Ashley Carter, JD ’17, a Judicial Law Clerk at the Superior Court of the District of Columbia, was awarded an Equal Justice Works Fellowship. Ms. Carter's fellowship will be sponsored by Greenberg Traurig, LLP and Steptoe & Johnson LLP. She will begin her fellowship in September 2019.
Ms. Carter will work with the DC Volunteer Lawyers Project (DCVLP), a local legal aid organization that recruits, trains, and supervises volunteer attorneys to represent domestic violence survivors and at-risk children. She will open a legal clinic for survivors of domestic violence, sexual assault, stalking, and child abuse. Ms. Carter will offer brief services and legal advice to anyone who needs assistance obtaining a Civil Protection Order and will train pro-bono attorneys from the DC area to staff the clinic. “Our hope is that we will be able to host this clinic inside the Superior Court of the District of Columbia, which would be a great way to make sure we can help people at any stage of the process,” she explained. Ms. Carter also intends on taking on a limited number of Civil Protection Order cases for full representation.
Ms. Carter shared that she did not always intend on a career as a legal aid attorney. “My plan was to become a prosecutor, but my interests have expanded and changed over time.” She explained that her experiences volunteering as a trauma counselor with a rape crisis organization combined with her internship with an organization working with refugees shaped her decision to focus on providing legal services to low-income survivors of violence.
After her fellowship ends, Ms. Carter hopes to work with DCVLP to make the legal clinic permanent. Ultimately, she would like to continue providing direct legal services to low-income clients, either at a legal aid organization or a public defense agency.
For students who are interested in public service or who want to follow in a similar path, Ms. Carter encourages them to start exploring their interests early and not to limit themselves to legal aid organizations or law school programs. “I volunteered with the Mid-Atlantic Innocence Project and the International Refugee Assistance Project during my first year, and those experiences were incredibly beneficial when I applied to summer jobs,” she said.
Ms. Carter also recommends participating in a clinical program. “I participated in both the Family Justice Litigation Clinic and the Criminal Appeals and Post-Conviction Services Clinic. The clinical faculty at GW Law is incredible, and the skills you learn in clinics are invaluable in practice.”
Ms. Carter’s last piece of advice is to think outside of the box and outside of DC when it comes to summer internships. She spent her first summer working at the public defender’s office in Lexington, KY, and her second summer at the Legal Assistance Foundation in Chicago, IL. “I had incredible experiences at both organizations,” she said.
Ms. Carter encourages more GW Law students to consider Skadden and Equal Justice Works fellowships when starting law school. “Fellowships allow you to create your dream job from the very beginning and allow you to partner with any organization you choose. It’s never too early to start planning a project.”