Jamie Mauhay Powers on Second Careers and Protecting Kids Online

This transcript of Raising the Bar with RebuttalPR was generated using AI transcription and lightly edited for readability. It may contain errors, and speaker labels are approximate. The audio recording is the authoritative version.

Ray: Hey everyone. Welcome to a new episode of Raising the Bar with RebuttalPR. I'm your host, Ray DeLorenzi, and today I'm honored to be joined by Jamie Mauhay Powers of the Dolman Law Group, which is based out of Florida. Jamie's in Sacramento. Jamie helps lead their sexual assault litigation group at Dolman Law. She's been involved in cases ranging from Roblox, which we'll talk about, and she has worked on the Camp Lejeune litigation. We're so honored to have Jamie with us today. Thanks, Jamie, for being here.

Jamie: Thank you so much for having me. I'm really excited.

Ray: I hope you still have that excitement by the end of this. We'll see how it goes. Jamie, I always like in these interviews to take it from the top and hear about growing up, coming of age, and the genesis of becoming a lawyer. I know you grew up in the Philippines, so maybe that's a good place to start.

Jamie: Yeah, I did grow up in the Philippines. My grandpa was a lawyer. He was doing insurance law in the Philippines, and I didn't know the story about him until later on in life. I did not start off traditionally wanting to be a lawyer. I had a whole other career in government and policy, and then at 30 I decided to take the LSAT.

I was really going back and forth over whether I was too old or if that was the right path to take. When I told my mom I was concerned that I'd be 34 by the time I passed the bar, she said, you know, your grandpa was 40 when he passed the bar. My mom's name is Barbara, and they named her Barbara because she was born the year that he passed the bar. And I was like, how did you not tell me about this sooner?

That story made it a no-brainer. I'm like, okay, I can do this, I can make this my second career. And here I am, almost twelve years after starting law school, and I'm just really honored to continue my grandfather's legacy in my own way.

Ray: How old were you when you moved to the States?

Jamie: I was five.

Ray: Do you have any recollection of what practicing law meant for your grandfather, and how that translated into your own life? What did it mean to be a lawyer?

Jamie: I was very young when he passed away, but my mom would always tell stories about his impact in the community, how he would help people who couldn't even afford his services. It was important to him to give back to that community. So that's why I wanted a career that helped people.

It started in government. I moved on to nonprofit advocacy, so I worked for the Child Abuse Prevention Center and Head Start California, which focuses on early education for young kids and families who are traditionally underserved in their communities. And now, using the class action and mass tort mechanism to help kids and families that have been exploited online, I think it's in line with the type of work my grandpa wanted to bring to the community. So hopefully he's out there looking down, saying I'm doing a good job.

Ray: Tell me about your experience in the California Legislature. I know you were a legislative aide, a legislative director and a chief of staff. What inspired you to go into government service, and who did you work for during that part of your career?

Jamie: I worked for then-Senator Abel Maldonado. He later became the lieutenant governor of California. It was such a great experience. This was maybe 2008, around that time, and he was a Republican, but a moderate Republican. I appreciated the opportunity to work in his office and see how both sides needed to come together to get things done.

Like I said, he was a moderate Republican in a Democratic state, so there needed to be a lot of compromise. That was really cool to see as a young staffer: the need for both sides to come together for real change to occur. That's really where I saw the power of community and grassroots organizing. Yes, he was a state legislator, but he came from rural counties, so we would see the effects of grassroots organizing within small communities, and how constituents from Salinas or Aptos, very small communities in California, could get their voices heard because of the needs of the community.

Ray: As a young person, you enter government service and you're sort of wide-eyed and very optimistic, and then after a few years in the meat grinder you can leave a lot less optimistic. What was your experience like? Did you leave more optimistic about the power of government service, or less? I know California is a complicated state, but you were also working for a moderate Republican, which is now sort of an extinct breed. When you look back on it, did you leave with more promise or more defeatism?

Jamie: You hit the nail on the head. It was definitely more defeatism. You called it the meat grinder, and that definitely is what the experience was for me. Even though I saw the power of communities and grassroots organizing, I saw exactly how much special interests and big donation checks really are a part of government.

I enjoyed the policy part. I did not enjoy the politics. It definitely left me a little jaded, which is why, when my boss was termed out and I was looking for jobs, my heart really wasn't in staying in the legislature. I think that's why I turned to law school: how can I actually help a person rather than just being a cog in the system?

Ray: You typically see folks become lawyers and then go into government service, in a legislature or on Capitol Hill, and you did the reverse. You already told me your mom's reaction when you decided to go to law school, which wasn't that late in life. But what was the reaction among others around you? Was it "why now," or was it "about time, you'll be great at this"? What did you hear from people?

Jamie: I talked to a lot of practicing attorneys at the time, and the thing they reiterated over and over was, make sure you actually want to do this before investing essentially four years of your life into the grind. At the time I was still wide-eyed. I'm like, I'm going to go in, get my law degree and make a change. But looking back, law school is such a grind, and with the toll it takes on you and the things you have to put on hold, I definitely understand now what they were talking about.

Ray: This obviously isn't scientific, but I know a lot of lawyers, and some went to law school right out of undergrad. I tend to think those who had career experience have a different view of how the law can work for people, and probably handle law school a little better. Do you look back and feel thankful for all the experiences you had beforehand, or do you wish you'd just gotten it out of the way and gone to law school earlier?

Jamie: I'm definitely thankful for the experience. I call it a nontraditional path, but it gave me that life experience. One of the things they told me when I first started working for the legislature was, don't marry your bills. Don't get too attached to the bill package your boss has, knowing that it's either going to get gutted and amended, not pass the legislature, or the governor's going to veto it.

I think that lesson early on helped me, because I started practicing mass torts immediately. I just got thrown into a mass tort where I was in charge of a docket of 300 clients. That was good training for me to jump in and not feel the full impact if a case was dismissed or if a client passed away, which is so terrible and devastating. Coming in with some experience compartmentalizing, to a degree, is one of the things that helped me in the transition from government to law.

Ray: It's a bit depressing that you built resiliency on the back of a lot of defeat in a legislature, but it's an important skill to be able to get back up when you're knocked down, and you see a lot of that in government service, unfortunately.

Jamie: Definitely.

Ray: When you're looking at young lawyers and maybe helping hire them at your firm, however involved you are in that process, do you have a bias toward lawyers who didn't take the direct undergrad-to-law-school path and have some other experience?

Jamie: I do. I teach at my law school, and about a month ago we had a career fair with a resume-building workshop. I told my students, put down your customer service experience, because I like a law clerk or a young lawyer who was a bartender or a server. That tells me you know how to talk to people, you can deal with difficult clients, and you can navigate the nuances of a highly charged or highly emotional client. So do I have a bias? I actually do. I tell people, don't be afraid to put your customer service background in there, because it's very important, especially in the work that we do.

Ray: That's a whole other podcast, and I'm not going to go down that rabbit hole, but here at RebuttalPR, if you have server or retail experience, I immediately gravitate toward those people. I worked retail in college. That's how I learned to talk to people, and it's such a great skill. Such a fascinating point.

You leave the California Legislature, and then while in law school you were at the Child Abuse Prevention Center and Head Start California. I want to talk about the former first: why you decided to work there while in law school, since clearly it had an impact on the type of law you practice today.

Jamie: Yeah, I wanted to stay in policy-adjacent work, but because of the really great experience I had working with grassroots organizations, I wanted to keep that in mind with my next job. At the Child Abuse Prevention Center, we focused a lot on prevention and intervention. That meant we went to underserved communities and provided families with wraparound services.

There were these community centers called family resource centers that provided health clinics, mental health clinics, and education on finances, and really acted as a support for young families who definitely needed it. These centers were run by community members and trusted by community members. It was so great to work there because I was still advocating on their behalf to the legislature. I was still doing the work I'd been trained to do, but on behalf of these family resource centers. It was really, really rewarding.

Ray: What made it so rewarding? It sounds like an obvious question, and I'm leading you in a sense, but particularly compared with government service.

Jamie: Because you would see the impact almost immediately. There was one family resource center that wanted to open an after-school program for kids focused on creative writing. It's called 916 Ink. We helped that organization secure funding through local communities, and then the next year I saw it start and open, and I got to sit in one of the classrooms and see the curriculum. As a policy nerd, you know how long policy and government changes can take. So for me, already kind of jaded with the system, seeing that almost instant gratification of impact in the community is what made it rewarding.

Ray: So you're in law school. Did you have a sense of what type of law you wanted to practice when you entered, or did that evolve over time?

Jamie: It definitely evolved, because I had no desire to get into civil litigation. I said over and over again throughout law school, I want to get my JD so I can maybe be a consultant for the California Legislature. Not necessarily work for an elected official, but continue my work in the legislature. There's an ongoing joke with me and my paralegals that I didn't pay attention in civil procedure, because I wasn't planning on becoming a litigator. But when you have plans, life always takes you in a different direction.

Ray: When did the direction change? Was there a seminal moment, or did you just kind of fall into it?

Jamie: It was definitely over COVID. Like many people, I had a lot of time to think and reflect on my life choices. At that point I was thinking, why did I put myself through law school, sit for the California bar and pass it, if I don't at least try to practice law?

So I got a contract job with a firm owned by one of my professors' husbands, just to get some civil litigation experience. After my contract was done, I was like, okay, great, I guess I'll go back to the legislature now. The firm offered me a full-time job, and I've been doing civil litigation ever since.

Ray: You go from the legislature, where things move slowly, to the Child Abuse Prevention Center, where you saw that immediate impact. In practicing law you can see the impact, but it isn't necessarily at light speed. Do you still get that feeling of impact in practicing law that you saw in your advocacy work and maybe didn't experience in a legislative environment?

Jamie: It's certainly a step back from seeing instant community improvement, and that's one of the drawbacks of working specifically in MDLs. Why did I choose complex litigation if I wanted instant gratification, knowing these things take four or five years, and some MDLs take as much as 10? But with what we've been seeing in the Roblox cases, Dolman Law Group started filing the first few cases last year, along with Anapol Weiss and others you've had on the show. Within that year, even though the litigation is kind of a waiting game right now as we go through these arbitration issues, there's been a lot of change.

Roblox and Discord have made changes, like requiring age verification. And with the courts, with the Meta ruling and the Meta settlements, courts are now recognizing that the harm arises in the design of these platforms. While the individual litigation is taking some time, as it does, it's been really encouraging to see these changes over the last year and a half.

Ray: I definitely want to get into Roblox. Before we go down that road, you talked about the contract work you did. What was the first case you worked on where you thought, yeah, this is for me?

Jamie: It was the Camp Lejeune cases. The Marine base, Camp Lejeune, had toxic water, and all the Marines and families staying on base were exposed to it and developed terrible cancers and conditions afterward. It was helping these veterans and families, some 30 or 40 years later. That's when I thought, okay, here's why I'm doing this type of work. MDL work is hard. It's not for the faint of heart. But that's when I knew this is where I'm supposed to be.

Ray: For those who haven't been in legislative service, something they may not appreciate is that the best folks in legislative service understand it's about constituent service. And Camp Lejeune is a case about a government failure. That's what it is. Do you feel your experience working in government, at the state level rather than the federal level Camp Lejeune involves, was helpful in how you communicated with people who were poisoned at Camp Lejeune?

Jamie: Yeah, absolutely. In legislative boot camp, when you're a new staffer, they throw you into this training, and a huge part of it is that we need to take care of our constituents. So from a very early point in my career in public service, the focus was on the constituents. Yes, there's a shaded side to it, because those are the people who vote for your elected official. But at the same time, you're assigned to a district and a constituency, and whether you're a legislative aide or a chief of staff, you answer to them.

It's the same thing at a law firm. You work for the firm, but the bills don't get paid without your clients. You answer to the clients. Having that understanding of the importance of that touch point helped me when I started practicing law.

Ray: Let's pivot and talk about your move to the Dolman Law Group and your work with the sexual assault and mass tort litigation practice. Did you know you wanted to work on issues involving sexual assault and sexual abuse, or did that come about in a more organic way?

Jamie: It came about very organically. I actually had hesitation when I knew that would be the focus area of the move to Dolman. But I was ready for a change. I did want to go back to the advocacy space I was in with the Child Abuse Prevention Center, where we were working with individual families and even some survivors back then.

When I was going back and forth over whether this would be the right move for me, it was actually my husband who said, survivors, and what they've gone through, they're the ones who need a voice like yours. Once he said that, my heart cracked open and I was like, yeah, you're absolutely right.

Ray: What experience did you bring to bear in working with survivors, and in many cases their family members when it's a minor, and in being trauma-informed? Tell me about the experience you brought that you felt elevated that work and made you a more natural communicator with that constituency.

Jamie: I definitely credit my work with the Child Abuse Prevention Center, because that's the first time I had ever been exposed to trauma-informed training or even knew what it was. Coming into Dolman and working with these survivors, I don't want to say it was an easy transition, but it was pretty seamless, because the core lesson of trauma-informed training is to meet your client where they're at. Coming with that compassion, that very human-oriented training from my days at the Child Abuse Prevention Center and then Head Start, was very impactful. I'm very happy I was able to have that training early on.

Ray: Let's say you're at one of the mass tort conferences or AAJ, take your pick. You've been a lawyer for a few years, but not terribly long compared to some other lawyers in this space. Did you feel it was difficult to break in or be treated as an equal, or did people appreciate what you could bring to the table once they understood your background?

Jamie: I was almost shocked at how welcoming it was from the very beginning. It took me a while to catch up to the fact that my background and fewer years of practice weren't holding me back. I'm very lucky that the attorneys I'd met through various firms and the MDL saw my experiences as a strength.

I really appreciate that about the MDL space, because I don't know that it's like this in other practice areas: how supportive and eager everyone is to help each other, even though at the end of the day we're all competitors. But I think MDL lawyers understand the landscape. We're all here to help as many people as we can. So it was very surprising, but a welcome surprise.

Ray: What gets you excited about working on a case like this? Is it interacting with the clients? Do you like the writing? You already make jokes about your civil procedure acumen, but are there areas you feel are your sweet spot, and other areas where you're like, I'm going to get sharper, just wait and see?

Jamie: For sure. I think the sweet spot is being as loud about it as we can, because the more parents and the community know what's happening, the better. It starts with education and awareness. Talking to clients is absolutely what I love most. I hate that we have to talk in this capacity, and I wish I could be speaking to these kids in a different capacity. But my favorite part is talking with the families, being part of their healing journey, and seeing how resilient these kids are. I have clients as young as eight, nine, 10 years old, and they just want to move forward and heal from this. I find a source of strength in working for the families.

In terms of what I'm looking forward to improving, it's going through the life cycle of this MDL. I've worked on cases with bellwethers or cases going to trial, but this is the first time there's a lot of extensive work on some of the bellwether cases, and I'm really looking forward to expanding my experience there.

Ray: Jamie, I always like to end these on a lighter note. For some reason I seem to know many trial lawyers who are also yoga teachers. So I saw that and I was like, here's another one. Is there something about being a plaintiffs' lawyer and a yoga teacher that goes together, or is it a coincidence? Do you get to teach often these days, or is it more something you do in your spare time? What does that look like for you? And can you prove or disprove my theory about plaintiffs' lawyers and yoga?

Jamie: Well, I can prove your theory. Life is hard anyway for everybody. This world is insane and crazy, and anywhere you can find some respite and relief, however that looks, is great. But for plaintiffs' lawyers specifically, we're all type A at some point, and we're all anxious at some point in our lives, or all points in our lives. I think yoga is the perfect counterbalance for that. I started practicing yoga in 2011 and continued through law school, and it's the one thing that's kept me grounded.

So your theory is correct. There are more and more of us teaching yoga. Sometimes I teach at conferences if they need a yoga teacher to lead a group of lawyers, and sometimes I teach at my law school. For me, getting lawyers and law students to sit down and breathe for an hour is really cool. I urge anyone to just sit for five minutes with your thoughts and breathe. There's some magic behind that.

Ray: I always say I'm too anxious to sit down and do yoga, which is obviously the worst part.

Jamie: That's why you need it. That's why you need it.

Ray: You're right, and I will take that to heart. With that, Jamie Mauhay Powers of the Dolman Law Group, thanks so much for joining the podcast.

Jamie: Thank you so much for having me.