Defender Project

There have been questions, so here are some answers about the most exciting part of my summer, which has been my first Real Lawyering Experience - the Paul E. Wilson Project for Innocence and Post-Conviction Remedies!

Naturally I can't get too detailed, because as with any Real Lawyer work, the specifics of the cases I'm working on are Strictly Confidential. (Apparently I'm in a random capitalization kind of mood.)

However, I can go through the general way the Project works. Like all in-house clinics at KU, the Project is partially staffed by law student interns supervised by Real Lawyers. I may be biased, but I think the Project has the best Real Lawyers. There are four total, one who works with us on our direct appeals, which are basically long papers arguing why a client's sentence deserves to be overturned, or their case remanded back to the trial court for another go.

The other three Real Lawyers are individually assigned to supervise us in our other cases. "Other cases" are the ones where we aren't arguing that the law was misapplied in the lower court, but that our clients have "new" causes of action that haven't been brought up yet, or they need help with issues that have come up since they went to prison.

If you didn't get it from the clinic's title, all of our clients have been convicted and as far as I know they are all incarcerated. Which means I've been to the Topeka Correctional Facility and Leavenworth, worn a visitor badge, and listened to the automated doors lock behind me as I pass through security. There's a very specific kind of claustrophobia that goes on inside a prison, but those visits were interesting, too.

My classroom experience of criminal law is still fresh in my mind. I loved studying criminal law and I hoped I would love applying criminal law to specific cases. The challenge is an interesting one. When I read cases in class, I didn't have to take sides; I could sit back, cross my arms, and let the advocates try to convince me. Let's be serious, I probably won't ever have that luxury in my career. Most lawyers aren't lucky and accomplished enough to be judges. As someone's representative, you have to do your best not to take their side necessarily, but to look at the law and see how it can help them. You have to believe that no matter what they did, everyone has a right to have the law applied to them fairly, even if you're not sure they deserve it. A system that works fairly and objectively is the best protection for everyone, and believing in that system is what criminal defense lawyers must do.