The Impact of Internships
By: Paul Szydelko
Unsettled about her career, Ekaterina “Katie” Derjavina interned for six months at the Rochester, N.Y., district attorney’s office while shenwas pursuing an undergraduate degree in psychology at SUNY Brockport. She discovered she loved the law so much that she moved across the country, earned a degree at the William S. Boyd School of Law at UNLV in 2015, and is now a Henderson assistant city attorney (criminal division), making a difference in local justice.
She is proud that her office has done the most Battery Constituting Domestic Violence jury trials of all Southern Nevada jurisdictions.
Derjavina chose Boyd Law after attending an open house while visiting a friend. “Every student I interacted with talked about how Boyd is a community, and everyone wants you to succeed. It was not ‘cutthroat’ that you expect from law school,” she says.
She remembers professor Nancy B. Rapoport taking time in her office to explain a legal term Derjavina wasn’t grasping in contract law. “She never made me feel inadequate for not understanding it but rathern made me feel supported. She wanted to make sure I understood it, and I thrived in her class. This reaffirmed the reason I ultimately chose Boyd Law.”
Lawyering Process was also difficult for Derjavina because legal writing is so much different than writing a psychology paper. “I had to relearn how to write. However, those classes made me such a better writer. I have heard judges comment that they can tell when a new attorney is a Boyd Law graduate based on their writing.”
Derjavina, 35, was born in St. Petersburg, Russia, spent most of her youth in Brooklyn but decided to practice in Southern Nevada even though she intended to move away after graduation. Just as her internship in the Rochester DA’s office convinced her of her love for the law, her externship with the Clark County DA’s office convinced her to stay.
“I truly believe that the law school does a great job connecting students to internships/externships in the community, and I hope they continue to do that,” Derjavina says.