FEATURE ARTICLE
THE SUMMER OF THE COVID-19 COURT EXTERNSHIPS
By Judge Shama Mesiwala and Saraf Ahmed
Judge Shama Mesiwala sits in Department 133 of the Sacramento County Superior Court. Saraf Ahmed is a 2L at UC Davis School of Law and Judge Mesiwala's summer extern.
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or decades, law students have spent their summers getting a taste of their future as attorneys — interning at firms, working at legal aid organizations, and externing with judges at courts. This year, even with the COVID-19 pandemic, the U.S. District Court, Eastern District of California, the California Court of Appeal, Third Appellate District, and the Superior Court of California, County of Sacramento, have maintained robust externship programs for our law students. Some court externs have received less traditional research work, but all have been finding ways to diversify their skills and establish thriving relationships with their supervising judges. Rising 2L Saraf Ahmed from UC Davis worked closely with Sacramento Superior Court Judge Shama Mesiwala. Together, they read books about American history and professional development, including Roots and New Women’s Dress for Success. Ahmed also sought out volunteer opportunities in the area of law she
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1. Hon. Shama Mesiwala 2. Hon. Elena Duarte 3. Hon. Louis Mauro 4. Hon. Helena Gweon
wishes to pursue, including serving as a counselor for the housing crisis hotline, Tenants Together. Under their supervising judges’ guidance, some students studied the virus’s effect on the law and judicial processes. Jaspreet Lochab, rising 2L from UC Davis and extern to Sacramento Superior Court Judge Helena Gweon, wrote about the pandemic’s impact on criminal justice processes across the country. This included how Texas, Missouri, and Oregon handled trials in response to Sixth Amendment speedy and public trial objections. Rising 2L Krystan Miller-Caballero from UC Davis — who externed with Sacramento Superior Court Judge Emily Vasquez — and Ahmed researched issues of landlord/tenant law and unlawful detainer procedures in the wake of COVID-19. Judge Gweon is the supervisor of the externship program for the Sacramento Superior Court, duties she assumed when Judge Russell Hom was elected by his colleagues to be the presiding judge.
SACRAMENTO LAWYER | Summer 2020 | www.sacbar.org
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Justice Ron Robie of the Third Appellate District noted that prior to the proliferation of Zoom hearings due to the pandemic, going to court presented physical and financial challenges to many indigent litigants across the state. “People may not have been able to come down to, say, Monterey for a 15-minute hearing. Buses don’t reach all court locations there. And it’s the same in [the more remote areas like regions of] Fresno,” he observed. “We’ve experienced the same thing with people coming from remote parts of the state, particularly on the criminal docket, who travel from the farthest corners of the Eastern District — it’s usually a genuine hardship,” said Magistrate Judge Dennis Cota. “[Technology] is a great benefit in that situation. They can just appear in court from home.” The atypical nature of this summer also presented opportunities for law students to observe firsthand changes that occur in court proceedings once in a generation. Tommy Levendosky and Julie Zalinski, ris-
