Week Five: Walking Fast
To those who are reading my blog,
Congratulations! You have stumbled upon week five of the summer series of my time at NCSC! Or maybe you read it diligently every week and were waiting for the most recent installment... shout out to my fans in E.Stl, D.C., and Texas.
This week I was mainly focusing on an assignment on the Liberia record keeping. NCSC is working on a guide for the court clerks to decide what needs to comprise the manual for how to work in the court. I was focusing my research on other projects that NCSC has created similar guides for, including the Caribbean, Morocco, and Tunisia. I also was looking through some older United States (1980s- 90s) manuals that would be similar to the level of advancement that is in Liberia. Much of Liberia does not have electronic record keeping so the research had to focus on the basic requirements for court clerks.
I also worked with Evan and Judge Mize on an assignment focusing on a House resolution that sought to place limits on contingency fees for lawyers. We researched the laws of different states and were able to compile that information to circulate. The results vary by state, but over half place some sort of limitation on the fees the attorney can collect.
Finally, Evan and I were able to go to a symposium at the United States Institute of Peace. The symposium was entitled, “Lessons from the Field: Innovation in Rule of Law Programming” and was held by the Justice Sector Training, Research & Coordination Program (JUSTRAC). The event had multiple panels that focused on different aspects of rule of law programming, including harnessing political will, overcoming obstacles, and using technology to implement rule of law reform. I learned a lot about the challenges that experts have faced, including some interesting success stories. One of my favorite segments was the technology discussion, where one of the panelists had developed an app that could record videos and upload them, but just in case the person was in danger he or she could immediately close and hide the app, but the file was not deleted. It was complicated and I'm probably not the best person to attempt to explain it...
I know this may come as a shock, but it is officially the halfway point of my blogging venture. Perhaps I will pick it up outside the William & Mary domain... (let me know your thoughts).
A bunch of malarky later,
Bryony
P.S. Highly recommend going to monuments at night.