Professor and Law Library Director Raquel Gabriel is a first-generation, born and bred Jersey City legal scholar and librarian of color, who credits her criminal justice degree in college to watching too much ‘80s TV as a teenager. She once wanted to be a private detective in Hawaii because she enjoyed reading, research, and fact-finding.
While attending American University in the mid ‘80s, Raquel took a full-time job at the school’s library to help with tuition. It was there that she first met members of the LGBT2QIA+ community and discovered she was actually pro-choice and more liberal than she expected.
It was also in this wealthy neighborhood near campus in upper Northwest D.C. where she experienced unquestionable racism.
Avoiding the line, still got the obligatory tourist shot in Key West
“I hung out with friends who were also people of color, and whenever we’d go shopping, security would follow us around and ask us if we needed help. Once we told them we studied at American and they saw us make purchases, their entire attitude changed.”
Being followed by security every time she visited stores near campus continued on a regular basis.
Raquel’s criminal justice background led her to explore a myriad of avenues, including corrections and law enforcement, but she learned her disdain for the nature of prisons and unjust authority made this a bad career match.
She eventually decided law school might be an option, but all the schools she was accepted to seemed too similar to her college experience. She accepted an offer to attend Howard and was excited at the prospect of attending school with people of color, as this reminded her of her home in Jersey City.
While working as a research assistant and interning at government agencies during law school proved interesting, Raquel found that the traditional ways law was practiced sparked less passion than her work as a librarian. As she mulled the idea of pairing her growing knowledge of the law with library service, she tentatively planned to practice law for a year or two before going back to library school.
After law school, Raquel held temporary jobs for a year as she attempted to clarify her path. This stress led to a lack of focus for bar exam study, and she failed the first time she took it.
“I didn’t know what I wanted and stressed myself out beyond capacity. I was the first in my family to go away for school and to stay away for so long. I knew I didn’t want to practice law as I’d been taught in school. I’ve historically bombed standardized tests, and that anxiety won. I knew if I buckled down and was less hard on myself, I’d pass. And I did!”
She interviewed with a public library in Montclair in the technical services department processing and cataloging materials. When she was asked why someone with a law degree from Howard wanted this position, she told them she wanted to go back to library school.
They plainly told her that they needed more librarians of color, especially law librarians, and offered to work with her, so she could work while pursuing a graduate degree in library science.
For the next year and a half, Raquel commuted six days a week from home in Jersey City to Montclair working full-time and then down to Rutgers in New Brunswick. She often slept in between work and class in parks around Rutgers, setting a small alarm clock next to her, so she wouldn’t be late to class.
“I totally sympathize with the part-timers at CUNY Law! I was 28 or so at the time, and I was so exhausted.”
Before she graduated in ‘98, the American Association of Law Librarians (AALL) held an annual resume-matching program that paired her with a position at Cardozo as its circulation librarian. Montclair’s graceful response and support during her transition to New York made her realize that having a mentor to support her journey was vital.
In 1999, CUNY Law posted a government document librarian position, and Raquel joined CUNY Law.
Raquel’s home at the CUNY Law Library for the last 21 years
She laughed as she recalled not realizing that this position would require her to teach, which became one of her favorite aspects of the job. She found the challenges of keeping students interested and staying abreast of the ever-changing legal research systems and legal developments held her interest and ignited her passion.
“Historically, there’s been no training for law school teachers. You’re often thrown into teaching. I was fortunate to have folks who had materials and examples for me. I was able to discuss with faculty members how they got through to students and how they navigated specific examples in the classroom.”
CUNY Law’s legal research faculty is tight-knit and connects weekly to discuss teaching methods and successes, as they all teach differently, while using the same source materials and textbooks. Each legal research faculty member also has responsibility for helping run the library’s operations supporting the law school.
“I don’t think people realize that each library faculty member does several things, in addition to teaching Legal Research. They might be running the budget, lecturing in other classes, working on updating our textbooks, or answering research questions from faculty and students. We also need to write reports, gather statistics, and do a lot of other things required of us by CUNY and the ABA. There’s a lot of behind the scenes work, and I’m fortunate to have a fantastic group of colleagues willing to let me lead them.”
Raquel is grateful that CUNY Law recognizes legal research as a specialized skill that should be taught by librarians, so much so that they’re placed on the same tenure-track lines as doctrinal and clinical faculty. Historically, law schools have devalued these specialized skills, conflating legal research and legal writing as the same skill. In more recent times, schools are following CUNY Law’s example.
“If you don’t have strong legal research and writing skills, you’re not going to be the best attorney you can be, regardless of your chosen area of practice. Legal research is the foundation of how you frame and shape your legal writing and advocacy on behalf of your client. If your research is off, your argument is compromised. These research skills are distinct from legal writing, and while they’ll always be complementary, a division must be developed, lest students conflate the two skillsets as one and the same.”
To Raquel, helping students research and learn how to find essential information for their clients’ cases is how she can best use her law degree.
“I’ll never be writing that brief or arguing in front of the Court. Even with my comfort in being in front of a classroom, I’m not going to be someone in front of the press with the sound bite or rallying a crowd. Instead, I’m working with our students and underlining how important it is to research the law and do it correctly, in order to garner credibility with their supervisors or the Court.”
Raquel wanted to help both new and established professors integrate race into their first-year teaching curricula in ways that wouldn’t feel so overwhelming. Professors often lack time and the institutional culture of inquiry that supports surfacing controversial topics. Those engaged with infusing their curricula with diversity often don’t write their processes down. Students need to be shown how the systems themselves are based in racism and systemic oppression and aware of how their own unconscious bias plays into their client interactions.
Raquel co-edited the book Integrating Doctrine and Diversity-Inclusion and Equity in the Law School Classroom, which is the first known book that attempts to provide reflection and practical ways of integrating these topics more holistically into first-year law school curriculum.
“If you read through the book, the recurring themes that arise from the work of over 40 contributors highlight common grounds. Sometimes, it’s less about explicit race discussion and more about illuminating bias in students and how it affects their legal research and law practice.”
One of the key pieces of advice Raquel introduces in her essay “Integrating Diversity into Legal Research: Building an Essential Skill for Law Students” in this book is the idea of sharing teaching methods, ideas, and challenges with colleagues.
Raquel appreciates that our faculty talk to each other a great deal about teaching practices. She finds discussing personal experiences helpful for emergent teaching pedagogy.
“These conversations are happening more rapidly right now, and professors are catching on to this idea that you need to care about the people in classrooms and their diversity of ability. We need to be more upfront about our teaching methods and why we think they work and then share that information among fellow law professors.”
Another key area highlighted in the essay points at arguments that professors should teach students how to think like lawyers without acknowledging the impact of the outside world on a student’s ability to learn. Raquel affirms this is a disservice to students and their future clients. Faculty should get to know a bit about their students and their unique experiences in efforts to optimize teaching material.
Having been a part of CUNY Law since 2000, Raquel has witnessed many changes and notes that generational differences within the CUNY Law community may shape the parsing and iteration of those changes, which are also shaped by everyone’s unique experiences.
Raquel is guided by the idea that every individual who enters CUNY Law comes into the classroom with an entirely different set of experiences and underlines that the hardest thing to remember within that context is we need to make room to let everyone have those experiences and realizations.
“You go into the classroom with the knowledge that you, the law, language, and teaching approaches change over time. Effective advocacy in law is persuasion, and being able to convince a judge or jury to side with your client involves employing tactics that work for you, your client, and those whom you wish to convince.”
“I am here to support our students in developing the essential research skills needed to become effective advocates.”
There are numerous ways to serve the public interest, and exposure to a diversity of angles and tactics allows for growth and iteration in thought and praxis. Raquel hopes law students are open to recognizing that their ideas can be expanded, as well as learning new approaches to problems they think exist. Even the phrase “working in the public interest” may shift in meaning over time.
“As long as you’re a lawyer, you must keep learning, iterating, and adjusting the ways you think and approach problems. The law is supposed to be changing, and you’re supposed to be working to change it, and, if you want the law to change, you should be open to changing your mind as well. I will never tell a student that a decision to take a government job that puts food on the table for their family is ‘wrong,’ because I don’t know what’s best for their circumstances. We should allow students to make their own decisions as to how they want to pursue the practice of law in a way that makes sense to them.”
Raquel appreciates how often the community comes together to support each other, especially the staff, who she thinks provides a perfect example of how serving the public interest doesn’t always entail being in courtrooms or writing the perfect brief.
From left: Sootsie is usually the howling menace heard in the background if students hear a cat during class. In the middle is Moosebear, because Raquel didn’t like the names “Moose” or “Bear” and went with the obvious best choice. On the right- Purrito’s normally shy, but ready for her closeup.
“For me, the work the staff has done overall for us as faculty and students, especially during the pandemic, has been mind-blowing. Transitioning to remote environments was difficult for everyone, but the staff had to help both panicked faculty and students get comfortable with it really quickly, as well as adjusting their own schedules. I’m really grateful to them for showing us a way of service we can all take inspiration from as we move forward.”
Law is, after all, a service industry. As a lawyer, you’re being paid for your expertise. Being a good lawyer boils down to understanding that your clients have a problem that you can solve in a way that’s best for your client that works with your role as an attorney.
“If law teaches you anything, it’s that often there isn’t a clear bright line as to what’s right or wrong, but, rather, there can be many shades of gray depending on the circumstances. Not allowing for these diverse ways to approach a problem can prevent you and those around you from accessing the ability to grow into a better attorney.”
In the long run, Raquel’s goal is to continue improving the Legal Research program for students to successfully navigate the road to learning how to practice law.
“Many students arrive thinking that law is always adversarial, not realizing, in many instances, law needs to be collaborative, if you want to get anything done. Most cases don’t go to court. They settle. Your mindset is going to have to switch over to what is best for your clients and what should be recommended in this light.”
In addition to really listening to clients, learning how to work across the system, figuring out what you personally can live with morally, and what decisions will allow you to still sleep at night are equally important and have largely guided Raquel’s career trajectory.
“Most people are not built to be argumentative every single day, as it’s exhausting and traumatic. Most individuals can’t operate from this space daily. Sometimes choosing a career that’s out of the spotlight and truthful to your character and mission is better for your health and well-being.”
Raquel leaves lawyers-to-be with these closing words of wisdom:
“Not everyone you study with will become a Dean, a litigator, a librarian, or a famous attorney on CNN. You should find your own calling that’s best for your lifestyle and personal priorities. There’s enough work to be done in the legal profession for all of us, and our expertise in different ways is needed across the board. You may change your areas of practice, switch out of law completely, or forge a totally new path. There are so many ways to serve, and, if you want a comprehensive law school experience, be open to exploring many avenues before deciding what the right path is for you.”
You can read more about Raquel’s co-authored book here, check out some of her scholarship here, follow her on Twitter, and email her to discuss your future here.
Join us on September 15th from 3:30-5:00pm for a virtual kick-off of the book Integrating Doctrine and Diversity: Inclusion and Equity in the Law School Classroom. Register Here