Reflections on the fellowship - Kayla Sunshine Bell
Our 2024 Justice Fellows and third-year 2023 Fellows are finishing their fellowships, wrapping up a term marked by changing policy, funding cuts, and an unprecedented assault on immigrant rights.
These Fellows have showed up, day after day, to support their clients.
Kayla Sunshine Bell, a 2024 Justice Fellow working at the UNLV Immigration Clinic, reflects on her growth as an attorney and what allowed her to flourish. Kayla is a graduate of St. Thomas University College of Law.
Quality counsel changes everything, for everyone. I didn’t always think I was capable of providing quality counsel. One of the first full-representation cases I was staffed on, I made a series of small, fixable mistakes. Embarrassed by my newness, I confessed to my managing attorney, as she fixed one of my errors, that I felt terrible having our client’s future in my hands when I kept making mistakes. My managing attorney responded: “his options right now are either no representation, or, you, learning from your mistakes while under my supervision.” That shifted my perspective. As a defense attorney, I was taught not to gain experience on the back of my clients, especially my indigent ones, so I knew it was time to start trusting my training, my instincts, and my management.
I got the chance to trust myself in Summer 2025. I remember taking the initial consult of my client, “C,” and reviewing the Department of Homeland Security’s allegation against him. He insisted it was not true and my less-than-a-year old lawyering instincts told me to believe him. I felt strongly about “C’s” case; it was new and complex to me, and I was eager to take on a case like that. Our office took the case, and I partnered with the deputy managing attorney. In taking care to review “C’s” documents, FOIA results, and getting to know him, I faced novel and complex legal issues. I also got to watch our deputy managing attorney work. Standing in the light, so to speak, of her advocacy and organization showed me that, maybe, I too could be an empowered and organized attorney, and I was closer to it than I thought.
Ultimately, “C’s” immigration court case was terminated, and he was released from detention about six months after we took his case. The same case that “C” was almost ready to give up on, and that could have ended in deportation if not for a moment of trust, advocacy, and self-belief. “C’s” case became bigger than I imagined, and it’s now a defining moment of my fellowship.
When resources for the fellowship program and other non-profit immigration representation are plentiful, it allows us to be discerning, dedicated, and effective in our representation. It allows us to devote energy to quality representation, which can happen at all stages of an attorney’s career with the right mentorship and supervision. So, it’s true – quality counsel does change everything. It changed “C’s” life and my own perspective on my career. The change goes both ways, to the client and the fellow.
