Foreign connection for law students
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On July 2, 2008, Jeff Aird rose before the sun in Accra, Ghana. At 5:45 a.m. he rubbed the sleep from his eyes as he planted himself in the front passenger seat of Ted Goh's 1996 Mercedes sedan for the three-hour trip down the Ghana coast to Sekondi-Takoradi.
Brother Goh is a Ghanaian attorney to whom the Church refers legal matters; Brother Aird is an American law student who was in the midst of a five-week externship with the Church's Area Legal Counsel (ALC) for the Africa West Area. On this particular day, Brother Aird's assignment was to accompany and observe Brother Goh. Together they raced to a special 9 a.m. meeting with the city council of Sekondi-Takoradi about a land-use issue concerning a Church-held property.
Friendly banter turned to politics, things like Mitt Romney's future and the upcoming presidential election in Ghana. The speedometer hovered around 160 kilometers per hour as they blew past a tattered roadway sign attempting to impose wishful thinking in the form of a 50-km-per-hour speed limit. Nascent sunlight shone on a seemingly endless series of breathtaking coastal vistas.
They finally arrived at the government offices just before their meeting was supposed to start. But Brother Goh and Brother Aird discovered none of the principals were present. The city council's secretary said she had no knowledge of any 9 a.m. meeting. Brother Goh smiled and showed the secretary the official letter that had scheduled the meeting. He urged her to get everything organized.
It took more than two hours, but with equal doses of persistence and patience Brother Goh and Brother Aird left the government offices before lunch amidst a flurry of handshakes and smiles — and with a favorable resolution from the city council on the land-use issue.
In short, it was shaping up to be just another day of unforgettable on-the-job learning for a BYU Law School international extern.
This summer, BYU's J. Reuben Clark Law School sent 47 first-year students – nearly one-third of the Class of 2011 – abroad for international externships. They worked in 26 different countries and every continent except Antarctica. No other law school in the U.S. has a comparable international externship program.
Of those 47, nine received fellowships through BYU's International Center for Law and Religion Studies and worked at one of the Church's international ALC offices. The rest of the externs apprenticed at law firms.
The process of externship placement began all the way back in October, several months before the students received their first batch of grades for law school. Students can choose to apply for a fellowship with the Center for Law and Religion Studies; enter a "match program" seeking to pair prospective externs with an employer that closely mirrors the student's interests in terms of both geography and area of legal practice; or secure summer legal work on their own.
Karen Andrews, Off-Campus Recruiting and Externship Coordinator for BYU Law School, is the sage traffic cop who shepherds students to externship placements befitting their backgrounds and interests. Behind the scenes, Church Associate General Counsel William F. Atkin networks to open doors for law students seeking an international externship placement.
"The students give us their preferences and then we try to match their preferences with available placement opportunities with foreign law firms," Brother Atkin explained. "The ALC and I use our network of foreign law firms to find placement opportunities for the students."
Brother Atkin, who acquired his extensive list of international contacts while working for Baker & McKenzie in locales such as Venezuela, Taiwan and Russia, makes a point of helping law students obtain meaningful legal work experience because of the help he feels he received launching his own career. During the summer following his first year of law school at Arizona State, Brother Atkin interned at the U.S. Supreme Court thanks to Mark Cannon, a former BYU political science professor who worked in an administrative capacity for Chief Justice Warren Berger.
"He mentored me, and he mentored a lot of young LDS law students in particular when he was at the Court," Brother Atkin said. "I have always been grateful to Mark for giving me that opportunity. As a result, I personally feel an obligation to provide similar opportunities to LDS law students."
Students' international externship experiences are as diverse as the countries they visit.
For Amanda Mackey, working last summer with the Church's ALC in Guatemala City gave her the chance to see firsthand how the business aspect of the Church functions.
"It was really nice seeing how the Church works," she said. "Even from a legal aspect, just seeing how much the Spirit [is involved] — it's not just about the missionary work, but it touches the business side of it as well."
Brother Aird's workload included things like researching pertinent marriage law and what kinds of hoops the Church had to jump through in the Africa West Area for its bishops and stake presidents to be able to perform marriages.
His time in Ghana brought him face-to-face with poverty in a way he never experienced in the United States or as a missionary in France.
"There were definitely some humbling experiences where you see real poverty for the first time in your life," he said. "Ironically, that's not accompanied by real sadness — I probably see more sadness [in America] than I saw there. The people are just incredibly happy with what they have."
Dan Swiss spent the summer of 2008 working for Brother Atkin's old firm Baker & McKenzie in Sydney, Australia. The chance to work abroad enhanced his understanding of international law.
"I felt like going international and dealing with a firm like Baker & McKenzie that handles international affairs would give me a broader perspective," he said. "That way, when I came back [to the United States] I'd be able to take that broader point of view and be able to apply it.
"I've always thought that if you start big you can always go smaller. If you work for an international firm and get a really good idea of the broad brush strokes that exist in the world, it will make it easier for you to comprehend the nitty-gritty details. It's kind of like putting together a puzzle — once you've seen the whole picture, trying to assemble individual pieces makes so much more sense."
