Hello, listeners. Welcome back to Behind the Bio, where two lawyers talk about turning points in unusual careers. Today I spoke with Beth Henderson, pro bono director for Microsoft. We talked about starting out as an immigration lawyer, going to Microsoft where she learned about immigration around the world, and Microsoft’s incredible pro bono work with immigrant children. Talking to Beth reminded me of the positive impact we can each have in our communities. Here is Behind the Bio. Enjoy.

Julie:

Hi, everybody. Welcome to Behind the Bio, our series that interviews a different lawyer each month to talk about turning points in their career. I’m Julie Owsik Ackerman, and today I’m talking to Beth Henderson, pro bono director at Microsoft. Hi, Beth.

Beth:

Hi, Julie. It’s great to see you.

Julie:

It’s great to see you too. So we overlapped at Temple Law, and I think we’ve had some conversations about immigration law, maybe around the time of graduation. But it’s been a minute since we’ve actually spoken, so it’s great to have you here. I’m really looking forward to hearing more about what you’ve been up to the past 10 years or so.

Beth:

Thank you. Yeah, it’s great to be here. It’s hard to believe it’s almost 20 years since I graduated from Temple Law.

Julie:

I know. I know. I know. I was with some of my friends over the weekend and it’s hard to believe.

Beth:

Yep.

Julie:

All right. So let’s see. For our listeners, we’re going to talk about three turning points as we do in Beth’s career about being a judicial law clerk in the immigration court in New York City, about then going to work with a global law firm that does immigration work. Then finally I’m moving over to Microsoft and what you’ve been up to there, so really looking forward to that. Let’s dive in if you’re ready.

Beth:

I’m ready.

Julie:

All right. So yeah. So last we spoke, I think it was right around the time actually you were graduating maybe, and you were thinking about immigration law. I was practicing immigration law. So it looks like you ended up doing this clerkship. So tell us what was your role at the immigration court? What was that like?

Beth:

Yeah, so I had actually started working for the Philadelphia Immigration Court while I was still in law school, and I knew that I wanted to be an immigration attorney. That was the whole reason I went to law school in the first place. So I was really focused on, “How do I get my career started in this space?” One of the opportunities that came to light during my job search as I was getting close to graduation was applying for a judicial law clerk position through the U.S. Attorney General’s Honors Program. So I figured, “Well, I’ve been clerking as a law student at the Philly Immigration Court, I have a sense of what this role would entail. I may as well apply for one of these clerkships through the honors program.” So I threw my name in the hat. I knew from the outset it was a really competitive process, and I got through the initial round of interviews and the review process. You can prioritize areas where you would like to clerk, but there’s no guarantee that they can match you with a location that’s in line with your preference.” So initially they came back and they said, “Well, we have a spot for you at the immigration court in Oakdale, Louisiana.”

Julie:

Oh.

Beth:

I thought, “Huh, well, that’s really far from where I currently live.” I had gotten married my final year of law school, and so my husband was pursuing a master’s degree at Drexel University, so it wasn’t going to be feasible for us to just uproot from Philly and move to Oakdale so that I could do this clerkship. But I thought, “Well, this really seems like it might be a great opportunity.” Oakdale at the time, and I’m not sure if it still is, was a pretty large detention facility. So I thought, “Well, I’ll get really great exposure to removal work for detained individuals.” So I gave it a lot of thought, but then I was like, “It’s just not going to work with my personal situation.” So I said, “Thank you, but no. If something else comes up, please let me know.” So getting even closer to graduation from law school, I then got a phone call one day to say a spot opened up for the New York City Immigration Court, that one of the individuals they initially had offered the position to backed out, withdrew, so, “If you’re interested.”

I thought, “Well, New York is a lot closer to Philly, I can make that work.” At the time, New York City was the largest immigration court in the U.S. So I thought, “Well, I’ll still get really great exposure to a diverse array of cases through the New York City Immigration Court,” and so I accepted that offer. So the way the clerkships worked then, and I’m assuming it’s still the case now, is it’s a one-year position. You work closely with the immigration judges at the court. Because it’s so high volume in our U.S. Immigration Court system, a lot of the decisions the judges render are orally, but then they sometimes reserve written decisions for more complicated matters, either because a complicated fact pattern and complicated legal issue. So those are the cases that we’ll often get assigned to the law clerks as the ones that the judges reserve for a written decision.

So that’s what I worked on for the year that I was with the New York City Immigration Court was writing decisions on behalf of the judges, learning a lot about asylum, in particular, defensive asylum applications that would get submitted before the New York City immigration judges and really developing stronger legal writing and research skills through that opportunity. However, because of my personal situation with my husband still being a student at Drexel, I was going back and forth a lot between Philadelphia and New York because I had just graduated from law school and was a judicial law clerk and not at some big fancy law firm, I didn’t have the ability to afford the Acela Amtrak, so I was taking-…

Julie:

Megabus?

Beth:

I was taking the bus from Chinatown, from Philly Chinatown to New York Chinatown, which is within walking distance of the New York City Immigration Court, so it worked out. But when I look back, I think to myself, “Wow, that was a lot of just hustling back and forth, but I’m glad I did it,” because the experience that I gained through that was really well worth it and then helped me, I think, become a much stronger advocate for when I transitioned to private practice after I completed my one-year clerkship.

Julie:

You were going back and forth every day?

Beth:

Initially, I was, and then it became untenable for me, and so I ended up making arrangements with my friend. Her mom has an apartment in New York City, and so I rented a room from her during the week and then would go back to Philadelphia on the weekends. It was nice at the time because we had a compressed work schedule at the New York City Immigration Court, so I would have every other Friday off, and so that also helped make things more manageable as well.

Julie:

I also clerked at the Philadelphia Immigration Court, and I believe when I was there there were four judges. At that time, and this is around the same time, do you remember about how many judges were at the New York Court? I’m just curious about the size difference.

Beth:

It was much larger. Probably there were at least 20, maybe more than that.

Julie:

Wow.

Beth:

It wasn’t just me. That was also because of the size of the court, they hired multiple law clerks. There was a senior law clerk who had already done one full year as a judicial law clerk and then stayed on for a second year to then help manage the caseload and the incoming judicial law clerks. So I think there were four of us incoming as recent law school graduates and then one supervising clerk above us. So there were five of us to help support probably about 20 judges, I’d say.

Julie:

Gotcha. Yeah. Wow, that’s a big court.

Beth:

Yeah.

Julie:

Wow. That’s cool. So yeah, so I hear you saying that the experience really helped you once you became an advocate. For me, because I had done advocacy at the immigration court before and during law school. Then getting to be behind the scenes, I don’t know if I can quite put my finger on why I think it really humanized everybody who worked at the court in a way. I got to know all the secretaries and just the judges, and I think it just helped me. Since I’ve clerked in the Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas too and similar thing, like, “Oh yeah, this is a system full of humans,” especially immigration system can be very dehumanizing, right?

Beth:

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Julie:

So I don’t know. For me, that was part of what was helpful about the experience.

Beth:

Yeah, and I think it put things in perspective because I don’t think I really realize the sheer volume of the court’s caseload until you are behind the scenes. I think it just helps provide that perspective in that context because when you are in private practice sometimes going before the court being like, “Why does everything feel so rushed or frenzied?” It’s because they have this massive caseload and these expectations around timelines in which to process cases. So there’s a lot of constraints that the court is dealing with in a process that’s already can be very challenging because of what you’re dealing with. It can be a life and matter of death for the individual who is pursuing an asylum claim, for example.

Julie:

Right. Right, and language differences and cultural differences, and it is a very challenging situation for everybody involved.

Beth:

Yeah.

Julie:

I like that word, though, context. That’s a good way of putting it.

Beth:

Yeah.

Julie:

Okay, so you did that and then your next turning point is going to work at Fragomen. I know a bit about Fragomen, but I wonder if you would tell the audience about what Fragomen is and then your experience there.

Beth:

Yeah, so I actually between the time of finishing my clerkship and then going to Fragomen, I worked for a boutique law firm in Philadelphia, which at the time was called Steel, Rudnick & Ruben. The firm no longer exists under that name, but at the time, it was one of the well-known boutique law firms in Philly helping with individual immigration matters. So I ended up in that position after basically sending my resume to every single immigration law practice in Philadelphia, and they were one of the few to take a chance on this person ’cause I didn’t have an in through somebody I knew or some other way. I just cold-called essentially all these immigration law practices and ended up with Steel, Rudnick & Ruben. It was a great experience because I got to do a wide array of immigration cases, both family-based removal work, and then it was my first exposure to employment-based immigration as well.

It was the employment-based immigration experience that I developed that made me eligible for even consideration for a job with Fragomen because Fragomen’s practice is primarily focused on employment-based and particular high-volume employment-based immigration law for companies of all sizes. So I had my own caseload when I was at Steel, Rudnick & Ruben. I was doing a wide variety of cases, as I mentioned, when I got a call one day from a recruiter in Philadelphia who said, “There’s this law firm. They’re looking for someone with employment-based immigration experience, are you interested in applying?” I thought, “Sure, why not?” At the time, Steel, Rudnick & Ruben was undergoing some structural changes. Some of the partners I had been working for were leaving. It was definitely a time of transition, so it seemed like the right time to see what else might be out there.

So I applied for the job with Fragomen. I remember at the time their Philadelphia office was in One Liberty. It was a high floor, you could see the entire city. I remember going into the interview, a very formal office. I’m like, “Oh, this is the big leagues now.” So at the time, they were looking for somebody who could assist them with doing PERM cases in particular, which for listeners who aren’t familiar, it’s oftentimes the first step. It’s testing the labor market in the employment-based immigration process. So I didn’t have a ton of PERM experience at the time, and I was very transparent during the interview process. I said, “I’ve been doing a lot of H-1Bs, L-1s, national interest waivers, but I haven’t done a ton of PERM work.”

They were like, “You know what? It’s okay. We just want somebody who has general familiarity with immigration law and some of these employment-based concepts.” So they brought me on, they hired me, and then it was hit the ground running because they had developed this huge backlog of PERM matters for one of their largest clients. It was jumping right in and learning as I was going along the way and worked a lot of long hours, a lot of long nights just trying to get up to speed and then working through these backlogs of cases. But again, it’s an experience, I’m glad I did it because it definitely trained me up in an area of the law that I hadn’t had prior exposure to. I think then it also set me up for the next step, which is when I ended up at Microsoft.

Julie:

Okay. I want to hear about Microsoft. Before we get there, though, so Fragomen, about how many lawyers do you think worked there or how many offices, just to give us an idea of what kind of law firm we’re talking about.

Beth:

That’s a really good question. I know they continue to grow and they definitely are worldwide now. There’s probably hundreds of offices I would say now worldwide. Then in terms of lawyers, I don’t know. I would probably think anywhere from 200 to 300 I would think, maybe more.

Julie:

It’s all immigration law, right?

Beth:

It’s all immigration law.

Julie:

Yeah.

Beth:

Yep. Yep.

Julie:

In my mind, I just think of it as the biggest immigration law firm in the world. Maybe it’s not, but that’s how I see it.

Beth:

It’s probably one of them for sure.

Julie:

Yeah. Wow. Okay. You were mostly doing the PERM-

Beth:

Mm-hmm.

Julie:

… stuff when you were there? Okay.

Beth:

When I was there, yeah. There would be other matters that would come in, but the bulk of my work was really assisting with the PERM process for their client, their largest client.

Julie:

Gotcha. Okay. So yeah, then tell us how you came to Microsoft and what you were doing when you first got there.

Beth:

Yeah. So similar to my path to get to Fragomen, I was working at the office one day at Fragomen and got a phone call from a Microsoft recruiter who said, “Hey, I came across your information on LinkedIn. Microsoft is hiring. They have an opening on both their U.S. immigration team and an opening on their global immigration team. Would you be interested in applying?” Similar to the scenario that I was in when I moved to Fragomen. Fragomen at the time was in the process of moving some of their work from their Philadelphia office to their New York office. So the messaging was like, “It’s a matter of time before we close our Philadelphia office.” So I knew I was going to have to be making a transition to where my geographic location for work if I stayed with Fragomen or if I pursued this position with Microsoft.

So I thought, “Well, I may as well see where this goes.” So I applied for both positions with Microsoft. I got through the initial rounds of the phone screening and phone interviews. So they flew me out to Redmond, Washington, which is where their corporate headquarters are located. Then I had a whole day of in-person interviews with both the U.S. immigration team and then the global immigration team. So I returned to Philadelphia after that and then got the return call from the recruiter that was essentially like, “You have offers for both teams. That’s essentially up to you.” I thought, “I’ve been doing U.S. immigration law for a few years now. It’d be really interesting to start to learn the global side.” So that’s what I went for.

I said, “I’d love to accept the position with the global immigration team.” So the focus of my work was ensuring immigration compliance for the company in countries other than the United States. My geographic focus initially was countries in the Middle East, Africa and Latin America. So I had a lot to learn because I had no prior experience in terms of the immigration law framework in countries like Brazil where we would send a large number of employees for a variety of business reasons. But it was fascinating work. It allowed me to travel quite a bit. I was able to travel to UAE, our offices in Dubai. I traveled to Saudi Arabia. I traveled to Brazil. I traveled to Nigeria. So it was a great experience, and I’m glad that I pursued that path.

One of the conditions for me, though, for taking the role was to be able to bring my pro bono cases with me from Philadelphia because I had several that I had been working on for many years. They were really complicated, gnarly cases, and I was too afraid of transferring them to anyone else just because I had developed just strong relationships with the clients and their families. I didn’t want to jeopardize all the work that we had put into their cases by moving it to somebody else. So Microsoft knew from the outset that pro bono was really important to me. So I started getting involved with other pro bono initiatives when I came out here and then started chairing the company’s pro bono committee in addition to doing my full-time global immigration role.

Julie:

So Microsoft, is it mostly U.S. workers they’re sending to these other countries or people could be from anywhere?

Beth:

It could be from anywhere really. It’s a combination of both business travel and making sure we’re complying with business travel requirements for shorter-term travel, but also the need and coordination with our global mobility program to send people on assignment for longer periods of time to a given country. The individual could really be from anywhere in the world for those assignments.

Julie:

So then, yeah, figuring out, “Okay, in Brazil this is what we have to do to get permission for somebody to be here for…

Beth:

To get work authorization, we want them on this two-year assignment. What are our options for ensuring immigration compliance and then bringing in tax? I don’t think I fully appreciated how many stakeholders are involved when you’re trying to get somebody from country A to country B and all the things that come with that.

Julie:

Yeah. Wow. Yeah, I could see how that could be really interesting, but there’s a lot to learn. Yeah, I just personally would be curious how similar the different systems are, what’s similar and what’s different between-

Beth:

Yes.

Julie:

… immigration.

Beth:

Yeah, I definitely developed a strong interest in the comparative immigration piece. We would do a little bit of that sometimes looking at options based on this scenario and looking at these different countries, which one has a framework that’s going to be a better fit for business needs? It’s pretty fascinating.

Julie:

Wow. How many immigration lawyers were at Microsoft at that time?

Beth:

So on the U.S. immigration side, and it continues to grow. Well, currently there’s probably about 10 attorneys, but then there’s also business professionals, immigration specialists, paralegals that support the function because Microsoft, a lot of tech companies has a very large visa-dependent employee population. We attract talent from around the world to work in the U.S. so the U.S. immigration team is a very high-volume practice and they’re really good at what they do. Then on the global side, when I joined, I think I was one of five attorneys, and like I said, we had geographic focuses. But a lot of that work now, they created a larger team called the Global Employment & Migration Team. So it’s a combination of attorneys and other professionals who are focused on providing guidance and advice related to both global employment matters and immigration matters.

Julie:

Wow. Wow. That’s so interesting to me, just having never been in-house in an immigration role, it’s just, it’s very interesting.

Beth:

Yeah.

Julie:

All right, so now you’ve been at Microsoft for a while, and then tell us what happened with your next step as far as the pro bono program.

Beth:

Yeah, so I had been, as I mentioned, chairing our pro bono committee in addition to doing my global immigration role for several years. My practice group, the larger practice group I was part of at the time was called HR Legal, so it was the immigration practice, the employment law practice from Microsoft all under this HR Legal framework. The head of HR Legal at the time, her name was Dev Stahlkopf. She was promoted to general counsel for Microsoft, and she wanted to make a deeper investment in pro bono as part of her platform as general counsel and asked if I wanted to come over and lead pro bono full-time as part of her office of general counsel. So I thought, “Yeah, this is an amazing opportunity to get to build out our pro bono program on a full-time basis.” So I excitedly accepted that offer to do so. Dev is no longer at Microsoft. She is now chief legal officer at Cisco, but fortunately, we still have a full-time pro bono director position. My program now sits under our chief legal officer. His name is Hossein Nowbar. So it’s been great because I’ve been able in the last several years to continue to build and mature our program. I now have two full-time pro bono program managers that work closely with me, and we’ve really been able to expand the scope of our program since the time that I started in the full-time position.

Julie:

What are some of the projects that you’re working on that you’re most proud of or most excited about?

Beth:

Yeah. So immigration and I think that was part of the reason people saw me as a good fit for just the pro bono program at Microsoft because of my immigration background and my commitment to immigration pro bono work. Microsoft is a co-founder of Kids in Need of Defense or KIND for short. KIND provides free legal representation to unaccompanied children who are placed in U.S. immigration proceedings. The president of Microsoft and the head of our legal department Brad Smith is chair of KIND’s board. I’m now on the board of KIND as well, and so it’s an organization that is basically in our DNA. It’s very near and dear to us, and so it continues to be our signature pro bono partner. So we have lots of attorneys and other professionals who take on kind matters, who serve as interpreters. We’ll also do coat drives in the winter, school drives. So we have just a lot of general engagement with KIND and a deep partnership. We also host monthly DACA clinics. When the program first came to effect in 2012, we would host them monthly at Microsoft’s campus in person.

When the pandemic hit, of course, we had to shift to a virtual format. So I’m proud that we’ve continued with that work and continued to serve dreamers in the community who are eligible to extend their DACA status. I think time is of the essence because feels like DACA is constantly under threat, and so it’s important to us to continue to do the work to help as many people as possible why we still have the program in existence. Beyond the immigration-related work, like I mentioned, when I stepped into the full-time role, we were able to start to expand into other areas and really identify areas of legal need in our community. As I mentioned earlier, Microsoft’s corporate headquarters is based in Redmond, Washington, and so it’s really important that I think we’re prioritizing the needs of the community where we are based and give back to the community. Two examples of this are our virtual help clinic that we launched in partnership with one of our strategic partner law firms, Perkins Coie.

When the pandemic first started, there was a significant rise in incidents of domestic violence. People were, unfortunately, quarantined at home with their abusers and felt like there was no recourse. So the purpose of this clinic was to help domestic violence survivors get access to free and legal services to pursue a domestic violence protection order through a virtual format. So we did a ton of work just to create that infrastructure and get that off the ground and continue to offer those services and are really committed to that work. We also launched what we call our virtual records clinic to help individuals who are eligible to vacate convictions from their records in Washington State. We know that convictions can be barriers to employment, housing, educational opportunities, and so through this clinic, we help people get those off their records, remove those barriers. I think this work is particularly important in Washington State because we don’t have a unified court system here, unlike Pennsylvania. So that means that every jurisdiction can do things a little bit differently.

Julie:

Oh, wow.

Beth:

So it can make it really difficult if you’re an individual who doesn’t have access to legal help to try to navigate that, like, “Well, I was convicted in this county, how do I figure out, there’s not a one-size-fits-all in this state?” So we’re really proud of the work that we’re doing to build out that infrastructure to help people who might otherwise feel like it’s too overwhelming to try to navigate all of this on my own.

Julie:

It’s funny. That reminds me of your global integration work, right?

Beth:

Yes, exactly. It’s similar to, I’m like, “All right, let’s get a spreadsheet. How does this place do it this way? What does this place do?” Yep.

Julie:

Right. Yeah.

Beth:

Yep.

Julie:

Wow, that’s interesting.

Beth:

Yep.

Julie:

Oh, my gosh. Well, it has been really interesting hearing what you’ve been up to. I would like to ask a couple little just fun questions.

Beth:

Sure.

Julie:

Where is your favorite place to relax?

Beth:

Wow. Well, even though I live in Washington State primarily, my children and I love going to Ocean City, New Jersey every summer, and so-

Julie:

Get out of here. Really?

Beth:

I’m not kidding. Yes, because the coastline out here is beautiful, but you can’t swim in the water. It’s too cold. It’s too rocky even in August here, and it’s nothing like the Jersey Shore. So I don’t know how relaxing it is for me ’cause it’s usually taking my kids to the boardwalk and stuff, but there are these lovely moments where it’s like we’re set up on the beach, we’re by the lifeguards. My kids are playing on the beach, and I can just take a minute for myself.

Julie:

That’s pretty great.

Beth:

So that is a place that’s very special to us.

Julie:

Do you rent in the same area every year or what’s that-

Beth:

Yes. My cousin has a duplex. It’s not fancy. My brother, when she first bought it, actually helped her renovate it. It’s still got the very 1920s vibe to it, but we love it. It’s within walking distance to the beach and it’s great.

Julie:

That’s awesome. My parents have a little modest place in Ocean City too, so we go there quite a bit. So maybe we could do a play date sometime.

Beth:

Yeah, exactly.

Julie:

Yeah.

Beth:

That would be great.

Julie:

Are you a dog or cat person or neither?

Beth:

I am a dog person. When I lived in Philadelphia, I adopted my first dog from the Pennsylvania SPCA. She was a pit bull rescue named Remy. She was very special to me, and when I got the job from Microsoft, they flew her out here. So she passed away, unfortunately, when I was pregnant with my son, who, my son will be seven in January. But we since have adopted another pit bull rescue. His name is Loomis or Musis, as my daughter calls him, from out here. He’s this big 70-pound, blue nose pit bull, but could not be any sweeter, tries to get on everybody’s laps. So I’m definitely, definitely a dog person, and in particular, I have a soft spot for the pitties.

Julie:

Yeah. Oh, I know. Someone in my family has the sweetest dog I’ve ever met, and she’s a pit bull. I just adore her, so yeah, I hear you.

Beth:

Yeah, pretty special. Yeah.

Julie:

Yeah. Well, thank you so much for taking this time with me and with our listeners. If people want to find out some more about you or get in touch with you, how can they do that?

Beth:

Yeah, please find me on LinkedIn. I think we’ll make that available, my LinkedIn profile in the follow-up notes for this. But yeah, please reach out, be like I’m active on LinkedIn, check messages, and yeah, please feel free to reach out.

Julie:

Listeners, it’s been a pleasure. We’ll be back next month with another interesting lawyer. I hope you’ll join us then. Thank you.

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