News Archive

Michelle Yockelson, 2L, is currently in Myanmar for the summer working with the Bridges Across Borders South East Asia Community Legal Education Initiative (BABSEA CLE) in the Clinical Legal Education English program. Yockelson is there as an intern through the law school’s Program in International Human Rights Law.

Places at Pyay University, her role is to teach the faculty of the Law Department legal English, and the English needed to engage in social justice work, capacity building, and empowerment education. Yockelson develops her own lesson plans and class activities, which teach of access to justice and legal professional ethics, with a focus on development of skills and language capacity building. Another facet of her work is to help strengthen civil society by teaching the values inherent in social justice.

Of the experience itself, Yockelson speaks highly. “Myanmar as a country is going through a political transformation,” she said. “The law professors I work with are motivated and impassioned by the change.” Yockelson has nothing but positive things to say about the people she’s met, saying they are “open minded and beyond hospitable. After my first week here I had developed such aa strong and close friendship with the faculty. As Dr. SanSan told me the first day I arrived, we are family here.”

Yockelson is one of eight IU McKinney J.D. and LL.M. students who are spending their summer in 12 different cities across the globe.

In the photo, Yockelson (in the red shirt) is with some of her students in the classroom.

By Gino Maley