(This blog post was written by IHRC students Erica Sutter, Forest Miles, and Allison Pruitt.)
Despite being three years long, a usual law school career leaves limited room for exploration. Typically, the first year of law school is scheduled for you in order to introduce you to the law. By the time you enter into your second and third years, students are interested in concentrating their studies in areas they are primarily interested in practicing. While many students choose to use their last two years to take classes that strengthen their knowledge in areas they intend to practice in, it can also provide an opportunity to branch out and learn new areas of law.
The International Human Rights Clinic at Santa Clara University School of Law is one such “elective” type course. Here, a few students reflect on their career paths and what brought them to the IHRC:
Erica Sutter: I have a second degree in International Relations from undergrad, so I’ve always had an interest in international courses. I had taken an international law course when I was in undergrad and realized that the topic was complicated but interesting. As any law student can attest though, an undergraduate law course is nothing like a law school course.
Pursuing a career in patent litigation served as my primary motivation to go to law school, though. Thus, I spent most of my time in law school enrolled in courses related to intellectual property. I recognized, however, that my final semester may be one of the last opportunities to enroll in a course to learn something I am interested in even though I am not pursuing a career in the area. The International Human Rights Clinic fit perfectly.
Forest Miles: My career will be to write patents to protect intellectual property interests. My job is challenging, important, and technically difficult but the stakes are usually monetary. This low emotional stake though is actually part of my attraction to IP work for large companies. For the most part, I will not be representing clients who have been fighting an injustice for years, are facing life in prison, or could lose their individual livelihood as a result of my job performance. The pressure to produce high quality work is still very high, but the stakes are largely divorced of emotional counterparts.
I care a lot about justice and human rights – this was actually a big factor in deciding to go to law school. I plan on doing pro bono work throughout my career, and taking a human rights clinic is an excellent way to build a skillset that I perhaps won’t always be able to focus on during my day job. I am thankful for the opportunity to develop skills and learn the law around international human rights. I am especially grateful that my school is able to provide financial support which makes it feasible for students to not just learn in the classroom, but to actually go out and experience the legal process of international human rights first-hand.
Allison Pruitt: As someone who came to Santa Clara University to study public international law – participating in the International Human Rights Clinic was a natural fit for me. After taking classes in the IACtHR in Costa Rica over the summer I relished the idea of getting to work on an amicus brief to be submitted in an actual case before the Court. That the case dealt with LGBT rights was even more of a draw as these issues are coming to the forefront around the world and I was thrilled to be involved.
Despite our differing motives for participating in the International Human Rights Clinic – we all agree that the professional and personal skills students develop in the clinic are transferable to any legal field, and that the experience is one of the most interesting and rewarding aspects of our law school career.
