Professor James Cooper, Director of Proyecto ACCESO, paid a visit to Santiago de Chile’s new Centro de Justicia in the San Miguel neighborhood of Santiago Sur.
There are five students from California Western School of Law interning at the Public Defenders Office under the direction of Claudio Pavlic, Public Defender for the South of Santiago.
Alissa Bjerkhoel, Solomon Chang, Victor Herrera, Tiffany Javier, and Sarah Yousuf are all in Santiago for four months assisting the Public Defenders in their daily work.
“The students have participated in trials, prepared legal memoranda for the lawyers, and even got to watch a public defender get robbed of his cell phone in front of the office,” says Cooper, “Now that’s a very intense, first-hand experience in a new criminal system!”