About R. Paola Vargas Daly

R. Paola Vargas Daly is an attorney with a professional record that spans criminal prosecution, public health research, medical-legal advocacy, and institutional reform. Her career is defined not by a single area of practice but by a consistent throughline: applying legal and public health expertise in service of the populations most often underserved by both systems.

R. Paola Vargas Daly graduated magna cum laude from Loyola University Chicago School of Law, where she ranked first in her class. She earned those two distinct academic designations through a part-time weekend program that met 17 times per year, often for 9 or more hours on Saturdays and Sundays. She completed that program while working during portions of her enrollment and raising a daughter. She is the first attorney in her family in the United States.

Before law school, R. Paola Vargas Daly built a substantive career in public health research. She holds a Master of Science in Public Health from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, with a concentration in women’s perinatal and reproductive health, earned in 2010. At Johns Hopkins, she administered prenatal education programs for low-income and at-risk adolescents. She later spent six and a half years at the Lupus Foundation of America, where she directed research programs and co-wrote a $5 million federal grant from the Office of Minority Health to develop programs reducing racial disparities in lupus diagnoses among young Black and Latina women.

Her research career extended to the American Academy of Physician Assistants, where she led the organization’s annual census to more than 20,000 physician assistants and conducted health workforce policy research. At Clinical Outcomes Solutions, she managed qualitative research studies valued at approximately $200,000 each for biopharmaceutical clients, oversaw a team of four, and served as the primary FDA compliance liaison. R. Paola Vargas Daly is a published researcher with peer-reviewed articles in journals including the Journal of Patient Reported Outcomes, Pediatric Rheumatology, Lupus, and the Journal of Medical Economics.

Her legal career began with a clerkship for Justice Briana Zamora of the New Mexico Supreme Court, where she drafted bench memoranda and opinions. She subsequently served as an Assistant District Attorney in New Mexico’s First Judicial District, managing the felony intake docket in Santa Fe County, approximately 120 cases, and later the full Rio Arriba County misdemeanor docket, comprising approximately 200 cases including all domestic violence misdemeanors and first through third offense DWIs. She handled cases from initial filing through trial or plea negotiation, screened cases, reviewed discovery, drafted plea agreements, and conducted preliminary examinations in Magistrate Court.

During law school, she practiced as a student attorney in the Health Justice Project, a medical-legal partnership at Loyola serving clients whose legal needs were directly tied to their health outcomes. That work included representing an asylum seeker who had survived death threats and sexual assault in Central America, and successfully appealing a Social Security disability denial for a woman developing dementia. She also clerked in the medical malpractice unit at Coplan and Crane for nearly two years, reviewing medical records and supporting pre-trial litigation.

Her commitment to structural change extended to the Loyola Law Journal, where she co-led the Diversity and Inclusion Committee and developed a survey to assess barriers to Law Journal entry for first-generation students and caregivers. The findings produced formal bylaw amendments, including reduced GPA weighting, removal of an explanatory statement requirement, an extended write-on window, and expanded scheduling options. She also served as a student representative on the Bar Exam Faculty Committee and was recognized for public service at her law school graduation ceremony.

R. Paola Vargas Daly has provided informal language interpretation for community members at hospitals and clinics throughout her adult life, and regularly assists undocumented, uninsured, and non-English-speaking individuals in navigating institutional processes following injuries. That work reflects a consistent personal commitment extending beyond any formal job description.