Giving

A Great Summer Job

Supported by the BU Law Access Fund, two students reflect on the value of their judicial internships.

Sarah Klim (’22) and Kennedy Barber-Fraser (’22) both spent this summer working as interns for Judge Ojetta Rogeriee Thompson (’76) on the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit, mostly writing bench memos and researching a wide range of legal issues.

“I’ve loved it,” Klim says. “The exposure to different areas of the law has helped round out my understanding of the law and build on what I learned in my first year.”

Says Barber-Fraser: “My writing has improved so much! And I’m more comfortable now with receiving feedback.”

Klim studied English and art at Florida State University, then taught English in Japan for nearly four years. When she returned to the US, law school seemed like the next step.

“I always really liked reading, writing, helping people understand things,” she says. And her mother’s experience influenced her, too: “She wanted to go to law school, but it wasn’t really possible for her.”

Now, Klim is the first in her family to attend a professional school, and she serves as vice president of BU Law’s First Generation Professionals group.

Both of Barber-Fraser’s mothers are doctors, “so I couldn’t say, ‘Mom, what do you think of this school or that school?’ They didn’t know about it,” she says. “BU wasn’t really on my radar.” But she was interested in immigrants’ rights, in part because her grandmother immigrated to the US, so when she learned of the BU Law Immigrants’ Rights & Human Trafficking Program, Barber-Fraser says, “I was intrigued by it.”

Now, as a student, Barber-Fraser is working to help immigrants in that very program. “So it’s cool that it’s kind of come full circle,” she says.

Her judicial internship, too, has been deeply satisfying. As she researched the claims submitted to the court and reflected on how her bench memos might influence the judge, she found herself moved by the opportunity to make a difference in people’s lives. “These are real people, in a real court, that I’m working for,” she remembers thinking. “It’s awesome to know that my work was having an impact.”

Likewise, Klim’s experience with “Judge O,” as her clerks often call her, “has been great,” she says, even though the pandemic meant she worked remotely. “She does make an effort to meet [online] with all of us,” Klim says. “And it’s really an honor to work for someone who’s so good at her job.”

It’s also something that was possible only because of the BU Law Access Fund. Thanks to generous donors, this fund was established this year to meet needs that regular financial aid does not cover, from purchasing interview attire to handling emergency expenses in the wake of COVID-19. For Klim and Barber-Fraser, the fund provided a stipend for the summer. “The stipend was huge for me,” Klim says. “I support myself entirely on student loans and scholarships. Many internships are unpaid, and you don’t get credit for them so you can’t apply for a loan. I don’t think it would have been possible for me to do it at all without the stipend.”

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