An intensive, practice-based experience
Fred Millett, ’08, entered his externship at the Southern Center of Human Rights in the fall of 2007 little knowing that in addition to gaining practical experience while earning academic credit, he’d be at the United States Supreme Court listening to the nation’s top justices discuss arguments he had helped research. But the United States Supreme Court is exactly where Fred found himself on December 4, 2007.
He describes the case in the Winter 2008 issue of Pierce Law (forthcoming):
In 1996...Allen Snyder, an African-American, was convicted by an all-white jury and sentenced to death... in Jefferson Parish, LA. The prosecutor in his case struck all five potential black jurors using nearly half of his peremptory challenges to get an all-white jury. The prosecutor then, both in the media and to the jury during the sentencing phase, compared Snyder's case to the O.J. Simpson case, decided just a year earlier, and urged the all-white jury to not let Snyder ‘get away with it' like O.J. did. The jury sentenced Snyder to death and his conviction was upheld twice by the Louisiana Supreme Court. Snyder appealed to the United States Supreme Court, arguing that since the prosecutor peremptorily struck African-American jurors because of their race, his conviction and death sentence were unconstitutional based on the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. For this reason, the Supreme Court of the United States agreed to hear the case and granted certiorari.
The world will have to wait to learn the Supreme Court’s decision in Snyder vs. Louisiana, but in the meantime, there is no doubt that Fred has been placed in a remarkable legal and professional position while still attending law school. And that is the whole point of Pierce Law’s externship program.
Externships provide credit-earning opportunities for students to develop professional skills and judgment, reflect about the practice of law and their place in it, and build proficiency in specialized areas of practice. Students apply for externships in private practice, government and non-profit agencies, and corporations. Recent placements have included Black Entertainment Television, Calvin Klein, Inc., Innocence Project of the National Capital Region, Lawyers for the Creative Arts, Library of Congress, National Public Radio, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit and the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.
In Fred’s case, his externship was an opportunity to work in the public interest before moving after graduation into his job with Fitzpatrick, Cella, Harper and Scinto, an Intellectual Property “boutique” firm in New York City.
Externships are just one of many practice-based learning programs offered at Pierce Law, a school founded on the premise that its graduates will leave school knowing how to think like lawyers and how to practice. To that end, the school also offers nine clinics where, by law, Pierce Law students can do everything a lawyer does and has created a state-of-the-art courtroom utilized by students in presentations, practicums and moot court competition preparation.
Pierce Law is situated in Concord, the capital of New Hampshire and, as the state’s only law school, its students are in demand for law-related volunteer, paid and Federal Work-Study positions. The school’s select Daniel Webster Scholars are immersed deeply in the daily workings of the legal system and upon completion of the program are already certified as having passed the New Hampshire bar examination.
