So in my view, the time that you spent in jail, it seems like it would have given you some significant insight into the system that most attorneys just don’t have.

You have some insight into the process. I guess my question is, like, would you agree with that? And if so, have there been specific moments that you can think of where you feel like it has been, it has proven beneficial to you as a lawyer? And I have a follow up after that.

[00:20:36] Ocean Mottley: Sure. I mean, I think one of the biggest surprises about being in jail is it’s just other normal people, you know, living everyday lives, having the struggles that, you know, they’re sad about being away from their families, their children, their loved ones.

Just trying to get to the day, you know, at the end of the day, everybody wants the same sort of thing. They want to be able to have their basic needs met, be with the people that they love and care about. You know, I, you know, I’m seeing so much on TV about how, you know, No, I mean, I mean, I think movies tend to sensationalize the prison population and focus on, you know, how scary it is and how threatening it is and how there’s just a bunch of animals locked up, which kind of just goes into that whole narrative about how people in jail don’t need to be treated like humans.

And just how human, and just like everybody next door, people are, who are incarcerated. I was definitely surprised by that. And in terms of how it helped me with my career, certainly doing reentry work gives me a lot more empathy from where people are coming from and the obstacles they have, you know, a lot of times, you know, as an attorney, I’m busy and I’m like, Hey, you know, we were supposed to meet at this certain time and you weren’t there, or like you were supposed to do X, Y, or Z and kind of just understanding how many things people have going on in their life just to be able to show up and create some empathy around that.

[00:21:49] Louis Goodman: David, you had one more follow up. I’ll give you one more follow up and then I’ll move on to Rachel and Jonathan.

[00:21:55] David Parnell: Thank you. Yeah. So my follow up is this, you know, and so, so in my view, and I mean this sincerely is like, you know, so in the sense of you understanding the system, to me, it seems like that makes you in that respect, like a stronger attorney than me, because I don’t have that knowledge. I don’t have that experience to have that kind of deeper understanding of what I might be advising people about. But, so I wonder, like, if it’s ever come out, if other attorneys have tried to, you know, somehow diminish you as an attorney when it gets into the conflict because of it, or is it something that people just really just easily don’t know about until you do podcasts like this?

[00:22:38] Ocean Mottley: Yeah, I mean, it’s, it’s not something that most people know about. I mean, I think people assume like, Oh, you’re an attorney. You can’t possibly have a criminal record. I mean, most attorneys, if they commit a crime, they were already an attorney and they’ve lost their license and they’re not going back. I mean, for me, I did all that before I ever even started college had many years before I got to my moral character application.

So it was a little bit backwards. And I think I’m in sort of a unique situation where people make assumptions. And in that case, these assumptions are in my benefit. I mean, I’ve had a hard situation in one job where I, one of my employers was a former police officer and he would often talk about criminals as scumbags and everything else.

And I felt like, ah, I can’t, you know, I was afraid to say anything. I was afraid to stand up to say anything because that’s who I was. But again, you know, he just made that assumption that of course I’m not that, so it doesn’t usually come up.

[00:23:24] Louis Goodman: Rachel Harger, can you unmute? Join us.

[00:23:28] Rachel Harger: Ocean, always good to see you.

My question was other than maybe confronting the law school student lungs, have there been any times in your legal career where you regretted becoming a lawyer or regretted sort of the things that you were in a position of having to do by virtue of your, you know, your role as an attorney for some person or party.

[00:23:53] Ocean Mottley: No, I don’t think so. It’s been a very satisfying career. It’s been incredibly difficult with a lot of sacrifices, but I don’t have any regrets. And I’ve had a lot of opportunities to have clients that I did not expect. You know, in law school, one of the things that one of my favorite things about law school is they’d have you, you know, make an argument, here’s a case and people naturally have what they think one way or the other. And you make the argument and they’re like, great, now argue the other side. You know, for myself, I, you know, have not, not been a big fan of law enforcement in my life just because of my background. But then I became an attorney and a labor lawyer and most police officers are in unions and I ended up representing some police officers.

And that was a really good experience. Same thing. Like I had turned, tended to dehumanize police officers as this monolith of a machine, forgetting that they’re, they have the same thing, you know, they got to get up every morning and put the pants on one leg at a time. They’ve got the same struggles at home.

So yeah, it’s actually been a very interesting experience being a lawyer and having clients that I did not expect having.

[00:24:54] Rachel Harger: Okay. I have one other question. What’s your favorite lawyer joke?

[00:24:57] Ocean Mottley: My favorite lawyer joke. I don’t know if I can say on this. Well, I’ll say it cause we can edit it out. I’ll just say it and you can do what you want to do with it.

What’s the difference between a lawyer and a sex worker?

[00:25:06] Rachel Harger: Oh, I, I,

[00:25:07] Louis Goodman: yeah,

[00:25:07] Ocean Mottley: The sex worker stops when you’re dead.

[00:25:10] Louis Goodman: Well, on that note, Jonathan, can you join us?

[00:25:14] Johnathan: Oh, I’m here and I’m laughing. That’s a good one. That’s a real good one. Oh, Mr. Motley. Good to see you. Good to see you. So from your unique experience, both with working with people re entering from prison, as well as from your own experience with the criminal background, what can we as lawyers do or do better when we have a client who has a criminal history?

[00:25:42] Ocean Mottley: That’s a good question. I mean, I think it’s important to talk about because many cases, particularly, I think you do personal injury and sometimes issue that’s going to be relevant to the case and just being sensitive around that and talking about, Hey, this is why it’s important for her to talk about it.

I don’t have any judgment about it, but there’s certain things that I need to know, because if you don’t tell me now and we get ahead of it, It’s going to come out later and be difficult. I think some of it is, you know, don’t watch so many movies and all that stuff about the glorification of prison life.

You know, if there’s any books that you can read about people who shared their, their life in prison. There’s lots of good ones now. I mean, what I started with, I think the first book that I ever read around the prison experience was Eldridge Cleaver’s Soul on Ice. That was a good one back from the seventies and then George Jackson’s book.

But there’s a lot of folks now where there’s people have a lot more opportunities to write books and people who have had that experience. If you haven’t read any books about anything, somebody’s experience at first hand, I think that would be a good place to start.

[00:26:39] Johnathan: A follow up, you know, you’re right. I do personal injury law and oftentimes, you know, when I am representing somebody with a criminal background, the defense will really hammer on that criminal background, whether it be a felony conviction or something of moral turpitude where they say, Oh, you know, we are going to go after your client. This is going to reduce settlement value. You know, how can we rebut that?

How can we, you know, help them see that, you know, just because, you know, the client has a criminal background, you know, why does that really affect the value of their case? They are a human that was injured just like any anyone else, just like you and me.

[00:27:22] Ocean Mottley: That’s a tough question. I think it’s more important about getting ahead of it, like not letting people bring that out and then having to clean it up afterwards.

Just, you know, starting with that, bringing that on your direct exam and getting ahead of it is important and probably the best you can do, unfortunately.

[00:27:37] Louis Goodman: Ocean, you talked about being in law school and being a little older than most of the other students and having some additional life experience. Do you think that that life experience, having done some things between college and law school, Gave you some focus, some better sense of why you were there and what you wanted to do than some of the other students?

[00:28:03] Ocean Mottley: I can’t speak for the other people, but I do think for myself, it was very helpful to have some life experience. Going into law school at a very young age, there’s a lot of like, you know, programming our young brains into how we’re supposed to react to the world and what we’re supposed to think is important.

And I think having had a good chunk of life experience and finding for myself what was important to me ahead of time was very important and gave me a center. And I also had the motivation. I knew why I was going to law school and why I wanted to go to law school. And I knew that as long as I had the opportunity, I was going to keep taking whatever the next step was until I was finished.

So I think that that was very helpful for me, but I will, I would caution people, you know, It’s hard too, because it’s inertia. It’s so hard. It’s so much work getting through school and everything else. And, you know, if you take time off, the longer time you take off, the harder it is to come back. It doesn’t get easier when you’re older.

So it’s definitely a balance.

[00:28:53] Louis Goodman: Ocean, is there anything at all that you would like to discuss that you wanted to talk about that we haven’t touched on that you wanted to bring up?

[00:29:02] Ocean Mottley: Sure. I’ll talk about two easy topics before we leave. Since we’ve got some time, the first is. Just about what’s going on in the Middle East with Israel and Palestine.

I don’t want to make any arguments about who’s right or wrong or what should be done or not be done. But I think there’s a lot of suffering going on there right now. And it’s not affecting people just there, but in our local communities. And it’s really tearing our local communities apart. And I just really hope that people can find some patience with themselves and other people continue to focus on our humanity and see where we could find common goals.

It’s just really highlights how much conflict we have in this country in general, how hard it is to have a discussion with people that we disagree with. Like, I feel like there used to be a time where you could have a, you know, have a conversation with people you didn’t, you disagreed with, and then still go on and get things done.

And now it’s kind of becoming so much to the point that we’re just surrounding ourselves with people that we agree with, and if we don’t agree with each other, we just can’t work together. So I’m just hopeful that we can get past that in some way and get back to focusing on our humanity and not trying to be right as much as trying to figure out how to move forward together, which leads me to the other part.

I’ve had a recent experience that helped me learn a lot more about myself and about the criminal justice system and about something called restorative justice. My partner was killed last year by a couple of folks during a robbery gone wrong, and that spent the last year and a half watching one of those people go through the system.

There was like 13 different hearings going all the way up to their conviction and sentencing last month. And really thinking about getting past the like, me and that person and really thinking about the communities that we’re involved with, I had a very meaningful experience at the sentencing hearing, being able to sit with the mother of the person who was accused of killing my partner.

We didn’t even speak, but we were able to just hold hands and kind of get through that process together. We’re now in touch and I’m actually going to go meet her for the first time in person and about a week and a half from now over in San Francisco, we’re just going to go to the park and go for a walk, kind of just figure out how.

When the worst thing that you think has happened in your life, how is that an opportunity? And it really has been a way to kind of figure out how to bring communities together who wouldn’t otherwise ordinarily be able to meet each other. And I think that’s where the healing power of restorative justice can happen regardless of whatever opportunities that there are in the formal restorative justice process in the system.

[00:31:25] Louis Goodman: Ocean Mottley, thank you so much for joining us today on the Love Thy Lawyer and Alameda County Bar Association podcast. And thank you to the other attorneys who participated in this discussion. And we really appreciate having all of you on. So, thank you very much.

[00:31:45] Ocean Mottley: Thank you.

[00:31:47] Louis Goodman: That’s it for today’s edition of Love Thy Lawyer in collaboration with the Alameda County Bar Association. Please visit the lovethylawyer.com website where you can find links to all of our episodes. Also please visit the Alameda County Bar Association website at acbanet.org where you can find more information about our support of the legal profession, promoting excellence in the legal profession and facilitating equal access to justice.

Thanks to Joel Katz for music, Brian Matheson for technical support, Paul Robert for social media, and Tracy Harvey. I’m Louis Goodman.

[00:32:37] Ocean Mottley: I don’t know if I can say this. Well, I’ll say it. Cause we can edit it out. I’ll just say it and you can do what you want to do with it.