Internships Offer Washington University Students Legal Experience

Washington University student Jessica Porter empathizes with families who struggle to prove their children qualify for special education: The Fort Wayne, Indiana native was diagnosed with cerebral palsy at age 2 but didn't get an individualized education plan until she was in second grade.

Now, Porter is helping families in similar circumstances as an intern with Legal Services of Eastern Missouri. The organization provides legal assistance to low-income residents of 21 eastern Missouri counties.

Porter, who now lives in the Central West End, will graduate in December with her master's in social work and plans to work with the families of military veterans. As of mid-August, she will have logged 500 hours with Legal Services. "This just reaffirms what I want to do," Porter said.

She is not the only Washington University student interning with the organization this summer. 

Andrew Bleyer of Webster Groves is working with victims of domestic violence.

"It's so hard for someone to just go in and navigate that" legal system, Bleyer said. The internship program exposes law students such as himself to the entire process right away, something students working at a large firm might not experience, he said. 

He's had the opportunity to sit in on meetings with judges and go to court. Bleyer has finished his first year of law school and said it's too early to say what type of work he would like to do as an attorney. 

Kami Narayan is from Creve Coeur and now lives in University City. She graduated from the University of Missouri in 2008 and spent a year teaching throughout the St. Louis area. Like Bleyer, Narayan has finished her first year of law school. 

She wants to work with children and has been working with The Children's Legal Alliance, a Legal Services program that supports children with disabilities who experience educational needs. 

Daniel Underwood once served as a Legal Services intern. Now he is managing attorney of the The Children's Legal Alliance. 

He assigns cases to students and meets with them regularly to discuss the status of projects.

"It brings in a lot of fresh ideas about how to handle cases," Underwood said. Organizers also try to make the internships fun, offering free food and mixers in which students working in various programs within Legal Services can interact.

Most surprising to Narayan is the fact that she enjoyed writing a recent research memorandum, unlike the memorandums she wrote in her first year of law school. Writing about the clients she cares about is different than writing about a hypothetical situation, she said. 

Being able to make a difference in a client's life is "an amazing feeling," Narayan said.

"This is actually what the practice of law is," she said.

Legal Services has worked with interns for decades, said Jeanne Philips-Roth, associate director of client services. During the summer, it hosts about 70 of them.

The organization serves roughly 20 percent of the people eligible for its services. The internship program extends its reach to more people who need legal representation.

"We have an 80 percent justice gap," Philips-Roth said. In 2010, the organization helped 21,000 people, providing a cumulative $7.5 million in affirmative dollars, benefits and debt write-offs, she said.