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Martin was a welder, before he was a lawyer. He started welding when he was 16, after he had dropped out of school for the first time. But after moving in with his grandmother in the United States, she told him that if he wanted to stay with her, he’d have to enroll in the community organization, ASPIRA, that helped the Hispanic neighborhood kids apply for college.
“Any college was making it big, where I came from in my hometown, Coamo, Puerto Rico. We didn’t have big universities, we had small trade schools,” says Martin. “You had to be very special to go to college. Community college would have been great, they would have been proud of me.”
Martin considered community college, but after doing better than he expected on his SATs, he toured Indiana University of Pennsylvania and fell in love with the quiet nature of the campus. He went to IUP for his undergrad, and then applied to law school at the University of Pittsburgh. He still recalls the surprise of finding out that he had been accepted — mid-welding job. He was working on building an airport in Grand Rapids, Michigan when he received the news.
“I decided to apply to Pitt. I only applied to Pitt — honestly I didn’t even think I would get in. At that time I had dropped out of college, probably, two times,” says Martin. “I was all the way up there, on a four-inch beam. My mom called me to tell me I got in, and I told my foremen, ‘Listen, I’m out! I’m out!’ And we had a celebration with the crew.”
So, Martin came to Pittsburgh in 2015, and has been here ever since. Before working with the PHDC and his own firm, he worked for bigger law firms, helping prepare immigrants for interviews with the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. He also handled cases regarding asylum, visas, and adjustment of status, which he says was more stressful than what he does now.
“Even coming from Puerto Rico, I still was sheltered from the reality of what immigrants from South America, Central America face,” says Martin. “I was like, ‘Wow!’”
He also worked as a contract lawyer for the Blackburn Center, a domestic violence shelter in Westmoreland County. There, he mainly worked Protection From Abuse cases, or PFAs.
“A lot of the cases, a lot of the stories I have, they are very rewarding because we were saving someone from an abuser in their house, or saving a little kid from being molested by a parent or a friend,” says Martin.
With that kind of work, and the family law he practices now, Martin sometimes finds it hard to balance the emotional aspect of the job, especially because he makes himself available to his clients most hours of the day — something he says is not typical of a lawyer.
“You know, you’re dealing with fifty other people’s problems, and then you’ve got your own life that you gotta try to hang on to. So you try to juggle all their problems at the same time, and then one little thing goes wrong in your life, and it throws chaos into everything else,” says Martin. “If you’re a corporate lawyer, no one’s calling you at 2 o’clock in the morning. If I get a call at 2 o’clock in the morning, something bad has happened, and I’m gonna give you the time of day.”
But Martin says he’s learning, in his fifth year of practicing law, that staying neutral is what’s best for the client, as it allows him to assess what the best solution for the case would be. He first realized he wanted to work in family law after that was the focus of his first internship, and he found that he was good at it.
“I always thought I was going into corporate — mergers and acquisitions,” says Martin. “And then whenever I was in different, bigger firm settings, I noticed that’s not truly what I wanted. I wanted to do family law, and I’ve been going at it for five years now.”
Martin has been practicing law since 2019, and he began his own firm in 2020 — right before COVID-19. He says he learned to start his own firm from watching YouTube videos, and it all started in the bedroom of his apartment, with one little laptop. He also says that running a business and being a lawyer are two different things — and they’re not for everybody.
“If you don’t understand cash flow, and you try to start a business, if you don’t get the clients, you’re not eating. And if you have employees, they get paid first,” says Martin. “You gotta stay hungry, you gotta stay grinding. And just because you had a good week or month, it doesn’t mean the next one is gonna be good. Not everyone has daddy money. And it’s fine if you do, but I didn’t. I’m working hard for my kids to have daddy money — my future kids.”
Martin began working with the PHDC about a year ago. He covers three main branches of family law: Custody, Support, Divorce. He can be contacted for anything related to family affairs, including but not limited to: Prenuptial and Postnuptial Agreements, CYS/CYF involvement, Protection from Abuse (PFA), Relocation, Adoption, Grandparents Rights, and Special Immigration Juvenile Status cases.
The firm is also expanding into criminal law on August 1. This expansion, which his partner will be handling, will make it so they can help the community with criminal matters as well — DUIs and traffic stops, for example.
When he first opened his practice, Martin had two to three cases on his docket. Now, his firm has handled over 300 cases, and he currently has a case load of about 50 cases, not counting the ones which are dormant. Plus, Martin says that, today, around 90% of his clients are Latino or Hispanic.
“I guess more people are starting to notice that I’m around. Word is getting around more, and business is picking up. This year, business has picked up to unimaginable levels,” says Martin. “As it is right now, I’m booked all the way to mid-August, and bringing in new clients, or even consultations, isn’t happening until the second or third week of July, because I don’t have the space or the time.”
Martin also recognizes that part of his success comes from the connections he’s built in Pittsburgh and in his community. He has been a member of the Pittsburgh Metropolitan Area Hispanic Chamber of Commerce since he was in law school, and says that this organization has been critical in helping connect him to resources. He recommends anyone who is Hispanic or Latino to try out the chamber, regardless of whether they’re a business-owner.
So, given the obstacles he’s faced, which does Martin like better — being a lawyer or a welder? He says that welding was simpler, as he only had to worry about pipes.
“The pipe doesn’t argue. At the end of the day, I put up my hood, I put my hood in the car, and I deal with the pipe tomorrow,” says Martin. “Being a lawyer, it’s trickier than welding. Some days I work 14 hours a day. Sometimes I get up at 6, and I don’t go to bed until 4 the next day, to get up at 6. Some days I just want simple.”
But despite the complexities that come with being a lawyer, and a business-owner, Martin acknowledges that it’s way more rewarding for him than welding ever was. In one case that stands out to him, a father with a muddy background lost custody of his daughter, but was still the most capable guardian.
“We went to trial and lost custody, and so he was only seeing her one week per month, and then we came back, and within six months we were able to get him to 75% custody of his little girl,” says Martin. “That one was a big win for us. He stuck with us knowing that we believed in him, so he just needed to believe in us, that we were going to get him there. And we got him there, and now that little girl is thriving in the community — she’s loving it.”
While Marcus doesn’t have any free time right now to weld, he can see himself opening up a little shop in the back of his house as a retirement plan. He says there are many avenues he could take if he ever moves on from law.
As he looks toward the future, Martin also reflects on his past — he returned to Puerto Rico last year for the first time since leaving in 2007.
“I could go on about my island, my people. I saw a lot of people who have done so good with their life. I wish I could help every single one,” says Martin. “I’m trying to work something out, some scholarship. If we could [help] one or two kids out a year, that would be great.”
See the original article here:
https://presentepgh.com/marcus-martin-from-the-puerto-rican-projects-to-his-own-law-firm/
