By: Louise Byrne
During undergrad, I took a class called “The Refugee Experience” that opened my eyes to a lot of unique challenges that refugees face. In this class, I volunteered with a non-profit, Commonwealth Catholic Charities (CCC), that supports refugees and worked on the legal team. This was a great experience for me, so I knew I wanted to work in that realm for my first legal internship. The work that I did for the CCC translated well to my work at Just Law International (JLI), but being in law school allowed me to take on more responsibilities. JLI is a small firm with six attorneys, three professional staff members, and two dogs. One of the dogs is named Regent but is called Reggie. The office also houses the Jubilee Campaign. The firm mostly takes asylum cases, often involving religious persecution. They do some other transactional visas, but I only worked on asylum cases. The firm is owned by Ann Buwalda.
The bulk of my work this summer was writing briefs to be submitted to court for asylum cases. I had to learn the elements of an asylum claim and the precedent in the different circuits we had clients in. I first started by reading a textbook that Ann had and then researching cases from the circuit I was writing the brief in. The first brief that I did was met with great feedback from Ann which was great to hear because I had put a lot of work into using everything I learned in LARW and led to many more brief assignments. I was extremely excited to hear that much of my work was submitted to court. It was for a client from Afghanistan and was to be focused on the proposed Particular Social Groups (PSGs), which is one of five grounds that a refugee can base their asylum claim on. For a PSG to be recognized by the court as a valid ground, it has to meet a three-part test. The other four grounds are much less contested and include race, religion, nationality, and political opinion. The process of writing briefs taught me a lot about asylum law and how the precedent and policy have developed.
This post was written by a student at Regent University School of Law. The views expressed in this post do not necessarily reflect those of Regent University, Regent Law School, or the Center for Global Justice.