TWENTY-EIGHT aspiring lawyers at the University of the West Indies, Mona, (UWI) Faculty of Law have been selected for the second staging of the Mona Law Professional Internship Programme (MLPIP).

This group doubles the number of students selected during the pilot programme last academic year where LLB degree students were first assigned to organisations in the Corporate Area under the patronage of Natalie Corthèsy, programme coordinator.

The brainchild of Corthèsy, she said that the 28 students represent the best of their cohort of up-and-coming lawyers from UWI, based on the fact that they are all a part of the group of students with the highest Grade Point Averages (GPA).

“We do want to offer our students that job opportunity and experience which they cannot provide for themselves. After the theoretical, the students need to experience law in practice and it was important that we opened doors for our students which they can also use to network themselves,” Corthèsy said at the launch of the 2014/2015 programme which was held at the Faculty of Law recently.

Corthèsy explained that a number of those selected this year were a part of the success of the pilot version, and their performance helped to pave the way for its continuity.

Interns will be placed at numerous law firms and legal departments of Government agencies and private sector companies, namely the Supreme Court, Office of the Contractor General, the Legal Reform Institute, Jamaica Intellectual Property Office (JIPO), Broadcasting Commission, Sagicor, and LIME.

According to Carla-Anne Harris-Roper, acting deputy director, legal reform, Jhade Lindsay, who will again be a part of the programme, was an outstanding intern.

“I was pleased to work with her. His string of work caused me to have been able to bat for another placement. Based on her work, I was able to confidently say to my superiors that this programme has proved itself and we can, this year, take somebody again,” she said.

Her testimony was echoed by Carol Simpson, executive director, JIPO: “We will continue to participate in this professional internship programme… We can show them that as lawyers, we are not really assigned to our desks, but we do seminars, we host conferences and workshops, we negotiate international treaties, and, as interns, they are exposed to that sort of thing,” Simpson said.

— Ainsworth Morris