Time Management Strategies To Be Proactive In Your Advocacy With Liz Krupa

As an actively serving board member for the Special Olympics Colorado and Commission Chair for the Independent Ethics Commission, Liz Krupa has a lot on her plate. But with proper time management and prioritization, she gets it all done and more! Liz doesn’t just have a great work ethic, but her moral ethics as a lawyer is one that should be admired. Her advocacy for – bleeds through all the work she does. In this episode, Liz talks us through her many initiatives to drive positive change in the community and the justice system. She explains the importance of having policies to empower representation and hold the legal system to a higher standard. Listen in to learn more as she chats with host Stephen Jaye. --- Listen to the podcast here: Time Management Strategies To Be Proactive In Your Advocacy With Liz Krupa In our past culture or the culture that we’re sunsetting, we’d often get the phrase that I’ve previously expressed that I hate, “What do you do?” One of the reasons I tend to hate it is because it encourages us to define ourselves pretty simply by our job titles. Most people are quite a bit more complicated than what you can get in a job title, a few bullet points or something like that, even more complicated than what you’d see in a resume. Oftentimes, people take on a lot of different types of pursuits but these pursuits are part of the same whole personal brand. Something that I’ve been hearing about quite a bit more is that we all have a personal brand that connects a lot of the things we do. My guest, Liz Krupa, encapsulates this idea of having a personal brand that manifests in a number of different pursuits pretty much better than almost anyone else that I’ve encountered so far. Liz, I would like to welcome you to the program and quickly talk to you about all the pursuits that you are involved in toward the same goal of protecting the people, the unprotected, as well as the ethics in the legal profession. I’m happy to be here. Thank you so much. First of all, Liz, it’s an honor to have you on the program. Tell us about all these different endeavors because you’re in the trial advocacy, the Ethics Commission, Special Olympics. They’re all different places that you’ve got yourself involved with. Any time I have felt pushed down or doors shut or told no or 'that's cute little girl maybe you should try to do this instead', it has just made me more determined to get through that door, more determined to succeed. Share on X By training and education, I’m a lawyer. I do mostly criminal defense but I also do some ethics and internal investigation type of work, white-collar work. I serve on several boards and commissions. Two of the boards that I serve are NITA, the National Institute for Trial Advocacy, which is a nationwide advocacy group that tries to help lawyers be better advocates and the Colorado Special Olympics, which is part of the larger National and International Special Olympics, which works with getting developmentally disabled people more recognition through sports and school, giving them the correct access to medical care and the importance of keeping your physical health up as well. Those are two of the nonprofit boards that I serve. I am also the Chair of the Commission on Judicial Discipline for the State of Colorado, which is the only entity that looks at any rules of conduct for judges, whether those were violated, makes recommendations to the Supreme Court as far as discipline. I’m also the chair of the Independent Ethics Commission, which similarly looks at any violation of the rules of ethics for elected officials. Numerous of those types of endeavors. I also mentor through law school. Yes We Can, which is a mentoring program that tries to bring interested young people of color through college into the LSAT program through law school and help them pass the bar. We stay with them through their first several years and hope they stay and mentor as well. The first question I need to ask you given all these is how busy are you? Do you have time for yourself, rest, laugh, play, all that stuff? Time Management : There's an over-representation of people of color in our jails and prisons that they're overpopulated with people with mental health issues, homelessness, socio-economic issues, and things like that. It's hard to say there's social justice in our criminal justice. Yes, time management is something that, luckily, I was blessed with. I take time for myself to connect with people. When I have a downtime, I read a book or go to bed early. I manage my time efficiently. On the grounds of time management, I suspect that a lot of my audience may struggle with that. I’ve struggled with that in the past. Since you’re blessed with good time management, it allows you to take on so many different initiatives. What do you think is the biggest mistakes that a lot of people you observe make or the one you observe most frequently, especially maybe some of these potential young lawyers that you’re trying to get through the LSATs? Honestly, for me, it’s more of task orientation. I try to make a list of at least weeks to months in advance of what I need and schedule deadlines that are somewhat fake deadlines, but they’re important deadlines for me so that I have drafts or tasks that I’ve completed at least from my professional job, lawyering. As far as the commissions and boards, that’s also something that is task-oriented. I try to calendar it. I love and live by my calendar. One of the rules of thumb for lawyers is you build six hours a day. That’s in most firms. They require six hours. It seems like it’s hard to get to those six hours. The pandemic helped with getting those six hours done. It’s trying to make a list of those tasks. With that being said, even if you get through 2 of the 6 that you had for the day, you still have to find some success in that. It’s daunting sometimes when some tasks keep reoccurring on your calendar daily. You have to move it up and get it done earlier. An early start is always good as well. I know that feeling of having the same task 4 or 5 days in a row and it comes on to the next week. I tend to do my weekly planning on Sundays. I was sitting right here thinking how important it is to get this test done and I made very little progress on it. That happens. You have to extend yourself some grace too. Pat yourself on the back for what you did get done. How important is prioritization? It’s like you have 6 tasks knowing which one’s the top priority or which 2 or 3 need to get done versus nice to have or something like that. That’s critical and personal tasks too that have to fit in there. My mom used to have a day every week that she would do the bills, go through her checkbook and make sure that everything was accurate. I thought, “That’s funny. I wonder how many people have a day each week that they balance their checkbook, make sure everything’s up to date and paid.” She was a good inspiration for me in that sense but prioritization personally, as well as professionally, it’s where you have to look at things. Back to your individual story. When did you first decide you wanted to become a lawyer? Was the ethics of the legal profession always on your mind or is that something that came about later in your life? I wanted to be a lawyer from about the age of seven. My father was a Denver sheriff and worked in the courthouse. He would take me to the courthouse sometimes. I would go into the initial advisement courtroom, sit there and watch advisements happen. The judge was cute. It was a judge who was there for years. At that time, it was Espinosa. He says, “Ms. Espinosa, what do you think? Should I keep him in jail or let him go?” For every single one, I was like, “Let him go, judge.” Early on, I knew I wanted to be a lawyer. What type of lawyer changed from time to time but my dedication to having that degree help and serve some public good has always been there. You have to extend yourself some grace and pat yourself on the back for what you did get done.Share on X It’s interesting that you eventually became a defense attorney, given that you were saying, “Let him go.” Is that something that you always felt about our justice system? Do you feel like we over punish people in general or it’s a fair initiative and that the people on defense need to be well represented in the court of law? It’s twofold. I do think that people need effective representation in criminal defense, as in divorces or any other field. They’re required to have effective assistance of counsel. How I feel about the justice system is there’s an over-representation of people of color in our jails and prisons. They’re overpopulated for people with mental health, homelessness and socioeconomic issues, things like that. I understand that there are people that are a danger to society and there is a need or desire to lock them up, as people say but a lot of our prisons are also private prisons. They’re big money. It’s a little harder for me to say that there’s social justice in our criminal justice but it’s getting better. The pendulum always swings. You used to be able to beat your wife. Now, you can’t. A woman can call and say that she was abused by a husband, spouse, boyfriend or date. There doesn’t have to be any physical evidence. He’s arrested and kept in jail for several days before he’s allowed even to be released only on an accusation or word. Those pendulums do swing and not always the right way but they seem to start coming back eventually. It’s interesting from the standpoint of someone that would like to see that pendulum. If I had my way, I would take the pendulum and stop it or rip it off of its axis so it stops swinging and get to this place where we have this consistent idea of what the proceedings should be regardless of who someone is. Is there any hope,...