Press Releases

Legal Aid Society Hosts Seven Law School Summer Interns

The Legal Aid Society of Palm Beach County is proud to be hosting seven law students from around the country through its summer intern program.

All of this year’s law interns had either finished their first or second year of law school, and are working with attorneys in the following Legal Aid programs: Elder Law Project, Fair Housing Project, Ryan White Legal Project, Wage Theft Initiative, Low Income Taxpayer Clinic, Domestic Violence Project, Pro Bono Project and Foster Children’s Project. In addition to gaining valuable real-life client and courtroom experience, Legal Aid’s law interns are weighing the possibility of careers in public interest law.

“I went to law school with the simple goal of practicing ‘real’ law – the type of law that helps real people,” said Jared Stark, a rising second-year law student from Georgetown University. “That desire to practice law in the public interest led me to pursue an internship with the Legal Aid Society, where I’ve been working with the Wage Theft Project and the Nonprofit Legal Assistance Project. My experience at Legal Aid has been tremendously gratifying and humbling; above all, it has served to further encourage my passion for public interest law.”

“Working at the Legal Aid Society has truly been an amazing experience this far,” added second-year rising law student Thomas Morelli from the University of Tennessee at Knoxville. “As a law clerk, I have been able to apply the skills I learned in law school to the real world, which has inspired me to continue working towards my goal and given me new goals for my career and personal life.  I have learned that working in public interest law is as much about the law as it is about making life a little bit better for others. Whether it is by providing legal assistance or pointing clients in the right direction for help with their particular problems, working at Legal Aid has certainly been a true blessing, and I hope to continue to be involved with organizations like this in the future.”

Hosting law interns during the summer break is a time-honored tradition at the Legal Aid Society of Palm Beach County. Each summer Legal Aid welcomes between five to ten interns working across all of its projects. “The staff of Legal Aid believes fully in the importance of exposing law school students to the multitude of rewards that can be derived from practicing public interest law,” explained Bob Bertisch, Legal Aid Society’s Executive Director. “In all honesty, our staff almost always ends up benefiting as well from mentoring our interns, as they often feel renewed and reinvigorated from the time they have spent together.”

When they return to their studies in the fall, it is certain that the law interns will take the diverse and meaningful experiences they had at Legal Aid back with them. As Jane Woodfield, a rising second-year law student from Nova Southeastern University expressed, “Interning at Legal Aid has been an invaluable experience. Interviewing clients and participating in their matters in court makes the law school experience come alive.”