People of EarnIn: Swati Polce

She fell in love with law her sophomore year of undergraduate school. Since then, she’s dedicated her life to giving back to her community. Here’s her story:

“It is one of the most challenging yet rewarding jobs I've ever had in my life. I work for New York City as an agency attorney dealing with abuse and neglect proceedings involving children. You think it's fiction. You read about it in stories; you see it in TV shows like Criminal Minds and things like that, but it's real. It happens, unfortunately, more often than you like to think. The most rewarding part of my job is helping some of these children, who are facing the worst situation in life, find a loving and caring family. I've been with the agency for a little over a year and in my year I've had three kids get adopted so that makes it amazing.

I'm a very religious person, very big in my faith. I practice Hinduism, so part of my cultural upbringing is to give back. We're always raised to give back, it's kind of in our blood. That’s why my goal is to one day have my own private practice that does a lot of nonprofit work and individual representation for people who can't afford attorneys.

The experience that kind of sent me on this path, specifically law school and wanting to give back to the legal profession was about six weeks before I submitted my applications. I was in India at my guru’s religious school in Southern India. We were in one of our meditations and I was asking him to help me figure out if law school was the right decision, whether this was where I was meant to be, or if was I going down the wrong path, and during my meditation, he came to me and said, “Apply to law school. It's the right path.” I came back to New York and submitted my applications. Fourteen days later, I had four acceptances in my inbox.

My first year of law school was when I discovered EarnIn. Because as a law student, you’re either living off loans or whatever little money you can make. You sign contracts stating that you won't exceed a certain number of hours working because they want you to focus on your degree since your grades are everything in the beginning.

I love my job. I love the comradery, the support, and the fact that everyone there wants to see each other succeed. We're all team players. It's a lot of things that I didn't have in my other roles while I was in law school that just makes this one of the best jobs ever.”

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