The daughter of Mexican immigrant farm workers, Ana de Alba ’07 spent summers toiling in the fields with her parents as early as age 6 — often lacking access to clean water and regularly seeing supervisors harass her mother. When she helped her mother clean houses, she recalls the owners at times following them from room to room, worried they might steal something.
After earning scholarships to UC Berkeley and then Berkeley Law, de Alba returned to California’s Central Valley. She represented low-wage and immigrant workers, persuaded her firm to expand its pro bono work, and became the first Latina partner in its 63-year history.
Named a Fresno County Superior Court judge in 2018, de Alba reached the federal bench in 2022 as the Eastern District of California’s first Latina judge. Last year, she joined the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.
At a professional lunch event early in her career, uncertain of the table setting protocol, de Alba took another person’s bread and felt humiliated by her mistake and the woman’s curt reaction. A decade later, she returned to the same event — as its keynote speaker.
Here, de Alba shares her views on leadership in the law:
Looking back at my career’s trajectory, leaders I admire have shared two main attributes: confidence and accessibility. They know how to do their job and are patient enough to teach others, humble enough to attribute success to the team, and confident enough to recognize when it’s time for someone else to lead.
Not surprisingly, they also share access — to information, to spaces not always available to everyone, to educational opportunities, and to themselves and others as mentors.
Stepping into a leadership role happens quite early in the practice of law. Whether you work in private practice, for the government, or in the public interest, you’re often tasked with supervising paralegals, secretaries, community outreach coordinators, or more junior associates. They all look to you for guidance, and the way you interact with them will directly impact their futures.
As a young lawyer, I gained faith in my skills and instincts from senior partners who gave me constructive feedback, supported my ideas, and engaged in open dialogue. They also helped me understand a new world and navigate its, at times, treacherous waters.
My parents didn’t go past elementary school. Their employment was field and cannery work, along with some house-cleaning gigs. Luckily, my firm had senior partners who saw my “ganas” (desire) to succeed and opened space for me to grow. I had a child, became an equity shareholder, and started a pro bono and plaintiff-side employment practice.
When I left to become a judge, I wanted to pay it forward.
As a judge on the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, the impact a federal clerkship can have on a young attorney’s career isn’t lost on me. And as a first-generation professional Latina with poor immigrant parents, I know how hard it can be to succeed in these spaces. So my approach to hiring law clerks is a bit unconventional as I don’t limit my pool to top law schools or students who graduated atop their law school class.
That’s not to say grades and rank don’t matter, but I look at the applicant as a whole. Are they the first in their families to attend graduate school? Did they have to work during law school to make ends meet or help support their families? Is English their second language? Were their law school choices limited because of circumstances beyond their control?
Once they’re hired, I keep an open-door policy and expect the clerks to interact with everyone in chambers daily. This builds confidence in their abilities, improves their communication skills, and fosters a good working environment.
They also help me host local school field trips to the courthouse. Being in California’s Central Valley lets me connect with people who may not otherwise interact with the legal system — and may not think about it as a possible career.
Most of the kids and I share similar traits, and I enjoy telling my story, showing a photo of my childhood house, and reminding them that where they start in life doesn’t need to dictate where they end up. I get wonderful feedback from the schools, and many now make it an annual field trip.
By creating these kinds of opportunities for clerks and rural children, I hope to help pave the way for an entirely new generation of attorneys who will bring a different perspective to the practice of law.