My internship was with an affiliate non-profit organisation of Amicus' in St Louis, Missouri. The internship itself was focused on a research study that has an aim of proving that the use of the death penalty is arbitrary in the state of Missouri. This mainly encompassed working in the Civil Courts, where you would extract the information you thought was relevant to the study, from the selected case files and upload it to the main hard-drive.

The cases themselves were crimes of first degree or second degree murder, at times they were challenging to read as it involved understanding the processes of the US judicial system. It was also a challenge reading the facts of the cases themselves as they could involve a lot of violence and racism - racism was apparent in the judicial process and it was a point that was incredibly frustrating for me. However, this was quite a learning curve, and depending what type of law you want to go into, it’s something you have to fight against on a daily basis. 

The city of St Louis itself was quite a culture shock, however, it was a city with charms, particularly in the neighbourhoods and parks. I stayed in one of the neighbourhoods and could not recommend it more, I got to see a side of the city I would not have had I stayed downtown.

On the whole, my internship was incredible and taught me a lot, just make sure you take every opportunity as they come and ask for a variety of work.