Jason Barker:
Summer Internship with the SEC

Jason Barker spent the summer interning with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission's Central Regional Office in Denver, Colorado. He was placed in the SEC's Division of Enforcement where he was involved with the investigation of possible violations of securities law. Established in 1934 to protect investors, Jason's internship with the SEC came at one of the most consequential periods of the Commission's existence. "With corporate fraud cases like Enron and now the market-timing and late trading scandals rocking the 7.2 trillion dollar mutual fund industry, securities lawyers are grappling with cutting-edge legal issues. At the SEC, I was being assigned some significant work, which included researching and writing pre-trial motions that were directly inserted into the Commission's federal court filings."

Jason is from Colville, Washington, a small lumber town in the northeast corner of the state, fifty miles from the Canadian border. He did his undergraduate studies at the University of Virginia where he majored in English and played football.

Between UVA and UM, he spent a year in Latin America, primarily in Córdoba, Argentina where he studied Spanish and led English conversation classes at Universidad de Blas Pascal. After completing the program, he stayed in Córdoba for a few more months to audit law classes at Universidad Nacional de Córdoba. "The first day of class, I was the first student the professor called on. At the time it was intimidating to have to respond in Spanish, but by comparison, it made my first day at UM Law a lot easier."

Because of his interest in international law and South America, Jason plans on spending at least a few more years in Florida after graduating in May, 2004. Jason has taken Immigration Law, Transnational Civil Litigation, Real Estate & Property in the Spanish Civil Code, and the Spanish Commercial Code at UM. "These classes directly pertained to international legal issues. The two classes on the Spanish code were taught in Spanish and they've enabled me to understand legal documents written in Spanish." Jason has participated in International Moot Court and is on the International and Comparative Law Review.