Dan Jones Describes his Internship in London

HPJ offers a wide variety of internship and study abroad opportunities that allow students to gain real world experience that complements their classroom education. Below is Dan Jones' description of his internship in London, England, and his thoughts on what he brought home from the experience.

Hi, my name is Dan Jones, and I recently spent the summer studying abroad in England. The programme was set up through the Washington Center, which is an internship center in Washington, D.C. that routinely does these types of internships domestically and abroad. The Washington Center subsequently worked through CAPA, which is a similar programme based out of London for study abroad students. I was always interested in studying abroad because of my interest in the field of international law and the knowledge and experience you can gain simply from travelling and being elsewhere.

The programme ran as such: We spent about a week in Washington, D.C., getting acclimated to the city and taking a course that prepared us for relevant issues while we were abroad: political economy, homelessness, and culture were all discussed thoroughly, as well as general societal and political norms of England. This week had us living in Alexandria, VA, where we were within walking distance of the metro. We got to see exactly what it was like to live in a professional setting in the American workplace.

After this week, we all had flights to London Heathrow airport. After arriving, I grabbed the Tube off to where I was living in London, a place called Scala House just north of Tottenham Court Road. If you know the Tube system at all, you'll realise that this location is in the heart of central London. Our apartment was within walking distance of University Central London, The British Museum, Leicester Square, and Oxford Street, and only a short Tube ride away from the Houses of Parliament, The Thames River Walk, Fleet Street, Hyde Park, Piccadilly CIrcus, Abbey Road, and a variety of other places that came into interest as our 8 weeks there went on.

Probably the most rewarding part of this experience was where I worked. I interned at the Commonwealth Lawyers' Association (CLA), which is a professional organisation that works toward good governance and promotes the rule of law in Commonwealth territories. Although that sounds painfully memorised, or perhaps even copied and pasted from the website (www.commonwealthlawyers.com, if you're interested), it was actually just off the top of my head. And the reason I could do that was because it was so interesting to work there.

The CLA does a number of activities throughout the Commonwealth, biggest of those being putting on their annual Commonwealth Law Conference (CLC) in different locations on a biennial basis. Additionally, training workshops and programmes are run through the CLA, as well as holding governments accountable when they violate rule of law or the independence of the legal profession.

As an intern here, I did do a bit of bookkeeping--that's part of the benefit for a small but prominent entity like the CLA gets for having interns. But I had so much other work that this faded into the background. I got to research developing situations in third world countries in the Commonwealth, aid in strategic planning and statement development, as well as simply meeting some pretty high-profile lawyers from England and around the world. My best story about this had to have been taking a phone call, asking the man how to spell his name, and then realising later that he was the Attorney General of India.

Other activities I enjoyed while I was in England included: seeing the ancient city of Bath and Stonehenge, as well as Ireland, Scotland, and Oxford; checking out the quite active nightlife and interesting pubs in London; seeing a variety of museums including the Churchill Museum, The National Gallery, The British Museum, and many others; and taking photos of the London Eye, Big Ben, and all those other touristy things.

To say it was an eye-opening experience would be an understatement--I got to see what I would like to do when I get older. The field of international law is somewhat amorphous--that is to say, we all know it exists, but its hard to put a finger on exactly what it is. I understand know the implications of immigration issues, human rights institutions, international business markets, and how the Commonwealth itself works. This experience was certainly education at its finest, in all realms.

Dan Jones

To read more about Dan's experience, check out Dan's ONU blog page, and for an article by Jamienne Scott, about Dan's experience, click here.