She is the second Hispanic woman to serve on New York's highest court, after Carmen Beauchamp Ciparick.
She spent the next year as a staff attorney for the New York City Legal Aid Society in the Homeless Family Rights Project before joining the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund, where she remained as associate counsel until 1992.
In 1992, Rivera served as an Administrative Law Judge for the New York State Division of Human Rights.
Following the completion of that clerkship, Rivera taught for three years at Suffolk University Law School.
[4] Rivera was the first nominee in history to be advanced out of the New York State Senate's Judiciary Committee without recommendation.