LCYC offers paid internships as part of our priority to advance equity and diversity both within our organization and in the field of civil legal aid at-large. This aligns with feedback we received from young people of color who participated in the creation of our 2021 report “Invisible & Inaccessible: Young People’s Perception of Civil Legal Aid”, highlighting the importance of attorneys who reflect the population we serve.
Since 2021, LCYC has supported law students as they explore potential avenues for their law careers through internships. Interns support LCYC in a variety of ways, including advocating for changes to statewide policies, conducting intakes with youth, creating legal literacy materials, performing research, and more. We interviewed several former LCYC interns to gain their insights into the impact of interning with LCYC, and to learn about how their experience shaped their path going forward.
GABRIEL NEUMAN, POLICY COUNSEL & GOVERNMENT RELATIONS MANAGER AT GSBA
What motivated you to pursue an internship at LCYC?
I spent seven years in foster care and I was lucky to have a really good attorney appointed to me throughout the process, but I was able to understand how not everyone has access to that and how, even with that, there are a lot of ways the legal system can better serve youth. As a law student, I wanted to use my experience in the childcare system to represent youth well and provide representation that comes from an experienced approach having gone through the system myself.
Did you have any expectations going into your role at LCYC? What were your initial impressions?
I knew this was a group of passionate and well-informed attorneys, so I was just excited to be in that environment so I could learn from it. It was a great experience!
Do you have any advice you would like to share with current and future interns at LCYC based on your own journey?
Anybody who goes into a situation where you’re working with clients that are traumatized or where you may experience trauma, I recommend people read the book Trauma Stewardship or do some research into what they need to know to protect themselves while doing that type of work because there’s a high chance of trauma transference coming from the things you might deal with. Creating a system of self-care and support to shepherd yourself through difficult cases. You know, take care of yourself.
How did your experience with LCYC prepare you for the role you’re in today?
I definitely got experience with memo writing. I think I got really good guidance and feedback on how to write a good memo that is going to be used by attorneys. I also learned how to tie social science into law which is very important for the types of law that I’m interested in. Increasing my legal vocabulary and understanding of how to work with attorneys also helped me a lot.
Stephanie A. Lowry, Juvenile Rights Practice at Legal Aid Society
What motivated you to pursue an internship at LCYC?
LCYC is very involved with the legal community so I had seen them around school. I had previously worked for a non-profit that worked with youth prisons in Washington before I went to law school, where I cultivated my passion for working with young folks experiencing the carceral system. Being given an opportunity for an internship directly related to that was really important to me, and I was very, very lucky to be chosen for LCYC’s externship program.
In what ways did your internship at LCYC contribute to your understanding of legal advocacy for youth and children?
There are a lot of ways you can be an advocate for a young person—it doesn’t have to just be in the courtroom or from a legal lens. Sometimes, the most important work LCYC does is really just listening to a young person and having the time and space to hear about their experience or what they’re going through, and then trying to set them up for success as an adult.
How did your experience with LCYC prepare you for the role you’re in today?
I think about one particular youth that I worked with. It was the biggest case that I had that summer and it was a lot of document reviews. We worked hard to get a favorable outcome, and when we did it was really affirming for me. I spent a lot of time wanting to be a lawyer, talking about what it would be like to represent young people, and to just be a part of something where you see an end result where this young person is no longer going to be looked at as a suspect and they will have their freedom back was amazing.
Bobbi Fogle, Family Safety Staff Attorney at Tacomaprobono
What motivated you to pursue an internship at LCYC?
I came to law school because I was an optimist: I wanted to help people. Prior to law school I worked at a youth shelter and then taught middle school for a little bit, so I knew I wanted to continue working with kids. The model LCYC employs was really attractive to me because of its wholistic nature. Ultimately, I knew that I wanted to do good work for kids and the way LCYC operates is how I think law should be practiced.
Are there any skills or qualities which you believe you developed or enhanced the most during your internship?
Two things come to mind and one is directly working with and representing youth. There are different considerations to take when you’re not representing an adult, and it’s important to be cognizant of the power imbalance and ethics of serving youth, because no matter how you look at it, you’re an adult and an attorney and they need you for something. Another skill was the ability to break down complex legal concepts to a level that’s understandable to the general public, which came from a project where we worked on the youth ‘know your rights’ guide in a mental health context.
Reflecting on your time at LCYC, what aspects of your work do you feel the proudest of?
“LCYC is what a non-profit should look like.”
Some of the most rewarding moments were at the end of a case when you’re able to look back with your client and say ‘look, we did get this favorable outcome.’ On the other hand, the fact that I was able to work with a team to produce a guide that can actually be helpful to kids is important to me, and I’ve even referred people to LCYC’s online resources since being a practicing attorney!
How did your experience with LCYC prepare you for the role you’re in today?
One of the things I see in divorce court and particularly in custody court is that it’s hard to get the kid’s opinion into the record. Bringing in the testimony of teachers or social workers are some things we do to try and get these kids’ voices heard because they can’t testify themselves. I’ve also worked with a few domestic violence victims who were in high school themselves and the opposing party was also in high school—they’re not super common but it is something I’ve seen and I’m very grateful to the background I’ve had at LCYC to give me perspective on how to properly deal with all of these things.
Anna Pickett, Gates Public Service Law Scholar, JD & LLM Student
What motivated you to pursue an internship at LCYC?
In high school I experienced housing insecurity myself; I ended up emancipating myself and lived with family friends my senior year, so the idea of using that personal knowledge to connect with potential clients was really interesting to me. I also think youth homelessness especially when you start to look at it through an intersectional lens, like youth of color, children of undocumented parents, disabled children, or LGBTQ children. As somebody who had to untether themselves from their parents, something I appreciated about LCYC is how central the youth perspective is.
How did your experience with LCYC shape your professional goals in the field of law?
Ultimately, I want to do international human rights litigation. A lot of the experiences I’ve had following LCYC have been in the climate action space, so I’ve been doing research on the disproportionate impact of climate change and lack of response from government to mitigate it on indigenous communities, people with disabilities, and women and children. I have this vision of myself in litigation where I, as a disabled woman, am standing before court arguing to vindicate the rights of a disabled child. The fact of me being there will hopefully open the minds of parents and people in power with influence over children to dreaming bigger for disabled children. Oftentimes disabled youth that I meet don’t know what their full potential is because they’re never given the opportunity to try.
How did your experience with LCYC prepare you for the role you’re in today?
Sadly, I haven’t been able to work in the youth context since LCYC, but it reaffirmed how much I want to be working with youth. I think there’s so much potential in youth—youth are pure potential! I think it’s inherently optimistic to work with youth because they have their whole future ahead of them. LCYC helped aligned myself in support and in collaboration of youth. Watching how to be a lawyer in a stressful context while maintaining a certain amount of levity helped maintain my optimism and it’s something I hope that I can bring into my future. The way that the client interviews went, in my experience, was very humanizing. One of the goals was not to retraumatize but to just get as much information as possible. The interviews that I was a part of had a grace in which that balance was found and this is something I hope to replicate when I’m interviewing clients in the future.