Warm Welcome at the World Justice Project

About the author: Alexander Trivella ’19 is an FSI Global Policy Intern at the World Justice Project in Washington, D.C. Alexander is currently a Stanford undergraduate majoring in french and political science.

I’m currently entering my second week working at the World Justice Project as a Rule of Law Index Intern. So far, I have had a great experience working at the WJP; the office environment is friendly and hardworking at the same time. In fact, on Thursday the office went out to see the new Mission Impossible movie together after work. I’m really looking forward to meeting everyone and asking them about their experiences at the World Justice Project and the world of NGOs.

For the most part, the first week consisted of familiarizing myself with the kind of work the WJP does and getting to know the rest of the small group of interns. At the moment, our team is in the final stages of producing the WJP’s Rule of Law Index for 2018–2019, so most of the work we are doing consists of contacting practitioners and academics familiar with the rule of law in their respective countries. This entails tracking down their personal information through Facebook or a simple Google search, and although it sounds easy, you’d be surprised how difficult it is to find lawyers online in some countries (particularly in Central America and the Caribbean).

I have already begun working with the storage of surveys and answers that the WJP uses to draft its reports and the index. I’m excited to practice some of my quantitative skills, particularly with Microsoft Excel. Next week I will start work on the Mexico Rule of Law Index, which is a new publication by the WJP that compares and quantifies the rule of law between the different states of Mexico. I’m interested in the differences between the global index and the Mexico index, so I’m definitely excited to be contributing to the project.

My internship has also given me the chance to live in DC for the next few weeks, which I am looking forward to. Unfortunately it has been raining frequently since I arrived early last week. However, I have still managed to enjoy myself despite the rainy weather. It’s expected to clear up within the next few weeks, so I’m waiting until then to check out all the tourist destinations everyone keeps telling me about!