She joined the Charleston Law student chapter of the Animal Legal Defense Fund, an organization created to protect animals by providing legal assistance and training in the fight against animal cruelty. While exploring opportunities to serve and learn, Bess discovered Materra, a legal alliance “dedicated to using their collective expertise in financial intelligence to make an impact and support the fight against illegal poaching and wildlife trade with the use of sophisticated financial mechanisms.”

“I was really interested in the international component of the program,” she said. “It’s much larger than what my experience was like with animals. Then just wildlife crime has always interested me. It was interesting to see how I could kind of take my background and apply it in law.”

There’s was just one hiccup: Mattera is in Tel Aviv, Israel.

Bess reached out to Charleston Law Director of Externship Program professor Michelle Condon. “Because it was in Israel we had to confirm with the ABA about the qualification guidelines for externships. The ABA approved the site.”

The Externship Program at Charleston School of Law provides students with meaningful hands-on, practical legal experience in a variety of legal practice areas while earning academic credit. With more than 150 externship sites available, law students can also work with the externship director to explore externship opportunities that align with their passion in the legal field.

Once Bess received the school’s approval, she contacted Materra and shared her passion for animal law.

“The lead attorney was looking for an intern/extern that would do legal research and writing and explore these different parts of wildlife crime and financial investigations,” said Bess.

Materra operates with the understanding that “as global trafficking of wildlife continues relentlessly, many species have been driven close to extinction; that through the destruction of wildlife, poachers and traffickers are threatening biodiversity, global security, and public health; and that wildlife crimes are often associated with larger criminal operations, such as money laundering, drug trafficking, and terrorism.”

When she accepted the position, Bess made a small piece of history as the first intern to work with Materra. 

“To work with attorneys who have done some incredible things in animal rights through international law is a great learning opportunity for me,” she said. “Just learning about how these financial investigations can turn into wildlife crime, then sometimes leads to things like drugs, gang violence, money laundering. It’s interesting how an animal welfare crime can blow up to something on a large scale.”

During the 2022-2023 academic year, over 100 students externed at a wide variety of sites, including corporations like Volvo, Mercedes, Blackbaud, and Benefitfocus, federal and state prosecutors and public defenders, state, county, and federal judges, state, county, and local government agencies, local and statewide nonprofits, and private law firms in a wide variety of practice areas.

Choose from hundreds of opportunities and find the perfect fit to learn and develop skills in the legal field of their interest, including:

• Public service
• Corporate law
• Criminal law
• Environmental law
• Civil litigation, Family law
• Intellectual property
• Students can work with the director to create new externships