His name is Adam Ashour, and he is a junior at Revere High School. However, a few years from now, people may be calling him Attorney Ashour. Adam, a stellar student at RHS and member of the math team, mock trial team, robotics team, and debate team, spent last summer interning for Suffolk County District Attorney Kevin Hayden.
“I've wanted to be a lawyer for a long time, because my father used to be a lawyer in Egypt,” said Adam. “He gave me two passions, law and computer science.”
Adam said he wants to combine those two passions into a career someday and learned a lot about the different types of law during his internship with the DA’s office. Adam has his sights set on a college, and law school, that can fulfill both those passions.
“I want to go to college and law school somewhere where I can balance both computer science and law,” he said. “I'm not sure which school that would be just yet, but I've been looking at universities mostly around Massachusetts.”
He added, “I knew about traditional law and the court system that most people see on TV. However, during my internship I learned there are lawyers that do mainly investigative work and that requires knowledge about computer science.”
While at the DA’s office, Adam split his time between Chelsea Court and Suffolk Superior Court in Boston. He said he enjoyed the internship because he learned a lot about the court system and the roles of prosecutors and judges.
“My work mostly centered around learning about the justice system,” said Adam. “In the Boston office, I was doing a deep dive into the key components of our juridical system. For example, I didn’t know there is a separate court for interpreting the law. I learned about all these little complexities that are not taught in law school like learning when to prosecute and learning when not to prosecute, because both are just as important.”
Adam said he gained insights into the human aspects of prosecutors and the importance of diversion programs and worked with individuals involved in diversion programs, learning about the options available for people facing legal issues.
“I really enjoyed it, because I learned a lot more about the court system than I ever knew before,” he said. “Going to court doesn't just mean that you're going to jail. Not everybody that goes to court goes to jail. I would say most of the people who I saw in court didn’t go to jail. It was nice to see that because you learn the district attorneys are human--they're not some robot that are trying to get things done and put everyone in jail. They're good people and actually care about the people they're prosecuting. While they have a job to do and make sure people doing serious crimes get prosecuted, they recognize that they are human."