Legal Internship Wraps Up Pilot Program

By BILL BELLEN
OTSEGO COUNTY

For years, New York State has been faced with a compounding legal conundrum. It is well known that there is a severe imbalance in the citizen-to-lawyer ratio between rural and urban regions of the state. Out of the roughly 1,700 legal aid attorneys in New York, fewer than 500 serve residents outside of New York City, Buffalo and Rochester. Hamilton County is particularly affected by this negative distribution, with only 19 attorneys serving the entire county. A single case involving the Department of Social Services removing children from a home could occupy up to 14 of these attorneys, leading to a serious backup in the courts’ ability to administer legal justice.

These statistics were shared in the opening of a briefing to the New York State Unified Court System from Associate Court Attorney Sarah Cowen upon the conclusion of the pilot for the state’s Rural Pathways Program. Brainchild of Cowen herself, the initiative launched this year in partnership between the state courts and numerous bar associations in Otsego, Clinton, and St. Lawrence counties. The program began on June 2, lasting six weeks and offering two law students that have completed their second year of schooling (rising 3Ls) per each of the three counties the opportunity for a legal internship.

Cowen shared that “members at the bar and other people who work here took the interns out so they could get to know the area a little bit. They were sitting in with clients. They watched a trial from beginning to end. They did research. They went to court a lot. They basically got to see what an attorney does on a daily basis here in Otsego County.”

The program elicited great interest from aspiring lawyers both inside and outside of New York, and even beyond the borders of the country itself. Otsego County’s interns consisted of two rising 3Ls; Emre Ozsahin, student at Albany Law and citizen of Türkiye, and Sabreena Narvaez, student at University of North Texas at Dallas College of Law and a Texas native. These two participated in a weekly rotation that saw them view and discuss an A2 felony case, perform research, learn about private practice in small communities, and learn about Supreme Court practice, among other activities.