By Sofia Del Signore, Justice and Legal Thought
My time as an intern was spent researching current issues within our legal system, tracking legal and state websites for any changes in the legislature, and doing some minor secretarial work like editing the website and uploading donations.
Hello, my name is Sofia Del Signore and I am a student in the Justice and Legal Thought Scholars Program. For my capstone project, I chose to do an internship and this semester I had the opportunity to intern at Responsive Law. Responsive Law is a small non-profit operating out of DC, that focuses on making the law more accessible and affordable to the everyday citizen. When asked about what the organization is Responsive Law stated that, “many groups represent the interests of lawyers, courts, and industries. We’re the only organization representing the interests of individuals in the legal system.” This statement highlights the core of what Responsive Law is; it is an organization that fights for the legal rights of every citizen and works towards making legal systems more available and affordable while also educating individuals about their rights. My time as an intern was spent researching current issues within our legal system, tracking legal and state websites for any changes in the legislature, and doing some minor secretarial work like editing the website and uploading donations. Overall, the work that I and others do at Responsive Law is directly related to Justice as it seeks to make legal rights equal and available for every type of citizen. My internship can also be related to Legal Thought as a main part of it focused on policy research and the ways that written law could help to facilitate the mission statement of Responsive Law.
This project caught my attention because I am also double majoring in criminology and psychology and I plan to intern for a similar organization. From reading your poster, I was also surprised to hear that much of your work consisted of manning the website. I was wondering how you went about getting your internship and how early you started looking for internships. Do you plan to continue interning there?
Being interested in pursuing law in the future myself, I was intrigued to see what type of work a legal intern would be involved with as it is something I plan on doing myself in the future. I was interested to find that website management had a role in your work as I would have figured it to be primarily research work. One thing i was wondering about your internship was how significantly you think it improved skills that would be necessary for a career in law.