Internship helps this senior hone plans to step up to the Bar.

America’s legal system isn’t so exciting as the show “Law and Order,” but Cassandra Abdulla wants to be a lawyer anyway.

 “It’s very different from what’s on TV,” she says. “There isn’t so much tension.”
Thrills aside, Cassandra views the legal profession as a way to exercise her passion for social justice.

“I want to help people who are suffering,” she says after her Monday morning internship shift at the Natick and Framingham District Courthouse.

She interns in the Clerk’s office, tracking down dockets in the courthouse vault. She prefers to sit in on hearings. Much of what this senior law and government major sees in the courtroom is less noble than her aspirations: traffic and parking tickets, minor fines and probation hearings. Something important – an abuse case, for example – gains her undivided attention.

“I want to help victims fight for justice,” she says.

Cassandra also sees what happens behind the scenes. “I’ve noticed the lawyers and how they prepare,” she says. She often is the one who retrieves their dockets. “There’s so much work that goes into a case. There’s lots of research.”

In order to accept the unpaid internship, Cassandra works as an assistant for one of her sociology professors and at the Regis Career Center. Even with these jobs, what really helps are scholarships and grants.  She receives the Anniversary Scholarship, Gilbert Grants, and Regis Grants.

Undergraduate work is almost over for Cassandra, a student with a 3.4 G.P.A. who’s looking into law schools. She knows she’ll be a better candidate with this internship on her resume. 

 “I’m learning a lot,” she says. “I get to see how things actually work, and that’s going to help me in my next step toward law school.”