Wayne Law student Evan Myers served in the Peace Corps in Fiji, and is pictured selling coconuts in the capital city of Suva, with his host mother.
(Photo courtesy of Evan Myers)
By Sheila Pursglove
Legal News
After earning his undergrad degree in business and economics from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Evan Myers decided not to pursue a career in the business world.
What changed his focus was an internship at the Public Defender Service (PDS) for the District of Columbia the summer before his senior year, and returning there for four months after graduation.
As an investigator at the PDS Myers worked closely with a staff attorney to advocate for clients facing Class 1 felony charges, interacting with clients on a daily basis and throughout case litigation. His tasks included serving subpoenas, taking legal statements, analyzing footage, and writing legal memos that were entered into court record.
“Witnessing their stories, struggles and the challenges they faced within the criminal justice system had a profound impact on me—and ultimately inspired me to pursue a JD,” he says. “What really resonated was witnessing the unwavering passion and dedication of my supervising attorney. He fought tirelessly for the rights of underprivileged clients, working within a system that often perpetuates cycles of poverty and injustice.
“In general PDS showed me the impact legal representation can have on the lives of individuals who are marginalized or overlooked. I’m committed to fighting for equal access to justice and dismantling the systematic inequalities that plague our society.”
In October 2019, Myers headed to Vanua Levu in northern Fiji to spend seven months as a Youth Empowerment volunteer with the Peace Corps. Living in Raviravi, a remote village of 90 residents, immersed in a different culture and way of life, he learned the local dialect of iTaukei.
Myers taught schoolteachers how to better engage students and on the importance of teaching sexual education. In the village he wrote grants to help with solar power, clean water and tools to make walking paths in the jungle.
Unfortunately, his 30-month service was cut to eight months due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Myers and his partner Kaitlin then found work as gardeners in Entabeni Gardens, a botanical garden in the rural town of Hana on Maui; and also started a vegetable garden, eventually selling produce at a farmers market.
The two then spent a year in Bordo, a Buddhist community in the Italian Alps, maintaining gardens, cooking meals and contributing to the restoration of stone buildings.
Myers is now a rising 2L at Wayne Law and particularly interested in workers rights, criminal law, and housing rights.
A Penny Beardslee Public Interest Fellowship recipient, he is currently working as a summer law clerk at the State Appellate Defender Office (SADO) in Detroit, under Wayne Law alumnus Steven Helton.
“I’m excited to work at SADO both because of their unique mission, and to deepen my understanding of appellate advocacy and legal writing,” Myers says. “SADO had a Juvenile lifer unit—and I hope to work the resentencing of clients who were sentenced to life without parole as a juvenile. I believe minors should not be sentenced to LWOP because of developmental immaturity, capacity for rehabilitation, disproportionate sentencing and humanitarian consideration.”
This fall he will be working part-time at Lakeshore Legal Aid in Detroit and also has been selected to work this fall at the Federal Community Defender (FCD) office in Detroit through an Holistic Defense Externship, an interdisciplinary partnership between Wayne Law and the Wayne State School of Social Work. He was awarded the Harry Klein and Shirley Klein Legal Scholarship from the Law Office of Mark L. Teicher in Farmington Hills to help fund his externship.
“Different from my work at SADO and PDS, at FCD I’ll be combining aspects of social work within the justice system,” he says. “I’ll have the opportunity to work in tasks related to mitigation and generally providing for clients and families basic needs that arise as a result of being involved in the criminal justice system.”
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