San Diego Superior Court Judge Tilisha Martin Blends Social Work with Law

By S. Jolene Hui, LCSW, Director of Membership

While social work and law often go hand in hand, we don’t hear of a lot of social workers that are also attorneys. Judge Tilisha Martin from San Diego is one of them. She currently serves as a judge on the San Diego Superior Court.

After graduating with her MSW from San Diego State University in 1997, Martin worked for the County of San Diego Health and Human Services in the Indian Specialty Unit as a social worker for a couple of years. She had interned at that particular unit as part of her MSW program and stayed on as an employee.

Martin decided to pursue a career in law after her time at Health and Human Services. Of her couple of years as a social worker, Martin says they were “very rewarding.”

Martin says that she had actually wanted to go into law after completing her undergrad degree at UC Berkeley, but she received advice from Judge Napoleon A. Jones who encouraged her to pursue a career in social work first. She says that Jones, also an MSW, “shared that a career as a social worker would help me prepare for the practice of law and pursuing a graduate degree would help with the discipline needed to pursue a law degree.”

This advice ended up paying off.

“By the time I was accepted to law school at California Western School of Law, I had learned some life lessons from my career as a social worker and developed good study and work habits from graduate school and my employment,” says Martin. “This experience helped me to manage the rigors of law school.”

Always an advocate, while completing her juris doctorate Martin obtained her Masters in Justice Management from the University of Nevada, Reno. She did so “to improve my knowledge about the administration of justice related to management, the courts and consumers of the legal system.”

After completing her education she started her law career at a “non-profit as the community court coordinator for the first collaborative court in San Diego known as the Downtown Community Court.”

Martin then moved onto the county where she represented adults in the Public Defender’s Office. Next was the Juvenile Dependency Division of the Public Defender’s Office where she switched gears and represented minors. Finally, prior to being appointed to the Superior Court, she was hired as the Supervising Attorney of the Minor’s Counsel Office at Dependency Legal Group.

In addition to practicing law, she has returned to her alma maters and taught for both the MSW program at San Diego State and at the California Western School of Law.

Martin is a member of numerous professional associations and has received many awards and been recognized for her work as an attorney. Some of these honors include “Woman of Distinction” from the Southeast Women Incorporated of San Diego, “Most Valuable Board of Director” from California Western School of Law, “Distinguished President’s Award” and “Distinguished Community Service Award” from the Earl B. Gilliam Bar Association, and the list goes on. She notes that “the support from my family, peers, colleagues and community helped me to accomplish my goal of becoming a judicial officer.”

She does have some advice for those social workers thinking of going into law.

“My personal experience is that the skills learned as a social worker such as active listening, reality checking, respecting differences, assessing risk and safety factors are useful for interacting with clients… The combination of the skills learned from each of these disciplines is helpful when working with a diverse population.”

Also, Martin points out that the NASW Code of Ethics and the Model Rules of Professional Conduct share some of the same principles.

With already a rich career behind her, where will Martin go in the future?

“As a new judicial appointee, my plan for the immediate future is to focus on my new role as a judicial officer. A long-term future goal may involve pursing a PhD to do some research on legal issues of interest.”

Jolene Hui, LCSW, is NASW-CA’s Director of Membership and can be reached at jhui@naswca.org.