Today, our interns traded the classroom for Capitol Hill, spending most of the day meeting with more than 20 representatives. After a week spent building policy arguments from the ground up, this was the moment all of that preparation was for: sitting down with the people who actually turn policy into law, making their case, and fielding real questions in real time. There is a difference between writing a policy brief and defending it across a table from someone with the powe

Wednesday shifted the focus from the courtroom to the road ahead, giving interns a look at both the academic path forward and the deeper policy and casework skills that will carry them there. The day opened with a panel of admissions representatives from law schools across the country. The panel gave interns a direct look at what admissions committees are actually looking for, walking through what makes an application stand out and what the road to law school really looks lik

Today, our interns got to put the week's lessons into practice. Working in small groups, they spent the day building out their congress one-pagers. Alongside that, interns took part in a "Meet the Client" exercise with attorney Brandi Harden, sitting down with a real client to practice the conversations that sit at the heart of criminal defense work. Learning how to build trust, ask the right questions, and truly listen to a client is not something a textbook can teach. It ha

The first part of the Criminal Law and Trial Internship was about listening and learning; this afternoon was about doing, and our interns rose to the occasion in a big way. The session opened with a mock jury selection exercise, led and developed by our director, Jenna Sackter, who put interns directly into the seats of attorneys conducting voir dire. There is no substitute for actually standing up and questioning a jury pool: reading people, thinking on your feet, and making

The Criminal Law and Trial Internship kicked off today, and there was no easing into it. Our interns began the program with a keynote from Marshall Bailly about what to expect from the week to come. Then they received a keynote from our attorney, Brandi Harden, who will be working with us throughout the program, who spoke on "Being the Change in the Legal Field." Brandi Harden is the Managing Partner at Harden & Pinckney, PLLC, a boutique Washington, DC firm focused on crimin