By: Olivia Browne

We spent the afternoon following Staff Attorney Leita Powers, as she manages a caseload of family law matters — divorces, custody disputes, orders of protection, and spousal support — providing critical legal representation to clients across Central New York who couldn’t otherwise afford it.

7:00 A.M.

The morning starts with someone else’s needs first.

Leita has a baby now, and the day doesn’t begin with emails or a court calendar — it begins with him. Getting him ready, settled, taken care of. Then breakfast, coffee, and a quick check of her schedule to figure out what she’s walking into.

Court days mean dressing for it. Today is not a court day, but that’s the kind of thing she checks.

The commute is seven minutes. She lives in North Syracuse on purpose.

“I think it’s important to live where your clients are,” she’ll say. She means it.

8:30 A.M. — Arriving at the Office

Leita arrives between 8:30 and 9 a.m, settles in, and opens her email.

She builds a list. 

If there’s no court and no clients scheduled first thing, she maps out what the day actually needs: which files to pull, what to review, what’s been waiting too long. She tries not to schedule clients before 9. Most court appearances don’t start until then anyway.

Her office walls hold something intentional, artwork chosen for what it says. Pieces about confidence, strength, and empowerment. Things left by coworkers who understood what kind of space this needed to be.

9:00 A.M. — Into the Courtroom

Leita is in court three days a week.

Before she walks in, she’s already done the work: talking to her client about the facts, their priorities, what they’re actually hoping for. She prints everything. A paper copy of the file, a notepad with notes on how the appearance might go. She’s learned not to trust digital alone when things move fast.

One of the worst things a lawyer can do, she’ll tell you, is forget a client’s name. Or the opposing party’s. She doesn’t.

Court keeps you honest. 

About 70 percent of the time, you know what to expect. The other 30 percent is what sharpened her. Early on, the unpredictability made her nervous. Now she has strategies. She knows her needs and her clients’ needs — and she knows how to stay steady when the unexpected walks through the door.

Getting comfortable being put on the spot, she says, is one of the most important skills a lawyer can build.

Late Morning — Between Court and the Office

Some court appearances last an hour. Some take all day. It depends.

When court wraps early, she’s back at her desk. The courthouse and her office are within walking distance — she walks when the weather allows, especially in summer. She likes working downtown for exactly that reason. Everything is close. Her colleagues are close. So are the attorneys she went to law school with.

If there are no afternoon clients yet, the late morning becomes time for calls, emails, filing, and follow-up.

12:00 P.M. — Lunch

Leita is deliberate about lunch.

She likes Soupupes Rand Salads – just a short walk from the office on South Warren Street. She’s been going to a place by Water Street Bagels lately — sandwiches, usually. Sometimes the group from the office gets coffee or lunch together, eating in the break room or stepping out. The conversation moves around — cases, court, whatever’s on everyone’s mind.

She has a client meeting most days, and sometimes clients want to meet during the lunch hour. She works around it. The clients she serves have a lot going on in their lives — barriers that the office takes seriously and tries to accommodate.

2:00 P.M. — Back at the Desk

The afternoon belongs to the work that doesn’t happen in front of a judge.

Writing motions. Drafting agreements — many of her divorce cases settle outside court, and each agreement has to be specific to that client’s situation. Filing with the court. Keeping detailed notes on every client interaction, every judge, every meeting. Emails, calls, scheduling, updates.

She estimates about half her time is court and court preparation. The rest is client and file management.

Once a month, the family law attorneys meet as a group — talking through practices, sharing notes on judges, keeping each other current.

There’s a client meeting built into almost every day.

4:40 P.M. — Heading Home

She tries to leave between 4:40 and 5 p.m. Most days, she does.

One of the things she values about working at a nonprofit is that they mean it when they say work-life balance matters. She’s still working on drawing the lines — a big trial or a deadline will pull her back to her laptop in the evening — but most days, the work gets done before she goes home.

Tonight: getting ready for the evening with her son, reading while she nurses him. She reads a lot these days. She’s in the middle of She Said by Jodi Kantor — she was part of the Me Too movement — and she belongs to a book club that mixes serious novels with lighter romance. She thinks physical activity matters too, especially as a mother and an attorney, and she tries to keep that in her week.

The boundary is something she’s building. It matters.

Leita Powers has been practicing law at Hiscock Legal Aid Society since graduating from law school, where she knew from the start that she wanted to work with survivors of domestic violence and with clients who needed someone in their corner.

She didn’t start out thinking she’d be a lawyer. She majored in biology, thought she might become an epidemiologist or a doctor. But she spent five years working with Vera House, and something shifted. She watched the justice system up close — how it affected survivors of sexual assault, what it looked like when attorneys slowed down and took the time — and she realized there was a need for attorneys who brought real empathy to that work. 

Trauma-informed lawyers. Patient ones.

She became one.

Her advice for anyone considering law? : Ggo see what it actually looks like first. There are so many kinds of lawyering, and what your day looks like can vary completely. Get the experience before you decide.

“I think it’s important for people to have access to legal representation,” she says.

She’s built her career around that sentence.