UCalgary Law Alumni

Perseverance leads to clerkship in Canada's north

Amy Matychuk, JD’18 was certain she wanted to go to law school to work in a social justice or public interest field, but was unsure of how to do so. It wasn’t until she worked for Professor Nigel Bankes that she stumbled across a project that inspired her to look deeper into Indigenous legal issues.

“During the summer after my first year, I worked on a research project on the Canadian application of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples,” says Matychuk. “That work helped me understand that this was the legal issue in Canada where public interest and social justice intersect.”

Though she wasn’t aware of it at the time, it was this realization that would lead Matychuk to apply, and be accepted for a clerkship at the Nunavut Court of Justice nearly two years later.