The process of filing and asylum brief with supporting documents is tedious and agonizing. The first time I did it, I fretted over the brief for an entire month. It took me weeks to research, and days to write. It also happened to be the weekend of Halloween, and my friends had to pry me off the computer. However, it paid off. Migraine. Check. Asylum granted? Hell yeah.<\/p>\n
My brief did not win that asylum. My client did. Her story made me cry when we were practicing our direct examination for trial. She finally opened up that day about what happened to her, and I believe even the truly heartless would not have had a dry eye after listening to her. <\/p>\n
Ugh.<\/p>\n
And I have another abuse asylum case that I’m finishing up. I can even recycle parts of my own brief! The subject matter however, is not something I’m looking forward to reading about in depth. Thankfully, for a brief, I only have to gloss over the surface. Give the facts, show there was persecution, demonstrate my client falls under a protected social class (group), and therefore deserves asylum. The hard part comes after, when you’re sitting face to face with your client and asking her to tell her story again, but this time your asking her not to sugar-coat it. She’s had the time, and the counseling. Now she needs to convince a judge that she really was abused, and that her country won’t protect her. Her testimony needs to be convincing. So while the facts in my brief may be clinical and disconnected, her words need to be emotional and raw. <\/p>\n
I practice to ensure my clients know what to expect. Prepare them for the inevitable cross-examination, and just get them through it.<\/p>\n
But it all starts with a brief.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The process of filing and asylum brief with supporting documents is tedious and agonizing. The first time I did it, I fretted over the brief for an entire month. It took me weeks to research, and days to write. It also happened to be the weekend of Halloween, and my friends had to pry me […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2899","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blackglass.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2899","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blackglass.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blackglass.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blackglass.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blackglass.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2899"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blackglass.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2899\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blackglass.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2899"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blackglass.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2899"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blackglass.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2899"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}