Legal intern Colleen O'Malley's summer is off to a good start. She recently won her first trial under the supervision of a deputy district attorney for Deschutes County.

O’Malley, a student in the University of Oregon School of Law who lives in Eugene, is a certified legal intern with the Deschutes Office of the District Attorney.

Working under the supervision of Deputy District Attorney Casey Baxter, O'Malley obtained a conviction for Initiating a False Report after completing a day-long bench trial. The defendant had called 911 four times, reporting bombs in his former employer's house and that his employer was after him with a gun; the reports were untrue.

"I definitely was nervous, but probably not as nervous as I was for my mock trial in ‘Trial Practice,’" O'Malley said. "I didn't have as much time to prepare and overthink everything for my real trial. I just had to jump in and do it, so there was less time for nervousness to build.”

O'Malley said she would have been lost without law school classes that covered trial practice, evidence and legal research/writing. In the middle of the trial, she had to argue against a motion for a judgment of acquittal, something she had not expected.

"Without all the oral argument practice we did in ‘Legal Research and Writing,’ I probably would have frozen up," O'Malley said. "I managed to put on my argument and survive the motion. Professor [Anne] Mullins would have been proud. And, of course, (courses in trial practice and evidence) gave me the framework I needed to get through trial."

O'Malley also serves as editor-in-chief for the “Oregon Review of International Law” and as an Oregon Child Advocacy Project fellow.

- from the UO School of Law