Ilana Abramson (’17) Receives Massachusetts Bar Foundation Legal Intern Fellowship
The rising 2L is spending her summer as a fellow working for the AIDS Action Committee in Boston.
Ilana Abramson (’17) wanted to go to law school to make a difference in peoples’ lives, and she wanted to accomplish that through the law. This summer, after only one year of law school, she received the competitive Massachusetts Bar Foundation (MBF) Legal Intern Fellowship, which is allowing her to do just that.
The fellowship is designed to “give talented law students the experience and encouragement they need to pursue careers in the public interest law sector while providing legal aid to organizations with much-needed additional staff capacity for the summer.” The MBF awards these fellowships to students who do summer internships at nonprofit organizations providing civil legal services to low-income clients in Massachusetts.
Abramson’s fellowship is allowing her to work for the AIDS Action Committee (AAC) in Boston. She is interning in the legal services department, which provides legal assistance on a variety of issues. Although she’s only been in her position for a few weeks, Abramson is already fully immersed in the organization. “Just during my first week, I saw legal issues regarding housing, family law, discrimination, and more,” she says.
Her responsibilities during the summer will include conducting intakes at the legal clinic, following up with clients, researching various legal issues and questions, and assisting the AAC’s attorneys with any other client questions they might have. The direct interaction with clients is one of the reasons Abramson chose to intern at the AAC. “I know I want to pursue a career in public interest, where I can work directly with clients,” she says, “and I also know that I need to get more comfortable with it and gain as much experience as possible.”
Originally from a small town in northern Vermont, Abramson attended Brandeis University, where she received a BA in Psychology and Women and Gender Studies. While in college, she worked for a summer as a victim’s advocate intern at the Chittenden County State’s Attorney’s Office on a Social Justice World of Work Fellowship.
After graduating from Brandeis, she did a legal AmeriCorps program at the Massachusetts Law Reform Institute (MLRI) in the family law, immigration, homelessness, and benefits units. “While at MLRI, I learned about the effects of poverty on individuals in Massachusetts and how it can impact so many different aspects of one’s life,” she recalls. “This experience solidified my desire to go to law school and work toward a career in public interest.”
When it came time to choose a law school, Abramson says she chose BU Law because of the public interest opportunities offered, both in and out of the classroom. She has already begun to take advantage of them, spending herspring break on a pro bono trip to Biloxi, Mississippi, where she helped individuals gather documents so they could recover damages from the BP Oil Spill Settlement. “It was great to provide actual assistance and see the law unfold in real life as opposed to just reading case studies in class,” she says.
Abramson has also found that her classroom experiences have helped to prepare her for her challenging and varied work at the AAC. “Each day in my internship I hear terms and phrases that I know I picked up in my various classes,” she says. “Civil procedure questions come up often (how to properly serve summons to someone in jail or in South America), and the portion of my property class that we spent on housing has been helpful. My research and writing class has certainly been of great assistance when I am asked to research topics that I know nothing about and try to turn it into a comprehensive memo to give to my supervisor.”
Next year, in addition to taking classes, Abramson looks forward to participating in the Criminal Law Clinic. “The clinic will expose me to a different legal world that I cannot wait to learn about,” she says.
For now, she is thrilled to be learning on the job, and deploying the skills she has gained from her 1L year. “I have already learned a lot, and I know that as the summer goes on, the classes I took and skills I gained over this past year will likely come into play whether I realize that or not.”
Abramson is still excited at being selected as a fellow, and is “extremely grateful to be recognized for my interest in public interest and strong desire to pursue a career in this field. Receiving this fellowship has been an incredible step toward helping me discover what exactly I want to do with my legal career. It has encouraged me to continue on the public interest path, and it reassures me that I will be able to make a career out of this.”
Reported by Sara Womble (CFA’14)