As the first in my family to attend college, the legal system is admittedly very intimidating to me. Even considering going to law school feels like a massive undertaking. An undertaking that I, as someone born and raised in a small town, feel massively underprepared to take on. The pre-law students I know are mostly immersed in the world of big corporate law, a recruitment process which requires near perfection. While I’m sure about very little, I know that I’m searching for more of an Elle Woods or Erin Brockovich type experience with the law.
This is how I ended up in Bozeman, Montana, a region of the United States I had never set foot in. I am working at Cottonwood Environmental Law Center, a nonprofit organization so grassroots that it only has two full-time employees. Cottonwood is a public interest law firm, which means that the center takes on cases focused on serving the greater good, without any paying clients. This also means that money is often very tight, and developing relationships with the Bozeman community is of the utmost importance. On my very first day, I worked on creating a budget report for the previous year.Having fun is an explicit part of Cottonwood’s mission statement. While many of the cases we deal with on a daily basis are heavy and at times disheartening, we make a point to enjoy the work that we are doing. In other words, I have truly gotten to know my coworkers as real people, and I’ve sampled almost every baked good Bozeman has to offer at this point. As much as I enjoy posting on Cottonwood’s Instagram (which is no small task, we have over 27k followers), at times, I have felt a bit unhelpful as an undergraduate intern. Cottonwood’s office suite is pretty tiny, and when others are “talking law,” their jargon sometimes sounds like another language. I expressed this to my bosses one afternoon, which garnered a sort of taken-aback reaction. “You’re a translator,” they told me. With every newsletter you write, or letter to the editor you send, you are breaking down a complex, inaccessible system into terms that the average person can understand. “It’s very important.”
I came to Cottonwood with the intention of figuring out whether or not I want to pursue environmental law, but my time here has reshaped my conception of the law completely. I imagined life as a lawyer as spent in a cubicle from sunrise to sunset, and distinctly separate from the actual environment we are trying to protect. In reality, almost every day at Cottonwood I’ve had the opportunity to be outside, travel across the Western United States, and talk to members of the community from all different backgrounds. The legal system, and working within it doesn’t look one specific way, in the same way that the legal system isn’t just for one kind of person. Despite its complexity, the legal system is for everyone, and this is exactly what places like Cottonwood aim to do. While the law is certainly a respected institution, I’m starting to understand that we can also use it to promote respect for our environment.
Bella Amell – Western Resource Fellow | Bella is a student in Yale College studying Global Affairs and Environmental Studies, with a concentration in environmental law and policy. She was born and raised in the beautiful Brunswick, Maryland, and is passionate about advocating for environmental justice and ecosystem conservation in rural communities. Elsewhere on campus, you can find her singing with her acapella group, the New Blue of Yale, crafting the perfect cup of coffee at the Silliman Acorn, or representing her residential college community as a Senator on the Yale College Council. See what Bella has been up to.
