In summer 2024, City St George’s alumna Katrina Deering embarked on an intensive international voluntary placement working with Death Row defence lawyers in the United States of America. She shares the eye-opening experience she went through, her reasons for pursuing studies and a career in Law, and the next steps towards achieving her dream of becoming a fully qualified barrister.
How did your placement come about? What made you accept?
The opportunity arose when I joined City in September 2020. I was involved with the City Law School Death Penalty Research clinic, working with Associate Professor Nikki Walsh (Associate Dean Partnership & Development, The City Law School). International law has always interested me, so my work on the death penalty was an extension of that. My clinical legal education project was focused on the global death penalty, but not in America. However, I got the chance to go to a capital defence office in America via Amicus, a UK-based legal charity which sends around 30-40 volunteers a year to the US to deal with casework in states where the death penalty still exists. To take part, you need to have a Law degree and be a postgrad student still working in the area. In return, Amicus provides extensive training, including in matters of race, religion, poverty and constitutional law where relevant.
What does this kind of placement comprise?
On the placement I got the chance to work on live cases but through the Amicus Training events you also meet exonerees. I’d previously been to South Africa and done some work with juveniles in prisons, so international volunteer work with a challenging legal angle is very much “my thing”. It’s pro bono work, which I find extra rewarding, plus the death penalty and miscarriages of justice are fascinating as well as very important legal issues that need our attention.
What challenges does such work pose?
When you go on an international placement like this, you have to be prepared to face a very different system from what we have in the UK, for example. Police will go about investigations differently, and so too the Crime Prosecution Service, as the US system is not at all the same. Interviewing procedures also differ. Sometimes defendants may be confronted with ineffective counsel or attorneys who don’t seem to be as invested as they should, although I’m happy to say in the case of my posting that the attorneys really did care.
Paperwork is another challenge – in some parts of the world you’ll still be dealing with archive boxes, meaning no digital evidence. I found myself sitting in a room literally going through streams of paper in order to find what was disclosed and gradually build a picture by looking at other crimes committed around the same time, interviewing witnesses, working with mitigation investigators and reviewing extensive amounts of CCTV.
Can you tell us about any of the cases you worked on?
One involved someone who’d been in custody for eight years for an offence that happened in January 2017. It was an armed robbery, double homicide case, and the capital punishment trial was due to be held in September of this year. We had meetings with the district attorneys, and they actually dismissed the Bill of Death, which was really positive. We thought the case would then go to a normal trial, but it ended up being dismissed altogether, with the person in custody due to be released soon after serving the rest of his time for offences convicted of whilst in prison.
What feelings does working on such a case provoke?
You spend so much time reading into someone’s case that you get the impression of really knowing them. Often you’re having to delve into the family history prior to their birth in order to look for mitigating factors, so you get this almost forensic view into their life and background. Then you have to balance the nature of the work with how underfunded it is. The process can be very long, and a lot of people are involved, which is entirely normal as someone’s life is quite literally in the balance.
How does this recent experience fit into your career plan?
I’m a career changer, as I started out studying Psychology. I enjoyed the process of understanding people, but going down the whole psychologist route wasn’t for me. That said, I’ve taken some of the learnings from those studies into my personal and working life. I also worked in the banking sector but felt that something was missing. Deep down, I knew Law was the direction I wanted to take. I always wanted that wig and gown! Part of building up my profile and skillsets was to do a lot of pro bono work, including volunteering in homeless shelters. You have to understand people, life and society to some extent, otherwise you’re not going to understand your client once you become a lawyer, so all these different experiences have stood me in good stead.
How did you start on the legal path?
I went with the flow to begin with, but when I got a first-class degree I realised it was the right move. That was when I decided to do a Master’s and aim for the Bar. The City Law School was the perfect choice due to its good reputation for Bar studies, plus I wanted to be London-based. I took the LLM with Advanced Criminal Litigation alongside the Bar Vocational Studies. This coincided with lockdown, so classes were conducted 100% online. That said, we still managed to build up a rapport among students, setting up WhatsApp groups to keep the flow of information and relations between classmates going. Whether online or offline, the programme requires a lot of hard work and prep, plus we benefitted from really supportive lecturers.
Where are you working now?
Very soon after my return from my Amicus placement, I began a new position as a Criminal Law Paralegal at Bindmans solicitors, which is one of the UK’s leading human rights law firms. This will provide me with invaluable insight into how crime works from a different perspective, which hopefully will provide me with more career development in view of the pupillage route I will be going down.
How does the pupillage training scheme operate?
Applications for pupillage open in November and run until May, so I’m gearing up for a tough process but one that is essential for an aspiring barrister. It’s a vocational form of training which you have to complete to obtain the certificate required to then practise as a barrister and be able to go to Crown Court. On average this process takes about four years, this year being the third of my applying, so fingers crossed! The system is points-based, with extra credit depending on the grade you receive for your Law degree, other academic factors and professional placements and experience such as my recent one on Death Row.
During the first six months of pupillage, you shadow your supervisor, follow them to court, see how they work and help them with their cases. Over the next six-month period, you start working on your own cases, after which you’ll be pretty much on your own feet, have passed your pupillage and (hopefully) receive what is known as a tenancy. That’s when you become fully qualified as a barrister. It’s a gruelling process but one I am very much up for!
Any advice to those considering this path?
It’s a cliché, but if at first you don’t succeed… If, like me, you don’t manage over the first two years, keep trying but above all enhance your profile by acquiring more and more experience, all of which you can add to your next application. You need to prepare the application process very thoroughly and well in advance – it’s very demanding but well worth it, not only if you reach the end goal of becoming a barrister but also for the kind of experience and knowledge you’ll acquire along the way, of which my Amicus placement is a perfect example.
Footnote: since publication of this article, Katrina was also shortlisted for the Amicus Champions of Justice Award 2024.
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The official Amicus website: Amicus ALJ |