Interview with Silvia Zega

At what point did you decide that you wanted to dedicate yourself to Law and what motivated you to do so?

It was very funny, because it seemed to have nothing to do with Law itself.
When I started studying Law I had been working in criminal justice for approximately 7 years (since 1990). I had started with my previous degree as a social worker, in a court, with a program on psychosocial issues of people subject to criminal justice. And for 3 years I had been called to a higher decision-making level (an appeals chamber) to replicate and coordinate that program.

Practice had led me to accumulate a great deal of legal knowledge. And I had always been interested in the intersection between the legal and the sociological as the foundation of what I worked on. It never occurred to me to study Law, because I had gained from practice the knowledge I needed to design and launch that area, and moreover above me there was a leadership position held by a lawyer.

By that point I felt that I had reached a ceiling in what I could do: the project was fully institutionalized, I had done a master's degree in my specialty and I could not see where to find the way to greater growth.

I was in bed with pneumonia, with 1 month of rest, when on the radio I heard someone from the OMS comment that women of approximately 45 years old (the age I was then) had a life expectancy of 84 years. I thought: “Good Lord! I don't want to spend the next 39 years waiting for grandchildren and enjoying my salary. I'm going to study law!”.

Tell us a bit about your career as a lawyer.

It took me 8 years to finish my degree: I had children, a household to run, a job that took up a lot of my time. I started the degree in 1997 and took my last subject in May 2004.

At first, in the early years, I was not interested in having the degree. I always said: “I'm not interested in being a lawyer, but in knowing law”.
Halfway through the degree I brought my stage as a social worker to an end. I started to lean my work more toward the legal side and this led me to need the degree. It's not that I changed my job, but that I gave it a different reading, a different perspective.

When I graduated I had long been working only from a legal perspective and the degree was essential to legitimize what I said and did. In that change the study of Human Rights was decisive and the conviction that this was the point of intersection between the legal and the concrete reality of people, which had always interested me.

Law allowed me to make a qualitative leap and see that the issues I fought for from an area dedicated to “the social within criminal matters” were actually legal issues, not social ones: they were rights.

Shortly after I graduated I was offered the leadership of the area where I had been working and I was able to give a twist to the area I was now in charge of. This opened up spaces for people's rights, spaces that would become institutionalized after I left.

The law degree made it possible for me in several ways:

• It allowed me to see everything I was doing from another angle, previously unthinkable.
• It allowed me to clearly see how to frame proposals within the institutional framework, in which Law is hegemonic.
• It legitimized me before my lawyer counterparts as a non-subordinate peer.

Some people are afraid to study Law because they have the idea that it involves much more study time than other degrees, and that you need a privileged memory. Is this true?

It is true that studying law is long, and in general it is taught with a strong emphasis on codified subjects (the codes), which requires quite a lot of memory. I don't have it, nor am I interested in codified subjects, except Criminal Law, and yet I graduated and I love Law.

As in every university degree, 80% of what you study doesn't interest you and you think it will be of no use to you. But when you graduate you see that all those parts, mostly useless, make up a meaningful whole, and everything is useful.

Are there alternatives for professional practice beyond pursuing a freelance career? What are they and in what fields?

We people breathe Law like fish in a fishbowl. Law is not something foreign to our lives, the property of judges and lawyers. We are permanently shaped by Law because we are subjects of Law and that marks us in all our social relationships, although, as happens with health, we only realize it when Law is missing or “hurts” us.

In all areas where social relationships develop, lawyers are needed: in the cooperative formed by unemployed workers from the factory that closed; in housing jointly shared by evicted families; in the crafts fair of those who have been left without employment; in areas where migration issues are addressed, community association issues, safeguarding children's right to education, protection against abuse or child labor, gender, violence, etc. The more people's rights are at risk, the more lawyers are needed.

The lawyer's role is not only to manage the Law, just as the doctor's role is not only to prescribe. The lawyer's role is to make visible that behind most human suffering there is a violated right or one at risk, and to help people take ownership of their rights so they can at least fight for their fulfillment.

This, in the private sphere, separate from the career practiced independently (the law firm, or legal work for companies).

In the state sphere lawyers are needed everywhere, to turn the State into a true public servant, and for that lawyers are needed who understand that the law is an umbrella meant to protect our rights and the State is the vehicle for making that happen.

What satisfactions can the career of lawyer bring, both on a personal and professional level?

When you see that people who thought they couldn't, who thought something was not for them start to feel like holders of rights, and even when due to circumstances they cannot achieve the fulfillment of their right, they reclaim their dignity, despite their situation, their race, their ethnicity, it is an enormous satisfaction.
Law is wonderful because people, all of us, are subjects of rights.

What qualities should someone who wants to practice and have a successful career as a lawyer have?

It depends on what we call successful. I would say that anyone who wants to practice Law today must inevitably have a Human Rights perspective. But I don't know if that will bring financial return. It is an essential perspective for working in the State and in any field in which interpersonal or community social relations are settled.

In some Spanish-speaking countries the judicial system is often associated with unethical practices, is it possible to be successful in this career without compromising our moral principles?

All systems everywhere are associated with unethical practices. It seems that we Spanish speakers carry a stain that is actually shared globally.

In any field there are unethical and ethical practices. I believe it is absolutely possible to grow without compromising ethics, although the effort may be greater, since you will have to justify with your own merit the promotions that others justify with spurious means.

What advice would you give to a young person who is about to begin their Law studies?

Don't give up, even if at times nothing you study interests you, because in the end you see everything in a more comprehensive way.
Read and learn about Human Rights: because being holders of fundamental rights is the essential condition of the people you are going to work with, in any field of practice.
Don't believe that the degree gives you ownership over the Law: it only gives you the power to handle certain matters in a field that belongs to others.
Persist until you earn the degree, even if you have doubts, even if you feel discouraged, because the degree is only a tool, but a necessary tool that legitimizes your actions.
Shortly before finishing, ask to work in a free legal clinic alongside a lawyer, to learn from practice.
Don't stay alone with your career, seek out others to lean on, others to think with: people are richer in interaction than alone.