As an actively serving board member for the Special Olympics Colorado and Commission Chair for the Independent Ethics Commission, Liz Krupa has a lot on her plate. But with proper time management and prioritization, she gets it all done and more! Liz doesn’t just have a great work ethic, but her moral ethics as a lawyer is one that should be admired. Her advocacy for – bleeds through all the work she does. In this episode, Liz talks us through her many initiatives to drive positive change in the community and the justice system. She explains the importance of having policies to empower representation and hold the legal system to a higher standard. Listen in to learn more as she chats with host Stephen Jaye.
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Time Management Strategies To Be Proactive In Your Advocacy With Liz Krupa
In our past culture or the culture that we’re sunsetting, we’d often get the phrase that I’ve previously expressed that I hate, “What do you do?” One of the reasons I tend to hate it is because it encourages us to define ourselves pretty simply by our job titles. Most people are quite a bit more complicated than what you can get in a job title, a few bullet points or something like that, even more complicated than what you’d see in a resume. Oftentimes, people take on a lot of different types of pursuits but these pursuits are part of the same whole personal brand. Something that I’ve been hearing about quite a bit more is that we all have a personal brand that connects a lot of the things we do.
My guest, Liz Krupa, encapsulates this idea of having a personal brand that manifests in a number of different pursuits pretty much better than almost anyone else that I’ve encountered so far. Liz, I would like to welcome you to the program and quickly talk to you about all the pursuits that you are involved in toward the same goal of protecting the people, the unprotected, as well as the ethics in the legal profession.
I’m happy to be here.
Thank you so much. First of all, Liz, it’s an honor to have you on the program. Tell us about all these different endeavors because you’re in the trial advocacy, the Ethics Commission, Special Olympics. They’re all different places that you’ve got yourself involved with.
Any time I have felt pushed down or doors shut or told no or 'that's cute little girl maybe you should try to do this instead', it has just made me more determined to get through that door, more determined to succeed. Click To TweetBy training and education, I’m a lawyer. I do mostly criminal defense but I also do some ethics and internal investigation type of work, white-collar work. I serve on several boards and commissions. Two of the boards that I serve are NITA, the National Institute for Trial Advocacy, which is a nationwide advocacy group that tries to help lawyers be better advocates and the Colorado Special Olympics, which is part of the larger National and International Special Olympics, which works with getting developmentally disabled people more recognition through sports and school, giving them the correct access to medical care and the importance of keeping your physical health up as well. Those are two of the nonprofit boards that I serve.
I am also the Chair of the Commission on Judicial Discipline for the State of Colorado, which is the only entity that looks at any rules of conduct for judges, whether those were violated, makes recommendations to the Supreme Court as far as discipline. I’m also the chair of the Independent Ethics Commission, which similarly looks at any violation of the rules of ethics for elected officials.
Numerous of those types of endeavors. I also mentor through law school. Yes We Can, which is a mentoring program that tries to bring interested young people of color through college into the LSAT program through law school and help them pass the bar. We stay with them through their first several years and hope they stay and mentor as well.
The first question I need to ask you given all these is how busy are you? Do you have time for yourself, rest, laugh, play, all that stuff?
Yes, time management is something that, luckily, I was blessed with. I take time for myself to connect with people. When I have a downtime, I read a book or go to bed early. I manage my time efficiently.
On the grounds of time management, I suspect that a lot of my audience may struggle with that. I’ve struggled with that in the past. Since you’re blessed with good time management, it allows you to take on so many different initiatives. What do you think is the biggest mistakes that a lot of people you observe make or the one you observe most frequently, especially maybe some of these potential young lawyers that you’re trying to get through the LSATs?
Honestly, for me, it’s more of task orientation. I try to make a list of at least weeks to months in advance of what I need and schedule deadlines that are somewhat fake deadlines, but they’re important deadlines for me so that I have drafts or tasks that I’ve completed at least from my professional job, lawyering. As far as the commissions and boards, that’s also something that is task-oriented. I try to calendar it. I love and live by my calendar.
One of the rules of thumb for lawyers is you build six hours a day. That’s in most firms. They require six hours. It seems like it’s hard to get to those six hours. The pandemic helped with getting those six hours done. It’s trying to make a list of those tasks. With that being said, even if you get through 2 of the 6 that you had for the day, you still have to find some success in that. It’s daunting sometimes when some tasks keep reoccurring on your calendar daily. You have to move it up and get it done earlier. An early start is always good as well.
I know that feeling of having the same task 4 or 5 days in a row and it comes on to the next week. I tend to do my weekly planning on Sundays. I was sitting right here thinking how important it is to get this test done and I made very little progress on it.
That happens. You have to extend yourself some grace too. Pat yourself on the back for what you did get done.
How important is prioritization? It’s like you have 6 tasks knowing which one’s the top priority or which 2 or 3 need to get done versus nice to have or something like that.
That’s critical and personal tasks too that have to fit in there. My mom used to have a day every week that she would do the bills, go through her checkbook and make sure that everything was accurate. I thought, “That’s funny. I wonder how many people have a day each week that they balance their checkbook, make sure everything’s up to date and paid.” She was a good inspiration for me in that sense but prioritization personally, as well as professionally, it’s where you have to look at things.
Back to your individual story. When did you first decide you wanted to become a lawyer? Was the ethics of the legal profession always on your mind or is that something that came about later in your life?
I wanted to be a lawyer from about the age of seven. My father was a Denver sheriff and worked in the courthouse. He would take me to the courthouse sometimes. I would go into the initial advisement courtroom, sit there and watch advisements happen. The judge was cute. It was a judge who was there for years. At that time, it was Espinosa.
He says, “Ms. Espinosa, what do you think? Should I keep him in jail or let him go?” For every single one, I was like, “Let him go, judge.” Early on, I knew I wanted to be a lawyer. What type of lawyer changed from time to time but my dedication to having that degree help and serve some public good has always been there.
You have to extend yourself some grace and pat yourself on the back for what you did get done. Click To TweetIt’s interesting that you eventually became a defense attorney, given that you were saying, “Let him go.” Is that something that you always felt about our justice system? Do you feel like we over punish people in general or it’s a fair initiative and that the people on defense need to be well represented in the court of law?
It’s twofold. I do think that people need effective representation in criminal defense, as in divorces or any other field. They’re required to have effective assistance of counsel. How I feel about the justice system is there’s an over-representation of people of color in our jails and prisons. They’re overpopulated for people with mental health, homelessness and socioeconomic issues, things like that. I understand that there are people that are a danger to society and there is a need or desire to lock them up, as people say but a lot of our prisons are also private prisons. They’re big money.
It’s a little harder for me to say that there’s social justice in our criminal justice but it’s getting better. The pendulum always swings. You used to be able to beat your wife. Now, you can’t. A woman can call and say that she was abused by a husband, spouse, boyfriend or date. There doesn’t have to be any physical evidence. He’s arrested and kept in jail for several days before he’s allowed even to be released only on an accusation or word. Those pendulums do swing and not always the right way but they seem to start coming back eventually.
It’s interesting from the standpoint of someone that would like to see that pendulum. If I had my way, I would take the pendulum and stop it or rip it off of its axis so it stops swinging and get to this place where we have this consistent idea of what the proceedings should be regardless of who someone is. Is there any hope, anything that you’re observing that could possibly get to that point or do you feel like that there’s a natural aspect of human nature that’s going to keep swinging it back and forth from the three strikes and all the tough-on-crime laws of the ‘90s to stuff that’s happening that maybe swinging too far back the other way, then eventually, that backlash is swinging it back? Is that something that’s a natural part of human sociological nature that’s going to keep happening no matter what?
It is. It’s also a matter of whom we have in our legislature. Colorado has been pretty fortunate to have good legislation movements and a criminal defense bar that has done a lot of work to lobby and have the right policy people there with facts and historical data. It’s not going in there with some sympathetic plea of some juvenile that was wrongly treated or convicted. Many years of data and unfair treatment such as felony murder is one thing that comes to mind, juveniles that were held or sentenced to life without parole.
That legislation is moving in the right direction, in my humble opinion. It’s also hard if it was your family member that was affected by one of those juveniles. You thought they were getting life in prison without parole. They’re going back and letting some of these young people parole. They have a very different view and that’s a different thing. As far as the pendulum, a lot of it is time knowledge, our access to information but also misinformation that we keep seeing. People tend to see something on Twitter or a feed somewhere and they believe it. There’s not a lot of research or questioning of what we are fed through the media.
I listened to another podcast on the Tristan Harris, the Center for Humane Technology. He interviewed the Facebook Whistleblower. I’m completely blanking on her name but the product manager that came out in the Facebook files. She had recommended a few pretty reasonable fixes for some of this misinformation thing.
One of the things that I struggle with is that as soon as I hear someone saying that there’s a battle against misinformation, I hear censorship and something that I naturally don’t love, but her assessment was some simple things like making it a little bit harder to reshare something. It shouldn’t be a matter of a click of a button and also some tweaks to the algorithm to put everything like how our email is, where it’s only by time, as opposed to an algorithm. I’m taking this from her. I’m not assessing that I know it but people on Facebook don’t even know how this algorithm works because it’s all that machine learning thing.
One of the things I’m wondering is having us witness this. Almost anything was witnessed by people or even people with different information because one of the problems with our current partisan divide is that we don’t even have the same information and facts. Let alone the same interpretation of those facts, which is never going to be the same. What I’m wondering from this whole debacle is if people are going to be more likely to scrutinize their information.
A great example of that would be you go on Wikipedia. You look something up but there’s that little link that you see to the actual source. Instead of saying Wikipedia is my source. My source is Wikipedia cited. When you look at the article, make sure they’re a credible source and it makes sense to you before believing that. Do you see people putting more scrutiny on what information they absorb, believe and how they represent it to other people in public?
If there was that one change in algorithm, that would be the issue or if we made it time-based, that would solve it. Back in the day, we didn’t have the internet to do all these searches. We would go to the library. We would have encyclopedias but even that information and content were created without full disclosure of all the facts. Look at the education that we’ve all grown up with as to what America is. It lacked a lot of Native American and Black cultures. There are numerous times that the way our history has been written or taught has been selected given to us. None of us thought to look deeper unless we knew that our piece of it was missing.
There are little fixes like that will be imperative moving forward. It’s also one of those things, where as far as the pendulum swinging so far left and right in our political stance, anger and movement, a lot of that is trying to get those swing voters. This is people that have to take a far stance left or right because they’re trying to get those fringe voters because otherwise, the mainstream left or right are going to stay with them. It’s a battle of trying to get the fringe and if that was taken away, if there were different types of ways that our elected officials could try to get those fringe voters, then we wouldn’t have those issues as much as we do.
There’s an extremist view. There always have been. The beautiful part of this country is everybody has the right to speak it. I’ll defend people’s first amendment rights to my deathbed. Hopefully, beyond but it’s how we receive content. It’s more of being aware of the content selected for you. Even if it’s a site you always listen to or a podcast you always trust, it’s always good to listen to the other side. You might not like it but you should always at least hear it.
A lot of people don’t listen to multiple perspectives, as well as dive a little bit deeper. A lot of people like to go around thinking whatever’s new is making the sky fall. The sky is falling because of whatever this new development is but it’s not that new. It used to be the three major cable channels or whatever selecting the content for you. It’s an algorithm that Facebook may or may not understand based on your web search history or what your friends have shared with you and stuff like that. That’s another thing. It’s a matter of being aware that some other entity selected this content for you and who knows what that means.
We should put that on a slogan, a little shorter, though.
It doesn’t always work in our culture for something to be a long drawn-out explanation. We live in the era of the fifteen-second TikTok video, so people might see like, “Who sent or gave you this information?” One of the interesting things is that I’ve tried to look at some information from all sides. It’s interesting even what is chosen, so people will often talk about biases and articles and say, “This one presented an evil-looking picture of this politician and that one presented that politician smiling, looking like he’s hugging a baby or something like that.” It’s also often what they choose to report or not report on.
There are politicians or people that have tried to run for office and never got airtime. The different media channels were told, “Don’t give them airtime,” which is unfortunate because then we’re not hearing from a pool of candidates. We’re hearing from the chosen elective who they want us to hear from.
It’s always good to listen to the other side. You might not like it, but you always at least hear it. Click To TweetSometimes, we miss out on that voices. This reminds me of another thing. One of the problems that the polarization comes from is this idea of like attracts like. That can affect not just our polarization in politics but also our business endeavors or any endeavor. We’re only talking to the people who look like us, think like us, whatever we decide or bringing you your comfort.
What do you think is the key to having that level of comfort in your life, knowing you’re not alone while also still reaching out and looking for other perspectives saying, “Here’s a person that’s completely different than me over there at completely different life and culture, look completely different, probably a different generational divide but I’m going to go talk to them because we need to go out there. We need to understand each other and get those other perspectives so that we have a whole view of the impact of whatever we’re doing in life?”
For me, it comes as a little different base because I’m of Hispanic and Native American heritage. I don’t look White and my name was different growing up. I faced a lot of that bias in different areas and arenas of my life growing up and even professionally. With that being said, I had the good fortune to go to George Washington High School during the time that there was the busing going on. I didn’t live in the community or go to school in a community where everybody looked like me and everybody had the same background as me. I grew up Roman Catholic right by the Jewish community center. I had friends that had a bat mitzvah and I was jealous. Exposure is the key.
That’s on parents, schools and sports teams to encourage that understanding and inquisition or inquisitive nature of people to try to understand the differences in people. It compliments you. Having friends, social circle or professional circle, a mentor or mentee that is different from you is a godsend. I wouldn’t be where I am if I didn’t have not only some old White guys that have mentored me but also people of color and different genders that have guided me through to give me different perspectives.
A lot of people struggle to work through the discomfort, especially when people first started. If someone’s only hung around with different versions of themselves, surround yourself with yourself, there’s going to be an initial discomfort. What do you think people need to do to get over this discomfort saying, “This person’s going to have a completely different perspective. They’re probably going to say something that I completely disagree with at some point in time in our conversation?” The beauty comes in it once you’ve got all those perspectives and you understand it from a much broader and deeper sense.
Volunteer in your community. That’s one thing with Special Olympics. We deal with development disabled folks. I worked for years with physically disabled youth and adults trying to adapt sports equipment to get them active, skied with the National Center for the disabled. People that are disabled face the same thing as people that look or sound different from you. Muslim women walk around wearing hijab. There are things that make you uncomfortable because they’re different.
They also make you uncomfortable because you don’t understand it. There’s a base assumption when people see that sometimes. I’m not trying to call anybody as racist or ignorant. I grew up in a different way and with different exposure, which I’m fortunate to have, also this inquisitive base of I want to know more and I’m going to question things, which helps.
I always try to get people to volunteer in their community. With youth, it’s easier. People have a much easier time dealing with disadvantaged youth, which is usually youth of color or from a home that has suffered different issues, whether it’s criminal or mental health issues, big brother or sister. Whether it’s volunteering for physically disabled kids or Special Olympics, that’s a beautiful way to start. It’s something that people should be doing, giving back to the community but doing it with youth is much easier and less threatening to somebody to try to get into that arena than it is another adult.
You faced some discrimination coming up being Hispanic, being of native heritage. Did that life experience impact your feelings, the cause that you’re taking on with a lot of these initiatives where you’re defending people that need defense, helping out people at Special Olympics and some of the other ethical causes that are embedded in all of your endeavors?
How it made me feel made me more of an advocate for people that aren’t always seen or heard, professionally, as I was getting older and breaking into the legal arena, which is not for women of color necessarily, any time I have felt pushed down, a door shut, told no or, “That’s a cute little girl. Maybe you should try to do this instead,” it’s made me more determined to get through that door and succeed.
I don’t think it’s why I did it but it helps me as far as empathy and understanding how that makes you feel when somebody sees you. Something as simple as my mom and I went into a shop. I separated from my mom. My mom is of Hispanic descent but she’s very light-skinned, red-ish blonde hair. Our features may be alike but I look more like my dad with dark skin and hair at the time.
I was followed through the store and this woman was watching me like a hawk. She said, “Why are you in here? What are you doing here? You have to buy something.” When my mom came over, it was very different. Whether it was riding on the school bus and the kids would say, “I bet you were born in the gutter. When did you learn how to speak English? Burrito breath.” Like the things that they would say. I thought, “Where did I get that? How did I earn that?” As I was getting through college, DU was a great place for college. I didn’t get much kickback there but they also have a very big international community, which is nice.
Even starting in the practice of law. When I started as a public defender, I saw many more people of color and women in the practice of law and criminal justice in the state system. When I went to the federal system, there were less. When I worked at the SEC, I worked there for 9, 10 years. I only saw one woman litigating with me on the opposing side and never a person of color through the Securities and Exchange Commission. In Denver office, I did but not when I was traveling across the country trying cases.
Some of it is representation. Some of it is seeing people that look like you and understanding that you can do it. Having people that have gone before you to break that glass ceiling, so to speak but also, people that are different in a community giving back so that they can see that professional people of color, women, different genders or socioeconomic backgrounds still can give something of value to the community.
Is this an issue that you see as having got better over the course of the last couple of decades? Do you feel like it’s still in the same place that it was when you were a little kid being accused of having burrito breadth and all these other baseless accusations given to you by the people in that store?
It’s funny because everybody thought there were great strides that we were becoming this much more cohesive nation with people understanding cultural differences, celebrating holidays and things like that. You have the Trump era come along and there is bad hombre. Rhetoric about COVID came from the Chinese. All of this where people were like, “How did we get here? Where were all these people? I thought we had come so far?” We didn’t come very far. There might’ve been policies and changes. People love to talk to diversity, inclusion and equity. It shouldn’t be a talk. It should be a walk.
If people want to make the changes that reflect the community at large, then there need to be policies in every company, agency, government, firm, school, whatever it is. When they hire, they’re going to hire diverse candidates. They’re going to look at the teachers they have, lawyers in their firm, corporations, outside counsel that they hire and make sure that there was always a person of color that has a meaningful role in everything that they do. If companies are going to reach out, they’re going to reach out to the mailroom, administrative pool and somebody that’s worked very hard. Maybe it’s educated. They’re going to talk to them and see if they can bring them up, what they can do to help them get educated and how they can reward them for their service.
Those policies are what diversity and inclusion should be about. Not talking about, “We have to have gender-fluid bathrooms and make sure that we don’t talk to people based on their cultural background, gender or anything like that.” That’s common decency. That’s something that we hopefully, all have and continue to understand that we don’t talk to people about their kinky hair, things like that. Those are common decency and etiquette. The rest of it needs to be mandatory policies, in my humble opinion.
When you face this discrimination, it strengthens your resolve to succeed. It didn’t necessarily tear you down or maybe you had an emotional response. You became even more resolved to succeed. Do you feel like that’s a concept that a lot of people can bring any audience and their pursuits, whether they’re starting a business or anything else? You’re always going to face setbacks, challenges and people who tell you no. How would someone go about strengthening that muscle within your mind of saying no, a setback or someone telling me that I’m stupid is only going to strengthen my resolve to succeed at whatever I’m trying to succeed at?
People feel alone, so there’s comfort in surrounding yourself with people that are like you because there’s not a challenge to who you are to grow or different opinion or idea. I go out to charter schools. The no school left behind that got left behind and reorganized his charter. I talk to the kids about knowing their rights because they’re largely persons of color that are contacted by the police more frequently. I’ll talk to them about what the police are allowed and not allowed to do generally. Sometimes, I’ll hand out business cards and say, “If they start to bug you, call me.”
The other part of what I talked to them about is, “Don’t give up on your dreams.” There are some realistic measures to that, but I’ll talk to 5th, 6th, 7th graders and say, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” There is some very small stature that says, “I want to be an NBA player.” “You can work on that but let’s also look at what other types of jobs you could do or other things you could do within the NBA or the sports field that might get you close to that but maybe not playing but still a part of that piece or family.” Kids say, “I want to be an FBI agent or in the CIA.” “Cut out your social media because they’re going to talk to everybody that you’ve ever spoken to and everybody you’ve ever gone to school with. They’re going to look at every social media. You think Snapchat goes away but it doesn’t go away.”
There’s so much information that they need to know to think about moving forward. Not every high school counselor is the great one that says, “You can.” In fact, there are several high school counselors that’ll say, “Maybe you should look at junior or actual college. Maybe you shouldn’t be a lawyer because of this, that and the other thing.” Some of that is having the right support system, whether it’s family, mentors, a teacher that you like, a friend that has your back to talk it out and say, “This is the door I’m facing.”
Sometimes that door shuts and won’t open regardless of how much you kick, run, jump because it’s meant to push you in the right direction. Ultimately, when people say something or do something to try to keep you down, it’s harder on your soul and confidence to let that be what pushes you down than it is to say, “I’m going to take that as constructive criticism or I’m not the right fit for you but you’re not going to deter me from what I want to be or where I want to go.” It almost feels easier to give up sometimes when you hit roadblocks or failure. You don’t pass the bar or LSAT. You can take it again and keep taking it. You can try different things and reach out to different sources to try to help you. You’ll feel better about that than if you give up.
People love to talk about diversity, inclusion, and equity, but it shouldn’t be a talk. It should be a walk. Click To TweetSomeone out there doesn’t have that support system. Let’s say someone’s unfortunate. Maybe their family is not supportive. They haven’t met that right circle of friends or they don’t have that right mentor. What should someone go about doing to find that right support system? Having a mentor, community, friends and people that are rooting you on can mean a lot to your pursuits.
A lot of that depends on what that pursuit is but some of my mentors or even mentees haven’t been through the Hispanic bar, Hispanic chamber, women’s bar or groups. Sometimes it’s been a common interest friend that you meet, whether it’s through yoga, gym or knitting class, something like that. Putting yourself out there, you have the opportunity to talk outside of whatever it is you’re doing together as an activity. For young men, it’s always easier to try to get young boys to talk when they’re doing something. If you sit across the table from a teenage boy or a pre-teen boy, they’re never going to stare at you and talk.
They don’t talk that way but if you put them in a car, play basketball, do something that’s active where they do not have to look at you, you can engage in all these types of conversations. I only learned that because I was a single mom of two boys but I do think that some of it is on you to get out there. If you’re super shy and it’s easier to try to find an online book group or something that gives you a little bit more privacy, you can try to do those things. There’s always a way to try to find a mentor or somebody. When I mentor people, I try to talk to them too about networking. It’s not like, “I need a job. I want this. I’m trying to do that.”
The more you network and talk to people, you get to know things about them. When I take my mentees to any event or networking event, I say, “I want you to have a card, also your spiel about who you are and how you’re going to get it. The person that you’re talking to, I want you to get three things about them. It’s not their age, where they work or how many kids. I want you to find out their favorite book, the last movie they saw or what their passion is as far as outdoors if there is one like gardening, dogs, whatever it is.” That way, after they’ve met people, if they felt like there was somebody that had a good connection or they would like to meet further, then I have them contact that person and say, “I met you. I was impressed by X or Y. I would love to meet and talk about this.”
When you listen, take something that somebody says and say, “I heard you. I would love to meet with you and talk more,” that person is eight times more likely to meet with you. They don’t always but let’s say you meet three people you think can help you somehow or even if it’s one-time having coffee. It doesn’t have to be every month you meet them. Listening and pulling one thing from what they tell you can be a connection, even if it’s not something that’s similar to you.
I know how it feels because I have seen the difference in my own feeling between hearing a generic copy-paste, “We met at this. Let’s talk,” versus, “In the case of my pursuits, I remember hearing about your podcast. I listened to an episode and I liked it. I’d like to talk to you more.” It does come across quite a bit more differently. I’m also wondering part of it with the whole follow up needs to be a little bit of patience. I heard back from someone whom I had originally reached out to.
At some point in time, usually after a week or two, most of us tend to forget, move on and go onto something else. Sometimes it is patience, especially if you go into a networking event where a lot of people there may be busy. Sometimes they have a lot of things going on. They have labeled important emails and it takes them a week or two to get through them all because they’re behind. It happens. Not everyone manages their time as well as you do.
Even with time management, they’re all flagged emails so that I go back to them as I’m going through what is the first priority. I love it because I’ll call people and their voicemail will say, “I will get back to you in 24 hours.” I’m like, “Lawyers never give hours.” It’s like telling the judge, “I need five more minutes.” Five hours later, the judge will say, “Really?” All of that is dangerous for people but I do think there is some patience.
I will tell somebody if they are interested in meeting that person, “If you don’t hear back in three weeks, maybe a month, try one more time.” There are times that it gets lost in the shuffle. Some of these people have 3,000 to 5,000 emails a day, so to have one that they’re going to respond to right away automatically is not always because they didn’t want to. Sometimes, it’s other things that they had to do.
One other topic I want to make sure that we cover on this is the idea of legal ethics. Something that you’ve been quite a bit involved with. Tell us, first of all, a little bit about what drove you into getting, not just into the public defender or tribe, you could see that protecting some of the people that are not seen or heard in our community but also the ethical component of our legal profession.
When I was in law school, I was clerking for a judge in Denver District Court. My dad was a sheriff. I was fully aware of some of the injustices in our criminal justice system. I’m also aware of some of the police brutality issues and bad cops to lump it in one word. When I first started doing public defense work, the Colorado Public Fender System was statewide, so they do a bootcamp training. You have to practice your skills amongst your peers. You go into court and start defending people.
When you first start as a criminal defense attorney, at least in the public defender’s office, they have you do county court cases. You’re in court every day. It’s all day. There are multiple clients. You’re running to the jails to see clients. You’re meeting people that are generally broken. They don’t always have a support system. They’re homeless and have mental health issues.
There was a lot of education for me in terms of what resources there were, social workers, different things to help. Even I learn about different mental health afflictions or addiction issues. A lot of it for me was having to become more competent to be able to serve the people that I was trying to help. In doing so, understand what options there were for helping them. You start realizing that there isn’t a lot. If somebody doesn’t have a family that can help pay for it, it’s much harder for them to deal with mental health issues, stay on the straight and narrow. It’s harder to have them address any affliction that they have. Much less come back to court on time.
In Denver, I was part of a program that started the first drug court, which was to try to keep our prisons full of people that had addiction issues. If you were caught with simple possession, you didn’t have multiple prior felonies, you would come through this drug court. The reason that it worked is because everybody that was there from probation to the district attorneys, law enforcement and judges, everybody that was involved in that system was well-educated as to addiction and recovery issues. If somebody got put out on probation, if they had hot UAs, it wouldn’t automatically revoke probation. We’d snap, put them in prison.
There would be a series of incentives and some punishments to try to help people succeed and not. Then there would be a drug court graduation where somebody finished. You might see them again. Ultimately, it was those types of recovery or mental health courts that are starting to surface in more of the front range areas. It’s harder on the Western slope because there’s not as much treatment available. Those types of recovery or even veterans’ courts that started have helped the criminal justice system. For me, it was learning that competency to be able to represent somebody effectively.
After I was at the SEC, looking at other types of ethical issues that companies have to be fair and how they report their financials, market manipulation and all these other things, I’m learning a lot about that type of practice. Sometimes it was criminal but sometimes, it was a regulatory thing. You get used to applying these laws, regulations and things that people that want to play in this field or this world are held by.
When I left the SEC, I went to the Office of Attorney Regulation in Colorado. I had volunteered on the unauthorized practice of law committee, which is one of the committees that attorney regulation has under the Supreme Court. It was people that were practicing law that shouldn’t be practicing law, people that were sending out these flyers to businesses saying, “You have to do this and that. Pay us and we’ll do it for you.” It was a form that comes out or paralegals that overstep.
Become more competent to serve the people you’re trying to help. Click To TweetWhen I started working at Attorney Reg, having to interview and take lawyers to the court that violated the rules of professional conduct, I was sometimes astounded at what lawyers did. I was shocked that lawyers would do this. I thought, “You got to be kidding me. We should be held to a higher standard.” Our clients entrust us with their lives and if you’re not following these rules, then you either shouldn’t have that license. You should have a timeout. Especially in Colorado Attorney Regulation Office at the time I was there, it was also a social work. If lawyers had drug, alcohol or mental health problems or lawyers that were starting to see signs of dementia, the office would try to help.
There’s a Colorado attorney mentoring program that is trying to help with some of that so that some of these newer lawyers that were coming out, not getting hired at a firm, would hang a shingle and start their firm could have somebody to guide them through that, as opposed to starting a firm and being afoul of the rules because not everybody reads the rules. Working there helped me. I work with lawyers that get accused of misconduct. I defend them. Sometimes, it’s a lack of time management skills or accounting skills. I was appointed by different governors to serve on the Independent Ethics Commission and on the Commission on Judicial Discipline. It’s the same thing.
There’s a set of rules that if you want to play in this arena, you are bound by and you take an oath to do it. If you’re not going to follow those rules, these commissions aren’t there to hammer everybody. We’re not here to make sure that every judge doesn’t get retained, goes down or something like that. It’s the only agency, commission or organization that can clear them as well, especially when it’s an election year and people are making tons of complaints to the independent ethics commission. If there’s a basis for it, it moves forward and there’s a hearing, then those facts are heard, it plays out and the commission makes the decision. If there are things that have on afoul, then there’s a decision against the elected official.
If there isn’t that proof, then that elected official is cleared, similarly, for the judges. There are allegations. We look at them and if it flushes out, then there’s some discipline. Sometimes public, sometimes not. If there isn’t anything there, then that judge is cleared of that misconduct. The police are holding people accountable. That rings true through everything that I do.
As a criminal defense attorney, I make sure that the cops did it right. They didn’t pull any fast ones or make up evidence. We didn’t have an OJ Simpson scenario. We also have to make sure that the judges are making rulings according to the law and that people are being treated fairly in jails. It’s similar with holding our judges, elected officials and lawyers accountable.
For me, there’s so much talk about transparency. That’s a beautiful thing that people like to talk about. That is that part of questioning everything and wondering if the information you’re getting is right and what you’re being told that people are doing if they’re doing it right. I don’t mean to be skeptical or conspiracy theorists in terms of questioning but the more transparent, something appears.
The more faith people have in it. I love our courts and system of justice but I also demand that higher justice. I want to make sure that if it’s being done, it’s being done right for the right reasons and not affecting one population more than another, that our courts have the integrity that they should have. I try to hold myself to that same accountability.
It sounds like a few concepts here that are in our founding documents for our nation, the right to a fair trial, the idea of the rule of law that the law applies to one person that applies to everyone equally. Also, trying to maintain the integrity of your profession that you’re doing a service. That’s interesting because anyone out there that’s starting their own business or initiative, you’re providing a service as a service you’re probably trying to provide to some group of people, even if it’s a product. You have to maintain the integrity of that. Usually, in most organizations, that takes the form of some form of QA, QC, Quality Assurance, Quality Control.
This sounds like the legal profession. If you take it from one person out to an entire industry, that’s your industry’s version of that quality control and making sure that every lawyer is acting on good faith so that when you’re defending people, when you’re giving an attorney the right to a fair trial, they’re getting it properly based on the ethics and also the mental condition of the lawyers themselves.
I love hearing your story about how your personal experiences drove you to a specific profession and mission. It’s more than just a profession. It’s a mission. It’s a service that we’re all providing. How we can all go about managing our time better by prioritizing our tasks, listing them out and also how we can all also overcome the challenges, setbacks and negativity.
The more transparent something appears the more faith people have in it. Demand that kind of higher justice. Click To TweetIt’s astonishing to me that no matter what someone tries to do, you’re going to get negativity and a naysay. Even if it’s something as friendly as possible, someone’s going to say, “You should be doing it.” Someone’s going to think they know better for your life, how we can all go about finding that resolve, keeping that resolve and pushing forward with our endeavors.
Liz, I would like to thank you so much for joining me on the show. Thanks to all the audience. I’m encouraging you all to manage your time better and also, use the negative, the naysay that you get. As long as you understand your mission, this core mission at heart, find ways to strengthen your resolve, hopefully through a good mentor and a good community of people that support you.
Thank you so much.
Follow the show for more interviews with people who have followed their passions and found a way to make progress on the things that they most care about.
Important Links:
- NITA
- Colorado Special Olympics
- Commission on Judicial Discipline
- Independent Ethics Commission
- Yes We Can
- Center for Humane Technology
- A Conversation with Facebook Whistleblower Frances Haugen
About Elizabeth Krupa
Elizabeth Espinosa Krupa is a “303OG” (Colorado native) and alumnus of both the undergraduate university and law school of the University of Denver (“DU”). In 1991, Ms. Krupa earned a Bachelor of Art in International and Global Studies and a Juris Doctorate in 1994. Licensed to practice law for over 25 years, Ms. Krupa has extensive trial experience and has been deeply involved in the Colorado community serving on boards and Commissions for just as long a her career as a lawyer.
Law Office of Elizabeth Espinosa Krupa, LLC (list dates)
Practices primarily in the areas of criminal defense, white collar and civil litigation, securities law and internal investigations, professional conduct and attorney admissions to Colorado. She started her legal career as a judicial clerk and then worked for the Colorado State Public Defender Office for over seven (7) years providing criminal defense for indigent clients (1995-2002). Ms. Krupa left the state for the federal system, litigating first as a Federal Defender for the District of Colorado and then as a Trial Attorney for the Denver Regional Office of the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (2003-2010), conducting trials and administrative proceedings throughout the United States. Ms. Krupa was an Assistant Regulation Counsel for the Colorado Supreme Court Office of Attorney Regulation Counsel (2010-2012) before starting her own law practice in 2013.
Since 2009, Ms. Krupa has been a Faculty Member for NITA, the National Institute for Trial Advocacy. She teaches in regional, public service and custom programs including serving as the Program Director for the NITA/National Organization of Bar Counsel Advanced Trial Advocates Training. She is a frequent lecturer at CLE programs and has coached and taught trial advocacy for the American Association for Justice mock trial team at the University of Denver, Sturm College of Law. As mentoring is of utmost important to her, Ms. Krupa mentors young lawyers and those interested in law through the Colorado Law SchoolYes We Can / Si Se Puede program and through the Colorado Attorney Mentoring Program. She frequently speaks at middle and high schools on topics ranging from “Know your Rights” to “Don’t Give Up on Your Dream.” In furtherance of her goal to impact youth, as a single Mother of two boys, Ms. Krupa has been active in her community with service on the Board of Special Olympics of Colorado, the Rocky Mountain Resource Center, Adaptive Aventures, and the Mountain Area Midget Football Association.