Internship in South Africa proves to be rewarding and beneficial for Indiana Tech Law School student

Indiana Tech Law School sets itself apart from its peers by making legal education personal, practical and possible for its students.

Earlier this year, third-year law student Robyn Clark completed an internship that proved to be deeply personal and extremely practical. It was also made possible by her Indiana Tech Law School education.

Clark served nearly two months as a legal intern in the Projects Abroad Human Rights Office in South Africa.

“This experience taught me how to be a real lawyer,” Clark said of her time in South Africa. “There is a human component to this profession that can only be learned by doing, and that is what I got from this experience. Indiana Tech Law School has done a phenomenal job of preparing me with the legal knowledge that allowed me to help people and succeed in this opportunity.”

“These types of opportunities are precisely why Indiana Tech Law School strives to be a national leader in integrated experiential education, so that its students are optimally prepared to assist clients with pressing legal needs directly after they step foot outside of our law school,” said associate dean andré douglas pond cummings. “We are so proud of the extraordinary service that Robyn provided to the citizens of South Africa. She was able to learn experientially at our law school and then put into immediate practice the skills she developed at school with real clients that needed her to help.”

Projects Abroad, based in Sussex, England, is an organization that pairs volunteers of all ages with projects all over the world. In 2011, it created the Human Rights Office in South Africa as an accredited legal clinic to represent clients in court and assist them with various legal matters.

“While there, I was essentially treated as a lawyer. I had my own caseload, I had my own clients and I was responsible for doing the research and the legwork,” Clark said. “I had an attorney supervise me, but I was pretty much allowed to go on my own. The only thing I could not do was represent a client in court on my own.”

This initiative was developed to help impoverished people within the region who, typically, are not able to receive appropriate legal representation. The experience revealed cultural and societal differences that were quite eye-opening for Clark.

“Justice is a bit different there and it is created by a disparity of the classes. If you have money, you can buy justice,” she said. “The police are corrupt, the country has a high murder and crime rate, the region is densely populated and the country is still restructuring from the end of Apartheid. There have been great strides made, but there is still quite a ways to go.”

Clark worked at a clinic in Lavender Hill, a place that she described as one of the most dangerous areas in the Cape Flats suburb of Cape Town.

“Lavender Hill is a volatile township, due to the lack of education opportunities, high levels of unemployment and gang infestation,” she said.

The clinic she worked at was one of the busiest, and meetings were held every other week in the garage of the community center. There were no tables; interns had to write in notebooks using their laps for support.

“In this area, a majority of the issues were land disputes – many relating back to the granting of housing from the government after the end of Apartheid,” Clark said.

Clark found that land disputes were also a common denominator in the weekly clinics conducted in Vrygrond and Mitchells Plain, places within Cape Flats that are also affected by high crime, high unemployment and substance abuse. She also worked on cases dealing with labor disputes and family law issues.

“The clinics were walk-in and we would serve people as they came to us. The supervising attorney was available if we had questions, but for the most part, we were on our own,” Clark said of her typical day-to-day experience. “Clients would bring in paperwork related to their case. We would discuss the particulars of their case with them, identify their goals, assess a course of action and give them direction on how to move forward.”

Although the experience sometimes seemed chaotic, Clark left South Africa enriched, gratified and with a deeper appreciation for this career path she has chosen.

“I absolutely did help some of the people I worked with,” she said.  “There are so many people and it can feel overwhelming because you can’t help everybody, but you do what you can because it really does make a difference. When I first received my cases, they were just letters written on manila folders. It wasn’t until I met my clients at the clinics that they became real to me. It is the human connection with this profession that I have never felt before and look forward to reliving once I start my own journey after law school.”

Story written by Matt Bair, Indiana Tech Director of Marketing and Communication