With its 2025 Alum of the Year Award, NYU Law’s OUTLaw has recognized the achievements of Rachel Kafele ’10, co-founder and director of programs and advocacy at Oasis Legal Services, a nonprofit providing legal services to LGBTQ+ immigrants. OUTLaw, the student group that brings together self-identifying LGBTQ students, alumni, faculty, and staff, and their allies, conferred the award at its annual alumni reception on February 18.
Accepting the award, Kafele spoke about the mission she pursues in her work. “For so many of our clients, the first time they ever feel comfortable saying that they are part of the LGBTQ community is in our office during their first appointment with us,” she said. “By helping our clients apply for immigration status, a work permit, a Social Security number, to reunite with their family members, and having social workers on staff who can connect them to medical and mental health care, benefits, and other wraparound services, we get to witness powerful transformations.”
Kafele described the journey that led her to start Oasis. In her first job after law school, as a public defender in Miami, Kafele recalled, she was handed a large stack of juvenile cases on her first day in court and was told she had an hour to prepare before the trials started. “I will never forget the feeling of feeling completely unprepared, and that I was going to let my clients down,” she said. At the time, she explained, there was no discussion of the vicarious trauma that she and her colleagues experienced while interacting with traumatized clients: “I didn’t have the language or understanding to articulate what was happening to me emotionally, and even if I had, I would have been scared to talk about it because I didn’t want to seem weak or that I couldn’t handle the pressure.” In starting Oasis, she and her co-founders have sought to prevent workplace burnout by inviting employees to discuss vicarious trauma and its effects on themselves, their work, and their families.
Watch the video of the event:
Kafele credited NYU Law professors Anthony Amsterdam and Anthony Thompson, along with the Law School’s 1L Lawyering Program, for teaching her some foundational lessons: “How not to just zealously represent clients, but also to empower the clients and communities that I work with,” she explained. “How storytelling has a huge place in the work we do as lawyers, and [how] using our clients’ words, experiences, and getting to know who they are and where they come from is the first step in mounting a strong case.”
According to Kafele, inquiries from prospective clients have tripled since the November 2024 election. “It’s us lawyers who are helping to fight back against this administration's attacks on the law, our Constitution, and our shared values…. Let’s lean into the privilege we have as law students and lawyers to understand how to use the law to protect the people, communities, and ideas that we care deeply about,” she said. “This is truly the moment we can make a difference, and I’m very grateful for everyone in this room who is doing just that.”
Posted March 21, 2025