Just wanted to give a shout out to IBJ Summer 2008 Intern Bettina Roberts for being the poster girl for Duke Law’s Public Interest Program. Because of her unique experience – culminating in the training of 100+ Indian legal aid lawyers (photos) – Bettina was profiled by the Duke Law communications department.  An excerpt is below…

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Bettina Roberts ’10
Roberts, a JD/LLM student, tells how her summer internship with the Geneva-based nonprofit International Bridges to Justice led her to India.

Bettina Roberts ’10 knew she’d be spending the summer working abroad in her pursuit of a JD/LLM in international and comparative law. But when she boarded a plane for Switzerland for a job with Geneva-based nonprofit International Bridges to Justice (IBJ), she had no idea how multinational her summer would be.

“I’d been to Geneva before and I speak French, so I knew I wanted to go to there,” she said. “I also knew I was interested in criminal law. Other than that, I didn’t really have any criteria. And when I went in to work on my first day, I had no idea what I’d be doing. I definitely didn’t expect to end up in India.”

She also didn’t expect to help plan a training seminar for more than 100 legal aid defense attorneys in India. The training is especially important there, Roberts said, because there is very little public funding for defense attorneys representing indigent defendants, and very few attorneys who focus only on legal aid work.

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