If you want to know what life is like for the typical immigration lawyer these days, don’t bother asking Ted Oswald.

As the immigrant legal services manager at World Relief’s office in Sacramento, Oswald is quite an outlier.

First of all, Oswald is not deeply involved in securing visas for foreign workers or fighting deportations, despite a rise in immigration arrests since President Trump took office. Secondly, most attorneys helping the Special Immigrant Visa holders who previously served as interpreters for U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan have seen their client numbers dwindle. Yet business is booming for the ’11 alumnus.

Since earning her JD in 2011, Ellie Austin has demonstrated that it is, after all, possible to be both footloose and sure-footed.

Soon after graduating, the Golden State native returned and began practicing at a firm that represents Southern California districts in special-education matters.

Though Austin continued with the firm for nearly four years, she worked remotely for much of that time, following geographic, professional and personal pathways in diverse directions.

Nothing in Nobumasa Hiroi’s placid demeanor betrays that he is an intensely enterprising individual. Don’t be fooled.

Born in Japan, the ’12 alumnus speaks three languages and has lived in Europe and South America as well as Asia and North America. He’s been engaged in legal work in the U.S., Japan and China. His interests range from literature (he earned a master’s degree in English and creative writing) to nuclear nonproliferation (he interned one summer for the Project for Nuclear Awareness).

Jess Farris spends her days focused on the affairs of pretrial defendants who are locked up in California jails and their loved ones who are scrambling to get them out.

The director of criminal justice and the policy and advocacy counsel for the ACLU of Southern California, Farris, ’12, is a key player in a statewide effort to advance bail reform in the state legislature.