Anna Schieffelin Blog #3

Today for my internship I spent the morning at a self help clinic a few blocks from the Pro Bono office. Here, anybody can walk in from 9 to 12 to get help filing for custody, divorce, name changes, notaries etc. People can also file for restraining or protective orders regarding domestic violence. One lady came all the way from California to file a report about her mother being abused in a retirement home. Another man came in to file a restraining order against his neighbor who tried to hit him with his car and that morning tried to hit him and his grandmother with the car. I sat at the front desk and helped people sign in on the different forms and called people in to be seen by different lawyers. Below is a picture of me in front of a real estate auction sign, which is to help people find homes who do not have the resources to find a nice place and need to get out of their current living situation as quickly as possible. After lunch I accompanied Mr. George back to the court house in Gretna and I spent 3 hours sitting through different court cases. Many of the cases were people coming in to receive new dates for court hearings, so it was pretty dull the first hour. There was one interesting case where a woman came in to try and get custody of her kids, but had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder, depression, insomnia, and PTSD, among other things. She was extremely rude to the judge and kept rolling her eyes and interrupting the court hearing and she continuously skipped her phycological therapy and anger management sessions. At one point she blamed all of her mental disorders on whiplash which I thought was funny. I've learned from the past week and a half interning here that there is a lot of boring paperwork and down time, and a lot of the court hearings I've been to have not been all that interesting, so maybe I won't become a lawyer. But it has been interesting at times, so I'm glad I chose to do my internship here and I've learned a lot.