Ken Mayeaux on His Journey as an Immigration Lawyer

Hey, I’m Ken Mayeaux. I’m an immigration attorney down here in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and I’ve had a law firm open almost 10 years now. But I’ve been practising law for 37 years, and I like to say I’m on the ninth and happiest iteration of my life as a lawyer, but this has been a long time to get here.

Well, I spent several iterations of my life as a lawyer, as a young man, as a lawyer in a big law firm and representing oil companies and hospitals in complex commercial litigation. And as a guy who really gets his juice from helping people and really inspired more by social justice, that did not last. And the satisfaction of doing good work, representing clients, you know, a complex and sophisticated litigation, which was interesting to me. But at the end of the day, it wasn’t really what I wanted to do. And at 40 years old, I was a partner in a law firm and really ensconced in this niche, you know, commercial litigation practice.

And I thought, my God, I’m gonna do this for the next 25 or so years of my life. And so I decided to reinvent myself. Went through a couple of iterations before I landed on this one. But basically moved to Mexico, did some missionary work in Mexico. I worked as a chaplain in an immigration detention centre in Arizona. I came back home to Louisiana and eventually to Baton Rouge where I worked in the nonprofit sector doing immigration work and then I taught at the local law school, LSU law school, the flagship law school for Louisiana and ran their immigration clinic and 10 years ago, decided to open a practice, a private practice because ultimately I really, I love the work, I love my clients and the hands -on work of representing real people, real problems and seeing them through their problem to the other side with the future or sometimes I say we laugh with some, we cry with some. The joy of victory and the agony of defeat and our model of representation is that we really see ourselves as accompanying our clients through their journey with the legal system, whether that’s, we do 95 % immigration related work.

But we also do some other family related work and occasionally some criminal defence. But we always see our role as walking people side by side, accompanying them through their journey in the legal system and hopefully empowering them to have, you know, a new life and a different life than the problems that brought them to me.

So as you might imagine, our target audience are recent immigrants or immigrants. And as that population goes, 90 -something percent of those are going to be from Latin America and the Caribbean. And many of them are Spanish -speaking. We are currently five attorneys here. Four of the five speak Spanish fluently. One of them is working on it. Some of us are, a couple of the attorneys are from, you know, Latin backgrounds, but most of us are gringos, as I like to say. But, you know, we’re really committed to working with our client population.

And of course, all of our staff, 100 % of our staff are bilingual and many, and if not most of them are from Latin American countries or Latin American descent. And it’s a challenging area. You know there’s a lot of stuff happening right now with President Biden’s program to offer parole to the citizens, the spouses and stepchildren of United States citizens. I have a particular expertise in the intersection between criminal and immigration law. And so I routinely represent people in detention who are being deported for their criminal histories. But I also work with defence counsel really around the country to understand the immigration impact of a criminal charge and a criminal plea and try to reach an accommodation between the defence and the prosecutor that will allow the immigrant client to hopefully to avoid negative immigration consequences of a criminal conviction.

Well, we always say that it’s excellence. Well, I say number one, excellence. Number two, the client. Number three, money. And actually, I got that wrong even after repeating it. Number one is the client. You gotta be there for your clients. You’ve got to see the client as the most important aspect of the relationship. We’ve always given free consultations because I feel like I want clients to be able to be empowered to understand the chances that they have realistically to stay in this country. And they meet with us and we give them a very detailed proposal. so that’s our number one. Number two is excellence.

And of course, every attorney says that, but there are certain sectors of the legal world where there is more, I would just say, diversity of experience and ethical behaviour. And in our particular area, because you’re dealing with a client base that is less educated, less sophisticated, and also very dependent on finding an attorney who’s honest and competent. So they tend to get preyed on. They get preyed on by notaries who are really they’re not even real notaries as we would recognize them in this country. But they’re people who hold themselves out as being able to help the immigrants fill out forms and apply for benefits but they’re not attorneys and they don’t know what they’re doing. And then there are just a whole range of unscrupulous lawyers who are just out to prey on people.

The practice is very, very, very similar to a criminal defence practice where people on the margins who are in crisis don’t have the luxury of, and the networks to be able to know, hey, this is the guy that’s actually gonna help you. This one’s honest. So, now my competition here, I’m very happy to say that most of the competition here I know very well. Most of them were my students or I mentored them at different points in their careers. So.

It doesn’t look like it, perhaps on this video, but I’m almost 65 years old and I’ve been doing this for 37 years. That is practising law. And so there’s not too many around to have my level of experience. And I still get phone calls from my colleagues, you know, running case scenarios by me and asking me what I think about, you know, their particular scenario and a case. And I’m always happy to do it. I still feel like I’m Professor Mayeaux from LSU Law School and routinely talk to especially defence counsel around the country about how to structure pleas and how to work toward getting a resolution that’s in the best interest of the client.

Thanks.

I’ll tell you that one of the hardest things was that law school teaches you how to be a lawyer, but it really doesn’t teach you about the business of law. so finding mentors, I think, is the most important thing. And I am really surprised at how much I actually love running the law firm. I didn’t think this was gonna be my thing. In fact, I started out with a partner who later left. And at the time, I kind of let the partner run most of this stuff. And then when my partner left, I was running the firm and I actually, I love it a lot more than I thought. I did initially and I would very much encourage look for a mentoring program and there’s a bunch of them out there. I used a program called Lawyerist and you sign on with them.

They have a lot of resources available and you’ll get access to a coach and you can do that either like through group coaching sessions but they have a great framework for helping you understand all of the key performance indicators and the big pieces that you need to put together for a law firm, right team, right place, right clients, right technology. And just to have a one -stop shop where you can do that, get some really great advice. It’s really moved us forward. And so now we have a discipline of just constant improvement of looking at quarterly projects that we’re going to do to improve our practice and move, I say move the needle toward excellence and efficiency. So it’s a lot, it’s a lot, but I’m actually just surprised at how much I’ve really enjoyed running the firm.

I would say that, you know, it kind of goes back to that same hierarchy of People come first, investing in our people, investing in the clients, always seeing them as a work in progress, as someone who’s moving on. A lot of our legal assistants, they come and then they go on, hopefully to bigger things. I just had my longest tenured legal assistant leave to go back to graduate school in a completely unrelated field and I’m thrilled for her. We’ve had several legal assistants go on to law school and I’m thrilled for them too. And so, you know, one of my associate attorneys was one of my very first students when I was teaching. attention to people and realising that we’re investing in them and they’re investing in us.

Always inculcating excellence in practice. And those words are easy to say, but when you’re in our field where the clients themselves are not going to give you the kind of scrutiny that I’ll say I grew up with, where my work was being sent to the general counsel of an oil company or the general counsel of a bank or a hospital and had a level of scrutiny that people in our practice don’t have. And so you really have to instil a level of excellence in practice that is not significantly expected in this practice area. And then I can say the last thing is money. Money’s important, obviously, know, and we have to, and we always, do things of course to, you know, let’s make sure that our collections are getting dialled in and that we’re trying to pick a client base that’s able to pay, but at the same time, we want to reach people who really need the services and may not have the same ability to pay. So we’re constantly tweaking the economic side and pushing to make it more efficient. But I think just like on the practice side with the clients that if you have your priorities in order, people practice excellence and money, the rest, everything else falls in.

Well, I have a wonderful team of lawyers ranging from 10 years to seven years to three years to right out of law school. Of course, my senior most associate is really already operating as a partner and really co-manages the firm with me. And I hope that I’ll be passing the baton on to other people. But I could also see myself hanging around in a more consultative, of counsel role and gently walking off into the sunset. But I genuinely love the practice and love working with my colleagues here and still find ways to be involved on a national level with the Immigration Lawyers Association and stuff like that. So I’m not ready to walk off into the sunset quite yet.

Yeah, I have a colleague who’s 70 years old and I said, you know, when are you going to retire? And he said, I feel like at 70, I just figured out all this stuff and I’m doing it really well. Why would I stop when I’m, you know, at the top of my game? So I think I think I got, know, of course, we’re all growing, you know, this way they call it practice. And you keep practising and keep getting better at it.

And hopefully, you’re at a place where you have a legacy to leave behind and you have people who are ready to pick up the banner that you’ve carried. And then I’d be really excited to see them move on and carry on the traditions that we’ve really created together. I’m not that special. I’m just someone who wants to get it done and who’s tried to put the right priorities on how we approach our business and our clients.

We actually service the entire United States. So immigration law is federal law. And so while the vast majority of our clients are here, mostly in South Louisiana, in North Louisiana, and we reach over, we have clients in Texas, Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Tennessee. So that’s our basis here in Louisiana, but our reach is much further.

You know, what I tell young lawyers all the time is that the wonderful thing about being a lawyer is that there’s about a thousand ways to do it. And you need to find the way that really aligns with your values, you know, with who you are as a person. Law is, it’s a tough business, the stress levels and just the contentiousness of it is difficult. And if you’re looking for a practice area that’s really aligned with who you are and what you wanna be, then you end up serving another master instead of yourself. And that’s how I think it’s extremely common that if you go to law school and you do well,

You get shuttled off onto this track where you did well in law school. You should go to big law firm and represent big companies and make big money. And the truth is that law school is not a predictor of success in practice and that people who are middle of the road can come out of law school and do wonderful things. You need to focus on who you are and who you want to be as a lawyer and what aligns most with your values and who you are and pursue that. then, you know, hopefully the money comes. I know, you know, I of course worked in big law, as we say, you know, for the first 10 years or so and paid off my loans. And I think that’s awesome. Also a common story that, People get out of law school, they work at what they can, you know, for that first job, second job, third job. And then the beauty of being a lawyer is that you can constantly reinvent yourself and do something that’s more aligned with your values.

All right, Stephen, pleasure to meet you.