UNIQUE EXPERIENCES

Sample internship - nongovernmental organization

Rebecca Krauss, SLS class of 2010, ABA Rule of Law Initiative, Kosovo

“The ABA Rule of Law Initiative functions like an NGO in Kosovo and other developing countries, receiving funding from USAID for rule of law development projects. The ABA also produces “indexes” of development for its host countries, which document the progress made in key law-related areas of development and highlight the particular problems each country faces. In Kosovo, the ABA works primarily in two fields: with the Kosovo Chamber of Advocates (the equivalent of the bar association there), and with the University of Pristina (the primary legal educator there). The office has some other side projects, some of which I worked on, but the funding restrictions from USAID basically dictate the scope of their work. I had 2 main projects this summer, and a few smaller, peripheral things to work on. My biggest project was doing work to support an upcoming evaluation of Kosovo’s regulatory bar association—essentially, we were asking whether the Kosovo Chamber of Advocates should be the regulatory association for practicing lawyers, or whether another government entity should assume that responsibility. I performed comparative research on several other countries and U.S. states, documenting how they structure their regulatory bar. This wasn’t like writing an LRW brief—there was no specific legal question to answer—but it did teach me a lot about how the legal profession is structured and regulated. The project mostly involved internet research, but I also conducted a few interviews with lawyers from Bosnia and Macedonia. The other thing I did

to support the regulatory bar inquiry was to sift through the various layers of Kosovar law and administrative regulations (UN, EU, Yugoslav, and Kosovar laws) and identify the current legal protocols for disciplining attorneys—many of these are not followed in practice. The Kosovar legal system is, as of right now, ridiculously complex because of the different layers of legislative authority, and being able to sit down and piece through the laws is valuable for the ABA ROLI office.

My other main project was updating and modifying TeenLaw, a course on the law designed for high school students and taught by law students (modeled on StreetLaw). The ABA had put together the program and the teaching materials for TeenLaw in 2007, but this summer both needed to be updated—the content of the materials in particular, since Kosovo became an independent nation with a constitution in early 2008. I added sections on the Constitution and modified others to reflect the new state of Kosovar law. I also met with former TeenLaw teachers and students and compiled recommendations for how to improve the program—everything from amount of time spent on the course to the content and structure of the teachers’ manual. I updated the materials accordingly, and compiled a set of guidelines for future TeenLaw courses. This project was actually pretty fun—researching something like the constitution or juvenile law and then writing a section on it for Kosovar teens (who are somewhat skeptical of the legal system in their country) was interesting and rewarding. I also spent a lot of time interacting with Kosovar law students. (…) just being in Kosovo while it tries to establish the infrastructure necessary to run a country is fascinating, and watching the development community there try (and occasionally succeed) to help teaches you a lot about international work.”