From Malibu to Elk Ridge, Negotiation Competition Prepares Students for Service
Student takes lessons learned in law classes and is able to immediately help a small city find resolutions to problems while still attending school.
Change people's lives at home and around the world
February 2018
BYU students recently provided pro bono legal counsel to refugees in Texas as part of a donation-funded externship. More than an experience-building class project, their efforts may have actually saved lives.
Ten students spent five days in Texas preparing asylum-seeking refugees for interviews with government agents. Refugees can’t typically afford legal representation and often don’t know the local language of the country to which they’ve fled.
Courtney Young, one of the BYU law students, recalls a woman she counseled who had fled Haiti because of severe discrimination, was subsequently ill-treated as a refugee in two other countries, and eventually walked to the United States in hopes of finding safety.
Regardless of whether they ever work in immigration law, Young and her classmates saw the law in action, and many of them described the experience as life-changing.
“I learned a lot more from this experience than I would have just sitting in a classroom,” Young says. “I’ll never forget going to Texas.”
Student takes lessons learned in law classes and is able to immediately help a small city find resolutions to problems while still attending school.
Union, justice, tranquility, defence [sic], welfare, and liberty are words in the preamble of the Constitution of the United States. Their meanings may seem clear to you today, but do you know how they were used in 1787 when the document was written? And does a change in meaning really matter?
Brianna Rosier arrived at BYU dedicated to a future in public interest; she now enters her final year at law school with an idea of what her future holds.