FIrst day...

Yesterday was my first day on the internship. I will be honest and tell you I was quite nervous the night before and morning of but I had no reason to be so. I felt a bit lost when I first came but there was a trial to start at 8.30 so I got to sit in while the prosecutor and the defense attorney's discussed certain aspects with Judge Benson. When the trial began it started with the process of selecting a jury. It was a long and thorough process but I thought it was very interesting and got to sit in on all the interviews.

The case we are doing is a drug trafficking case where the defendant is accused of both drug trafficking and conspiracy to drug trafficking. As the jury was selected it was important to make sure that they could be totally fair and not involve personal opinions in the evaluation and therefore there was the need for personal interviews in certain cases. Judge Benson also emphasized the importance to consider the defendant innocent until proven otherwise, He said that at this moment he should be considered just as innocent as you and me.

That trial went on until a little after 2pm and I had lunch then read a little in the law books. After that was a hearing on a tax fraud. That hearing was perhaps not as interesting as the Drug trial but still it was interesting to observe the judge and the attorneys.

I realize that it is a new language to learn and I think it will take me some time but Judge Benson told me that it is just like a missionary learning religions words I will learn legal words so that I can speak like a native:)

the office is so laid back and nice. They have a foosball table, ping-pong rackets (we play on the dining table) a miniature putting green, darts...you see what Im saying. At the end of the day we sat in the Cougar-den and started throwing a ball. Apparently they have this game where they throw the ball really hard at each other and the one who drops it three times is out. I can tell you I was not the first one to be out:)

I think this will be some very good months!