Two students at Mitchell Hamline are getting valuable hands-on experience in the courtroom this summer through judicial internships.
Sheila Francois
Sheila Francois and Stephanie Lucero, who both start their third year of law school this fall, are the first Mitchell Hamline students to be chosen for the Fulton & Waite Scholars program.
Francois’ internship is with Judge Roberto Ramirez in Colorado. Lucero was paired with Judge David Mackey in Arizona.
Based in Washington, D.C., the Fulton & Waite program was created by former law students and takes a slightly different approach to judicial internships. Instead of requiring students to spend an entire summer or a whole semester interning, the program offers short-term opportunities that work around students’ summer schedules.
That means Francois can squeeze in a week with Judge Ramirez this summer and still work as a clerk in the Hennepin County Attorney’s office, take a three-day summer class through Mitchell Hamline’s Dispute Resolution Institute, and travel to London for two weeks to study international comparative law as a part of the Mitchell Hamline in London program.
For Francois, a student in Mitchell Hamline’s full-time J.D. program, the internship represents yet another way she’s getting hands-on legal experience while in law school.
“I want to understand what happens when a case comes into the system from a judge’s perspective,” she says. “How do they rule on it? How do they think about it?”
Francois is also excited about another aspect of the Fulton & Waite program—staying in touch with the judge through a long-term mentorship once the internship is over.
Stephanie Lucero with Judge David Mackey
Lucero, who is a student in the Hybrid J.D. program, completed her internship over a two-week period in late May in Arizona’s Yavapai County Superior Court.
She spent time shadowing Judge Mackey in the courtroom and had a chance to work with him on research. She also got one-on-one time with other judges in the court. Lucero, who hopes to someday work in criminal defense in the area of mental health, says the judges gave her insight into how they approach cases and offered her plenty of valuable career advice as well.
The internship also put her on track for another potential externship in the fall, thanks to a bailiff who heard about her interest in criminal defense.
“The bailiff called the Yavapai County Public Defender’s office and told them about me,” she says. “The next day they asked for my resume.”
While that fall externship is still being sorted out, Lucero will spend the rest of her summer in another externship with the New Mexico Public Defender’s office. That’s another opportunity she’s able to squeeze in because of the short-term, flexible nature of the Fulton & Waite judicial internship.