LAS intern spotlight: meet Genesis

January 31, 2020

Genesis Hernandez first joined the Legal Aid Society as a summer intern in 2019. She worked with Supervising Attorney Andrea Belard in the Safety & Family Practice Group. After interning with a judge for a semester, Genesis returned to LAS to work with us again for the spring.

Genesis shares her experience interning with LAS:

What practice group are you interning with and what kind of work are you doing?

I am with the Safety and Family Practice Group. I assist Andrea Belard with her caseload, which mostly consists of divorce cases. Those cases involve issues such as child support, custody, and dividing assets. I draft pleadings, accompany her to court, sit in on client intakes, and relay information between Andrea and the clients.

What do you enjoy about interning with LAS?

I love interning at LAS because I feel welcome and embraced by everyone here. I am included in meetings with clients, with the staff, and I get to observe and learn from the best. I am here to serve the clients and assist the attorneys, but it stood out to me when an attorney told me, the staff is also here to help me. I really value how everyone takes the time to sit with me, answer any questions, and explain case information and procedures.

What kind of experience or training do you think prepared you best for this internship? (i.e. a class, volunteer work, etc.)

As a college student, I interned at Civic Legal Corps, where I first learned about family law cases. During my first semester of law school, I took Civil Procedure. While interning has put into context what I learned from class, I came in understanding the stages of a case, rules of the courtroom, and how documents are filed with the court. I have taken three semesters of Legal Analysis, Research & Communication, which have prepared to efficiently research the law and find cases relevant to the issues in our cases. Many cases involve financial issues. This semester, I will have an even better understanding of resolving those issues because I am taking a course called Financial Aspects of Divorce.