Cristina Alma McNeiley – 2021 Hispanic Heritage Month Pro Bono Feature

I am a Mexican-American litigation attorney who was born on the South side of Chicago. My great-grandparents on both sides of my family immigrated to Chicago from Mexico in the 1950s for a chance at a better life. My paternal great-grandparents still live in the same house on the Southeast side of Chicago. The same house so many of my family members lived in, including myself. If it wasn’t for my great-grandparents’ courageous decision to come to Chicago, and my parents’ unconditional love and support, I would not be where I am today.

The product of two teenage parents, I was raised primarily in Northwest Indiana – also known as “The Region.” When I was born, my mother had just turned 18 and my father would turn 16 the following month. I was just 2 weeks old when the lives of myself and my parents changed forever. My father was tried as an adult and sentenced to prison for the first three years of my life. It could have been worse, as my father was looking at over 40 years of imprisonment, but my father’s lawyer helped more than we could ever repay him. My mother always told me the story of how the prosecuting attorney came up to her after my father was sentenced, looked down at me in her arms and said, “future gangbanger.”

As I grew older I always kept that story in the back of my head. Nobody thought I would be here. I was just another statistic waiting to happen. With this being the start of my life, it changed the trajectory of it all. With the limited resources life gave me, I learned to make something out of nothing to get through high school, college, law school, and to ultimately become an attorney.

Similar to many Brown and Black children, from an early age I knew what prison was, I was not new to police encounters, and I knew all about probation officers and plea deals. However, unlike some of my peers, I also knew about the lawyer that helped save my father’s life by not giving up on trying to reduce his sentence. I wanted to be more than a “future gangbanger,” and I wanted to be more than just another statistic. I wanted to be an attorney that changed lives and I wanted to make a difference in this world.

My parents always told me I would do both. I remember growing up and constantly hearing my parents talk about how I could change things for the family. What some may deem as pressure, I found to be an inspiration. I witnessed first-hand the sacrifices of my parents and I knew that I did not want my family or myself to continue sacrificing individual goals and dreams to make ends meet. I had to find a way out of our situation in order to provide a better life for myself and my family. The first step was graduating from high school and getting into college.

Among many things, my parents instilled in me the power of obtaining a great education and remaining driven and resilient regardless of what was happening around me. With this in mind, I kept my grades up in high school, started working at the age of 15, became a high school athlete and was probably overly involved in a number of extra-curricular activities. I applied to Butler University in Indianapolis on a whim and still remember the day my parents and I opened up my
acceptance letter. It was finally happening – I was going to be the first in my family to go to college.

It was at Butler that my passion for diversity, equity and inclusion work blossomed and I learned more about the limited number of Latinos in the legal profession – especially Latinas. Today, less than 2% of lawyers are Latinas; in 2013, that number was even smaller. I graduated with high honors from Butler in the spring of 2017 and went straight through to law school at Chicago-Kent College of Law. I had every intention of coming back home to Chicago to be closer to my parents and I was blessed beyond words to be able to do so.

In law school, I wanted to support law students that looked like me or had similar backgrounds to mine, while also shining a light on the fact that we are so underrepresented in this field. I remained true to my passion for diversity, equity and inclusion work and held leadership roles in organizations like the Hispanic Latino Law Students Association and the Midwest Black Law Students Association. I volunteered to help as an English as a Second Language tutor and also gave back and volunteered with the Cook County Juvenile Temporary Detention Center. The same detention center my father was housed at before they transferred him downstate after his sentencing nearly 25 years prior. It was as if everything was coming full circle.

In 2018, my life once again changed forever when I was the recipient of the Barnes & Thornburg Diversity Scholarship and became a summer associate in the Chicago office. This second life-changing moment was one that provided me with the opportunity and resources to help not only my family, but also my community.

I know too well that representation in the legal profession is crucial for the success of minority attorneys. My goal since law school has been to be a part of that representation and help younger generations of Latinx and BIPOC individuals navigate their way to and through the legal profession. I take pride in knowing that I am proof to younger generations of Latinx and BIPOC individuals, with backgrounds and stories similar to mine, that if I can make it here, they can too.