Internship Experience Will Help Muskie Fellow Strengthen Legal Aid in Georgia

Access to legal assistance can have a dramatic impact on individuals in crisis, helping families keep their homes and avoid foreclosure, allowing victims of domestic violence to obtain protective orders, and ensuring that workers receive compensation promised by their employers. Andro Gigauri, a 2008 Muskie fellow from Georgia, learned more about the U.S. legal aid system during his summer internship at the Legal Services Corporation (LSC) in Washington, DC and made connections that will help him expand legal aid to low-income people in his home country.

Established by Congress in 1974, LSC operates as a private, nonprofit corporation that promotes equal access to justice and provides grants for high-quality civil legal assistance to low-income Americans.

During his internship, Andro rotated among various offices within LSC and had the opportunity to visit legal aid organizations and attend a hearing in the Senate. As a public policy student at George Mason University, his work focused on policy issues, such as the gap in access to justice.
“Access by all is a fundamental principle in every state that respects the rule of law,” Andro said. “For every person served by LSC-assisted programs, at least one other person is turned down due to inadequate resources. Equal access to justice represents an ultimate goal, and it is important to pursue this goal and get closer and closer to it.”

The Georgian government supports access to justice by the poor through its legal aid bureaus, but Andro believes this assistance must be expanded to cover more regions and target more groups. He says that in order for the government-provided services to function efficiently, future steps must be based on models from other countries, including the United States.

“My plan is to bring the knowledge that I gained through the internship back to Georgia and contribute to the further strengthening of legal aid delivery to the poor,” he concluded. “During such a limited internship—only three months—it is difficult to learn the [intricacies] of the system, but now I have a general understanding of how civil legal aid works in the United States, and it’s equally important that I’ve established contact with LSC professionals and I know who to reach out to for advice in the future.”