Truth, Trust, and Taboos: Ethical Consumer Advocacy for Immigrant Clients

Immigrant consumer clients face unique vulnerabilities that can create complex ethical challenges for their attorneys. Cross-cultural and linguistic barriers, combined with the shifting and uncertain landscape of U.S. immigration policy, require consumer attorneys to approach representation with heightened care and awareness. This session will help attorneys strengthen their consumer law practice, ensuring they can effectively protect and advocate for immigrant clients in today’s legal environment.

What You Will Learn

• • How to recognize common ethical challenges that arise when representing immigrant consumer clients.
  • How to apply practical strategies to navigate cross-cultural and language barriers in client representation.
  • How to develop approaches to fulfilling ethical duties while advocating for immigrant clients within the current, evolving immigration policy landscape.

Speakers

Monica Eav Glicken is the CEO/Executive Director and General Counsel of Public Law Center in Santa Ana, CA.  Monica served as the Directing Attorney of PLC’s Immigration Unit from 2018 to 2022, where she worked with community-based and advocacy organizations serving Orange County’s immigrant and refugee communities. Prior to joining Public Law Center, Monica served as a Counseling Attorney and Adjunct Lecturer in UC Irvine School of Law’s Immigration Rights Clinic. As the child of immigrants from Cambodia and the Philippines, Monica is a long-time advocate for those who must fight to be heard, working tirelessly to promote greater access to justice and community empowerment.

Suzanne Iazzetta is the Directing Attorney of Public Law Center’s Consumer Law Unit, and is an Adjunct Professor of Law at UC Irvine School of Law, teaching a course/clinic in Consumer Rights and Economic Justice.  Some of the areas of law that Suzanne has worked on in her career are all facets of consumer law, bankruptcy (business and personal), housing/eviction matters, foreclosure defense, FDCPA, FCRA, TCPA, and UDAAP claims, and debt collection defense. Suzanne also spent time as a staff attorney for a chapter 7 bankruptcy trustee in New Jersey and had her own solo practice for many years before joining Public Law Center.

Please note that this webinar is open to the whole consumer law community. Non-members will need to be verified to register for the webinar. The webinar and its recording will be free to all.

This webinar will be eligible for two ethics credits. NACA webinars are pre-approved for CLEs in California and Pennsylvania. Attendees from other states will need to apply to their state bar for approval. NACA will submit the attendee list from California and Pennsylvania to their respective bars as long as NACA has the attendee bar number noted in the attendee’s NACA profile.