Each year, the Asian Pacific American Bar Association Educational Fund (AEF) awards summer fellowships and grants to law students across the country. On June 16, 2020, AEF announced that Catholic Law student Christine Lorica (2L) was selected as this year’s Robert E. Wone Fellowship recipient. The Robert E. Wone Fellowship, created in 2007, is awarded to one applicant each year who most embodies what a former director, Robert E. Wone, sought to be as a lawyer—a trusted member of the community, making a difference in public policies and seeing his efforts improve the circumstances of those around him.

This summer Lorica is interning at the Public Defender Service for the District of Columbia. When speaking about the award, Lorica shared, “It is an honor to be the 2020 Wone Fellow, and I intend to pay tribute to Robert E. Wone's legacy of serving the DC community as well as the Asian Pacific American community. Thanks to this fellowship, I have already begun this journey, starting as a law clerk at the Public Defender Service (PDS) for the District of Columbia.

I am grateful to the Asian Pacific American Bar Association Educational Fund (AEF) for supporting my work this summer. At PDS, I am a law clerk for a Special Education attorney, which is an amazing opportunity at the intersection of my passions for education reform and indigent representation. Indigent defense is incredibly important work—now more than ever. I am proud to contribute to the work of PDS and to serve the DC community, and the Robert E. Wone fellowship helped make this possible.

The director of PDS described the spirit of public defenders everywhere as a ‘new kind of tired and a new kind of inspired.’ Each day, I find myself more inspired by PDS attorneys’ innovative, holistic, and zealous approaches to client advocacy. After law school, I hope to return to PDS as a juvenile defense attorney.”