Hard Work Bears Results
Rita Soka is sworn in by Justice Brian Zahra.
By Cal Abbo
Rita Soka – daughter to Samir and Najat Elias, an immigrant, wife, mother, transfusion medicine technologist, and health care validation consultant has added yet another item to her resume. As of last year, she graduated from Detroit Mercy School of Law (UDM) and became a barred attorney – and as of as last month, she partnered up with her former professor at Detroit Mercy School of Law and formed a new law firm, Taylor Soka, PLLC. Rita’s story tells of a special kind of perseverance. She has lived many trials in her lifetime and expects to see many more in her newfound career. It started in the early ‘80s, when she was born in Baghdad.
“I was born during the Persian-Iraq war,” Rita said, reminiscing about her early childhood and the strife in her home country at the time. After this war ended, Iraq faced another war – the United States/Iraq war – and this brought much more imminent danger to her hometown of Baghdad.
“I missed a lot of elementary school during the war,” she said. “We would escape and go to Karamlesh for a few months at a time. That happened twice.”
Rita and her extended family, which numbered around 25 people, would pile into her aunt’s small village house in Karamlesh when Baghdad became too dangerous. “I think they had two bedrooms,” she said. They slept wherever there was floor space available.
Despite this hardship, Rita remembers her upbringing and education fondly, and attributes much of her work ethic, discipline, and love for education to her Catholic school, Al-Makasib Elementary and Middle School and Digla High School for girls.
Rita came to the United States at a young age, after meeting her husband in Baghdad and marrying in Jordan. Steve (Sarmed) and Rita met when he traveled to Iraq with his family. They became engaged quickly and married in Jordan soon after. She finally arrived in Detroit in 1999, eager to continue her education, which was her passion.
With the help and encouragement of her father-in-law, Farouk Soka, Rita applied to Oakland Community College (OCC), trying to enter the college’s English as a Second Language program. Unfortunately, she only knew English from grade school in Iraq. In her own words, she had learned English grammar, but didn’t know how to communicate.
As a result, she failed OCC’s ESL entrance exam. This consequence, however, wouldn’t stop her. She enrolled in a nighttime English course to learn the language better and secured her first job at T.J. Maxx, folding clothes.
Within a few weeks, Rita was promoted to a cashier position. Within a few months, she started to become comfortable with English. She got a secondary job at Kroger as a cashier, but her education plans were once again halted as she became pregnant with her first daughter, Celena.
Rita had always dreamed of working in the medical field, and had a special interest in pharmacy. Luckily, her Kroger location was building a pharmacy while she was a cashier. She asked the manager if she could help run it as a pharmacy technician and, once it was built, helped develop the business by bringing in new clients and increasing its sales. In October 2001, her second daughter Sabrina was born, and she decided to quit working and raise her children, but she still dreamed of pursuing an education.
Early 2003, Rita went back to OCC and enrolled in the ESL program focusing on prepharmacy. In 2005, she became pregnant and delivered her last child and only son, Luke, her education plans were yet again halted. Just after he was born, the rest of her family—mom, dad, and siblings, Sarmad, Linda and Tamara, arrived in the states. This was the missing piece; suddenly, she had an extended support system to help raise her family. At this point, she went back full force to OCC to continue her journey.
A year later, Rita graduated from OCC with honors and a near-perfect GPA. She entered a Clinical Laboratory Science program at Wayne State University with a merit scholarship and three children at home. Finally, in 2009, she graduated with a bachelor’s degree, summa cum laude, and secured a job at Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit.
Rita initially worked in transfusion medicine, helping as a liaison between the medical staff and the companies that provided blood to the hospital, like Red Cross. For a long time, Rita wanted to attend graduate school; she started shadowing doctors, but after gaining some experience, realized her feelings were conflicted. She wanted to work with people and solve problems, but didn’t feel passionate about examining patients.
Since Rita’s priorities were her kids and commuting to and from Detroit was keeping her away from her family for long hours, Rita decided to look for a job near her home in West Bloomfield. Rita’s Henry Ford manager found her a job at Providence Hospital in Southfield.
In 2015, almost by chance, she stumbled upon a new role – the hospital was upgrading its software and needed someone to conduct clinical validation and test the software. After some time, Rita became an expert in this role, and was eventually recruited by the clinical software developer to do similar work. She accepted the job, mostly because of its work-from-home style and excellent compensation, but she was still unsatisfied working with machines and not people.
That changed around 2018 when her daughter Sabrina, who has had a long-standing interest in the legal profession and will be attending law school in August 2023, told her about law school. You can attend, she said, as long as you have a bachelor’s degree and a decent Law School Admission Test (LSAT) score.
The first law school she found, after a quick Google search, was Cooley in Auburn Hills. She met with a counselor there and they confirmed what her daughter said. In fact, they preferred students with science backgrounds, because they possess analytical thinking skills.
Rita’s first attempt at the LSAT was quick, and she sat for it without knowing much. Although she applied with a stellar GPA, her low test score only netted her a 10% scholarship from Cooley. With a tuition near 200k, this wouldn’t work. Her plans were on hold until she could retake the test.
Rita became an LSAT fanatic. She signed up for a rigorous, three-month course that gave her the resources she needed to become an expert. She spent almost all of her free time studying, even her lunch breaks at work.
With hard work comes results, and that’s what Rita got.
She received a full ride from Cooley and a 70% merit scholarship from Wayne State Law School, both of which she turned down, as well as a personal phone call from the dean of UDM’s law school inviting her to a fellowship interview. After the interview and shadowing some schools, she decided UDM was the right fit for her: its Catholic program and intimate learning setting is just what she wanted. She accepted UDM’s offer for 100% of tuition paid.
Rita started school in August and, despite being older than most students, quickly rose to the top of her class. After the first semester, she ranked 21 out of 100 students, but she was still unhappy. In her second year, after a clerkship in Detroit with the prestigious Federal Judge Nancy Edmunds, her ranking shot up to 11. She attributes the change to “embracing the gray area” that exists in law. Seeing the world in black and white was something she had to unlearn.
Finally, she graduated in 2022, ranking 8th in her class, magna cum laude. She was sworn in as an attorney on November 11 by Justice Brian Zahra and was hired by the prestigious firm Secrest Wardle to work with municipalities like West Bloomfield, Bloomfield Township, and Bloomfield Hills.
Soon after she was admitted to practice in Michigan, her former professor connected with her and decided to work in collaboration by forming a new law firm. Rita and her partner, Alexandria Taylor, a seasoned attorney, practice family law, criminal defense and real estate. Rita wants to bring her cultural and linguistic knowledge to the courtroom to help judges and the government understand her client’s objectives and unique culture-based circumstances, and she wanted to start her own practice to focus more on helping other people.
In one example, Rita most recently helped a student attorney at UDM who was representing a woman from the Middle East. His client had unique cultural circumstances that only natives can understand and relate to. Rita assisted by interpreting for this client and translating documents, but more importantly, communicating the specific cultural importance and meaning of the client’s circumstances to the judge. Ultimately, this helped in her successful bid for asylum.
Rita currently serves on the Associate Alumni Board at UDM and is a committee member for the Students Relations and Mentorship Committee at UDM and is happy to assist and mentor students wishing to pursue a career in law.
