As an attorney one for the Judiciary of Guam, Francesca Camacho (Scalia Class, 2024) hopes to someday be a trial prosecutor, advocating for the interests of justice and the people of Guam – something she’s been wanting to do since before law school.
“When the time is right, I will be ready to jump in and advocate for the people,” she said. “I really want to serve my community in that way, because now, working at the court and seeing both sides, and seeing how much of an influx of cases that we get every day, it makes me want to be the one advocating for those who need it.”
While at Cooley Law School, Camacho, a Guam native, returned home to be a judicial intern at the Judiciary of Guam (Superior Court). During her last semester, she was granted an externship there, which led to a full-time position as a senior law clerk before being promoted to attorney one after passing the bar exam.
“It was always my plan to return home after law school,” Camacho said. “I want to do my part here and help out as much as I can.”
As attorney one with the Judiciary of Guam, Camacho works closely with her assigned judge, drafting their decisions and orders in all cases – which include criminal, civil, and probate.
“When I'm not in court, I'm writing,” she said. “I draft jury instructions and oversee other court proceedings, like motion hearings and status hearings.”
Camacho explained that because the island of Guam is quite small – no larger than 30 miles long and nine miles wide – sometimes conflict of interest arises.
“That is one of the challenges I currently face today and I’ve have been dealing with it since I started working here,” Camacho said. “In Guam, a lot of people know each other and run into each other. For the most part, I feel like familial relations or friendship relationships don’t really pose a conflict, but in certain cases they do and I don’t want to risk that.”
Staying neutral when it comes to drafting court decisions and seeing both sides of the argument is also a challenging aspect in her attorney role for the Judiciary of Guam. It’s about being open minded and not letting her pre-conceived notions on an issue influence her overall process of drafting a decision, Camacho said.
“I try to be as neutral as I can, but also find why one side has a more convincing or a more legal and credible argument versus the other,” she said.
It wasn’t until after she attended the University of California Irvine, earning her undergraduate major in Criminology, Law & Society (CLS) that Camacho answered the call to be an attorney. She found out about Cooley Law School through many Michigan connections in her homeland.
During her first year at Cooley, Camacho recalls having conversations with her professors about leadership opportunities and bringing back some of the student organizations that had dissipated during Covid.
At that time, only first-year students and instructors were back on campus wearing masks, and everyone else was online. But Camacho worked with the law school’s professors to rebuild Mock Trial and Criminal Law Society student organizations.
“It was like a ghost town walking through campus,” she said. “But then, you see all the poster boards of the organizations that used to be there before they had shut down in 2020. It was so unfortunate. I really wanted to help rebuild that side of Cooley and bring back the organizations.”
Since earning her law degree, the former dean’s fellow continues to carry with her a favorite expression from Professor Martha Moore: “just let the information marinade.”
When Camacho is on information overload, she recalls this particular phrase from her Cooley days to help her get through her caseload.
“It really stuck with me and my friends – we even still say it to this day,” said Camacho. “It has taught me to sit back – write everything down and take some time to try and understand the information given to me for myself. It taught me to just let it sink in and just go at your own pace.
“I am so glad that I had Cooley to kick start me into this career because they really did help a lot, especially with hands-on learning,” she added. “This is mainly where my whole career started.”
This article also appears in the Summer 2025 issue of Benchmark Magazine.