During fall 2022, Fionna Ek is joining the Great North Innocence Project as a student law clerk. Fionna will be our office’s intake specialist and screen applications for potential new cases of innocence.
Great North Innocence Project: Tell us about yourself.
Fionna Ek: My name is Fionna Ek, and I’m a lifelong Midwesterner from the northwest suburbs of Chicago. I went to college in central Illinois and graduated with a degree in classical music. I’m now in my second year of law school at the University of Minnesota.
GNIP: How did you learn about the Great North Innocence Project & why were you interested in working with us?
FE: I learned about the Great North Innocence Project and others like it when I was an undergrad volunteering with a college-in-prison program. Many of our students in the lower Midwest were served by similar projects, so when the opportunity to work with GNIP presented itself to me, it felt like a natural continuation of the work I had been doing with and for people experiencing incarceration. I’ve been passionate about anti-carceral work for a long time.
GNIP: What led you to law school?
FE: I came to law school because of my experiences in the same college-in-prison program I mentioned above – my lawyer-mentors in college-in-prison work showed me that it’s possible to stay true to your values while working within the carceral system to effectuate change in the lives of systemically-disenfranchised people. I wanted to be a part of that. I also hoped to be able to give more of myself to the folks in that college-in-prison program and others like it across the country. Becoming a legal aid attorney felt like a good marriage of my values and the skills and knowledge I spent years building before coming to law school.
GNIP: What are you most excited to learn while working at GN-IP?
FE: I am most excited to learn about the process of overturning wrongful convictions and to see the variety of cases that GN-IP attorneys work on. I also think it matters a great deal to simply be someone working within the system who is wholly on the side of incarcerated people, and I jump at the chance to do and be that whenever possible.
GNIP: Where do you see yourself in five years?
FE: In five years, I hope to be a legal aid attorney somewhere in the Upper Midwest working with low-income clients on housing and consumer issues.
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