Young immigration lawyer earns Wisconsin honor

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WISCONSIN RAPIDS − While Zimbabwe and Botswana may be a long way from central Wisconsin, Miranda Tichareva said it only took fortuitous events to lead her to practice law here and become the 2026 Outstanding Young Lawyer of the Year.

Tichareva, 27, grew up in Zimbabwe and Botswana, which are both in the southern part of the African continent. She has family in both countries and traveled between the two frequently while growing up.

Tichareva then had the opportunity to go to a South African high school for students with bright minds, she said. While a student there, the University of Wisconsin-Madison sent admission counselors to talk with students. It was the first year Madison offered them a full scholarship. Tichareva said she thought she’d be a fool not to apply for the scholarship, and she got in.

“I didn’t know what Wisconsin was,” Tichareva said. “I didn’t know how cold it was.”

Long before Tichareva knew where she would go to college, she knew what she wanted to be when she grew up. She would watch television with her grandmother, Tichareva said, and the show her grandmother had her watch was “Judge Judy.” Tichareva said she was 3 when she became a fan of Judge Judy Sheindlin’s strictness in court and the law.

Tichareva majored in psychology and nonprofit leadership. When she went to law school, she started out focusing on family law. She then got into criminal law and finally decided to focus on immigration law.

One thing Tichareva said she knew was that she didn’t want to be the kind of attorney who sits in an office doing contracts all day. She knew she wanted to be in a courtroom and fighting to win cases.

Tichareva faced her own immigration challenges while in college. She said staff members were knowledgeable about basic immigration rules, but they weren’t equipped to handle more complex matters. She had to do her own research and work to find the answers she needed.

Graduating in 2024, Tichareva got her first job in Phillips. She enjoyed the work, but the community, which has a population of about 1,533 people, was too small for her, she said. She saw Nash Law Group in Wisconsin Rapids had an open position and knew the law firm had a good reputation.

During her two years as an attorney, Tichareva has focused much of her attention on immigration law. She pursued Spanish-language education through the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. During her studies, she recognized rural areas in the country are underserved by immigration attorneys.

Because it is federal law, she can take cases in any state and has helped people from across the country, she said. She gets a lot of immigration cases from northern Wisconsin, she said.

Her work inspired the State Bar of Wisconsin to name her their 2026 Outstanding Young Lawyer of the Year.

“As an immigrant herself, Miranda (Tichareva) recognized that many individuals and families in these communities face high-stakes immigration issues with limited local legal resources,” her nominators for the award said. “Rather than waiting for the ideal conditions, she built a practice from the ground up by developing a plan, finding clients and mastering complex areas of immigration law through disciplined self-study and real-world advocacy.”

Tichareva said she works with other attorneys who are handling criminal cases involving immigrants to help defendants understand the possible ramifications of pleading guilty. Defendants who come from other countries must serve any sentence they are given, but they also are exposed to the added punishment of deportation in many cases.

Tichareva said new clients often ask her when she graduated college. She said it gets frustrating when people think a young attorney can’t do the same job as attorneys who have been practicing for many years. She wants people to know that attorneys recently out of college may have skills and modern ideas that long-practicing attorneys don’t have.

“(Young attorneys) have all the skills they need to see cases through,” Tichareva said. “I’ve seen a lot of my friends just feel discouraged because people want partners on the case and not an associate.”

Tichareva likes living in Wisconsin Rapids, although she wishes the population had more diversity. She has written a novel that will be published in December. It’s a coming-of-age story set in the United States, Zimbabwe and South Africa, she said. She hopes it will give people a different perspective on starting out in life.