Application Essay: My Experience As A Legal Assistant

411 Words1 Page

I am a second-year law student at the University of Washington, and I am interested in clerking for your chambers for the 2017–2018 term. Your diverse background working as a prosecutor, Assistant United States Attorney, and in private practice is one I admire. I have attempted to follow a similarly diverse path by working and volunteering in various settings. I believe this breadth of experience and my well-balanced academic record give me the necessary tools to excel as a clerk. I decided to attend law school only after working as a legal assistant for a general practitioner and learning that many areas of the law piqued my interest. Since matriculating to the University of Washington, I have continued to explore various areas of the law, working as a law clerk for a public interest organization, serving as a lay advocate in a tribal court, and, in the coming months, I will be working as a summer associate at Cascadia Law Group. These experiences, and others, have allowed me to work with a diverse set of laws, from immigration to administrative law and criminal defense to environmental law. …show more content…

As a lay advocate for the Tulalip Tribal Court, I built my advocacy and trial skills by representing indigent clients charged with assaults and other misdemeanors. This experience taught me not only how to draft motions in limine, negotiate plea deals, and engage in pre-trial practice, but it also provided me insight into a tribal justice system and cross-jurisdictional issues. As a law clerk for the Environmental Protection Information Center (EPIC), I often wrestled with complex federal and state law questions. For example, I worked with the attorneys at EPIC, and outside counsel, researching grounds for an appeal on a case of first impression: whether the attorney fees provision of the Equal Access to Justice Act applied to state agencies following federal delegation. This appeal is pending before the Ninth

More about Application Essay: My Experience As A Legal Assistant

Open Document