Colin Parent

About Page

2012-01-01T13:14:00.000-08:00

Colin Parent is the Director of External Affairs for the California Department of Housing and Community Development (HCD).

Colin was appointed by Governor Jerry Brown in the summer of 2011 to manage the Departments stakeholder relationships, to provide policy advice to the department, and to serve as HCD's press and media spokesperson.

In 2010, the San Diego News Network named Mr. Parent to its list of 35 Under 35 San Diego community leaders "who are shaping the region we live in, and beyond." In 2009, San Diego Metropolitan magazine named him one of its 40 Under 40, the only program in San Diego honoring young entrepreneurs; and the San Diego Daily Transcript named him among its Top Young Attorneys for 2009.

Colin grew up in East County San Diego. He attended the University of California San Diego, where he earned a Bachelor’s degree in Political Science with an emphasis in International Relations in 2003. While at UCSD, Colin was involved on a variety of levels with campus government and he was Editor in Chief of the satirical Muir Quarterly.

Between college and law school, Colin worked on political campaigns in San Diego, including the successful State Senate campaign for then-Assemblymember Christine Kehoe.

He attended New York University Law School, from where he graduated in 2007. He was a staff editor of the New York University Annual Survey of American Law.

At NYU Colin organized and co-chaired the second annual convention of the National Democratic Law Students Council, after serving on the organization’s founding steering committee. During his second year of law school, Colin worked through the Brennan Center Public Policy Advocacy Clinic for the New York chapter of the Apollo Alliance, a national coalition of organizations committed to green energy and good job growth. During his third year, he clerked for Vladek Wallas Elias and Engelhart, a leading plaintiff’s employment and labor law firm.

Immediately after law school, Colin worked for a private international law firm, DLA Piper, practicing commercial litigation. He is the founder of the San Diego Lawyers Chapter of the American Constitution Society, an organization dedicated to a progressive view of the Constitution, and the law. Colin is also the co-director and founder of a leadership development nonprofit, the San Diego Leadership Alliance (SDLA). The SDLA hosts the San Diego chapter of the New Leaders Council, an entrepreneurial leadership program for progressive young professionals. He has served on the boards of the League of Conservation Voters of San Diego, the San Diego County Young Democrats, the Young Professionals Committee of the San Diego LGBT Community Center, and the Young Alumni Council of UCSD.

In 2010, Colin joined the Jerry Brown for Governor campaign. He researched a number of legal and policy issues for the campaign, and advanced several rallies and events in San Diego and the Inland Empire. While working in the Oakland campaign headquarters, Colin co-wrote a humorous web video series titled "The Most Interesting Man in California."

Colin is Catholic, an Eagle Scout, and he is a supporter of Scouting for All.

How to Decide Whether to Attend Law School

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Here is a collection of the advice I tend to give, when people are trying to decide whether they should attend law school.

1. Find and read law student blogs.

Law students are prolific writers, they’re good at it, and they often present a flavor of law school that you just can’t find by reading about the law itself. I don’t currently follow other law student blogs, but you can google around pretty easily to find some. Read the ones that get linked to a lot.

This really is the BEST way to find out if you’d like law school. These blogs serve as daily reports from actual law students, who are often introspective, witty, and extremely open about their new lives in the law. These new windows into the life of law students can be profoundly demystifying. I read a ton of these during my application process, and it made the transition much easier. I highly recommend this.

2. Audit law school classes.

Most professors will let you do this. Ask to audit 1L classes early in the fall semester, so there’s less difference between you and the other students.

3. Watch The Paper Chase.

If that kind of insane, private pressure sounds appealing to you (as it did me), then that’s a pretty significant sign.

4. Read some law and policy websites.

These will give you a sense of the subject-matter of law school, in a more easily digestible format than the long books that are often suggested to potential applicants. These are some of my favorites: http://blogs.wsj.com/law; http://www.acsblog.org.

5. Consider working at a law office.

It’s difficult to get a sense of what lawyers do from day to day by watching the television or the movies. People tend to have a better sense of what it’s all about after they’ve worked with lawyers for a while. Working in a law office, whether it’s private, public, or non-profit, can give you a sense of what lawyers do.

I think this suggestion should come with an important caveat. While working in a law office can help you understand whether or not you’d enjoy being a lawyer, it generally won’t help you get into law school. Law schools don’t need convincing that an applicant really wants to go to law school.

There is no shortage of law school applicants with a law office background on their resume. They just don’t stand out. I think law schools, especially the higher ranked ones, are more inclined to admit people with interesting backgrounds, which are often not in the law.

6. Consider the costs.

Law school is expensive. For the many private schools, graduates can leave with upwards of $180,000 in debt. Plus there’s the opportunity cost of being out of the workforce for three years.

Granted, the top schools also offer unparalleled access to both loan repayment programs for public interest graduates, and access to incredibly remunerative private sector jobs. For potential applicants who can get into the top schools, the debt load really shouldn’t be too big of a concern, given the various methods available for paying off the loans.

The more difficult calculus is for those who expect to attend less prestigious schools. Employment options are relatively narrow for graduates of most law schools. The lower-ranked schools also tend to offer less loan repayment support for their public interest graduates. This can mean that even the most publicly spirited of law school applicants has to accept a position in the private sector simply to pay their bills.

7. Really think about why you want to go to law school.

This isn’t really a question about whether you’d enjoy law school. But if you can’t answer this question, the problems that everyone experiences with law school will be magnified. If you have a reason to be there, you are better able to overlook the ugly parts of law school. If you don’t want to practice, then you especially need some good reasons for being there. I didn’t want to practice, but then I practiced, and I liked it. But I’m not sure there are a lot of folks who fit that description. People who go to law school simply because they think it’s the next step tend to dislike the experience. I am an outlier on that, but I had a pretty fleshed out understanding of why I thought it was the next step.

8. Don’t rush it. Make sure it’s the right decision for you.

Take some time with the decision. Just because someone you respect liked law school, and is encouraging you to apply, doesn’t mean that you should also go to law school. Any smart person could enjoy the experience. It’s an interesting subject-matter. Most smart, capable people can avoid being overwhelmed by the competitive atmosphere.

However, for a lot of people, law school is not the best use of one’s 20’s (or 30’s or 40’s), especially compared to the value of developing ones career through work, or the great variety of professional and graduate programs available. It’s a decision that you have to make, and that is about what you want out of life. Lawyers are notoriously self-important, and we tend to discount the educational and professional tracks taken by others. We tend to tell people that we respect, that they merit joining our ranks, even where there are other options that might be better for achieving their goals. It’s often a genuine compliment for some smart lawyer to say “you should come to law school,” but it’s also not always the best advice.

9. Think about what you can get out of law school.

That all being said, law school is great training for strategic thinking, for learning how to juggle multiple ideas, and to figure out how to navigate complex systems. It’s very relevant to a lot of careers.

For some people who didn’t have a very rigorous undergraduate education, law school really sharpens their mind. It doesn’t just prepare them how to practice law, but also how to manage time, how to discipline their mind to focus on details, and how to organize their thoughts productively. I went to law school with a half formed idea that I needed to be a more rigorous thinker. And that is among the most important skills I picked up through my legal education.

Okay, so that’s your to-do list. Do some of these and check back in with me!

Colin Occassionaly Writes

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Colin tries to write from time to time. Below are a few of the items he's published for public consumption.

Guest Contribution: “San Diego’s Ready to Be More Progressive,” Two Cathederals Blog, January 14, 2011, available at http://twocathedrals.com/?p=86.

Letter to the Editor: “Readers discuss the tragedy in Tucson,” San Diego Union Tribune, January 11, 2011, available at http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/2011/jan/11/readers-discuss-the-tragedy-in-tucson.

Op-Ed: “Let Stockholders Control Corporate Speech,” San Diego News Network, January 25, 2010, available at http://www.sdnn.com/sandiego/2010-01-25/blog/a-more-perfect-union/parent-let-stockholders-control-corporate-political-speech.

Op-Ed: “The Future of the Democratic Party in San Diego,” NBC San Diego, September 22, 2009, available at http://www.nbcsandiego.com/news/politics/The-Future-of-the-Democratic-Party-in-San-Diego-60002947.html.

Letter to the Editor: “Taking Sides on City Council Endorsements,” San Diego Union Tribune, October 15, 2008, available at http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/op-ed/letters/20081015-9999-lz1e15letters.html.

Letter to the Editor: “The Gun Ruling, an Addendum,” San Diego Union Tribune, July 2, 2008, available at http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20080702/news_z1e2letters.html.

Letter to the Editor: “Their Responsibility,” Voice of San Diego, September 6, 2007, available at http://www.voiceofsandiego.org/letters/article_eda4392b-154b-5a49-ba83-463e577ab387.html.

Series of food and restaurant reviews for national food blog: SeriousEats.com, available at http://www.seriouseats.com/user/profile/colinparent.

Report to UN Security Council: “Failure to Protect, A Call for the UN Security Council to Act in North Korea,” Prepared by DLA Piper, October 30, 2006, available at http://www.dlapiper.com/nkreport. I personally drafted the legal appendix on the emerging responsibility to protect doctrine.