Students Get Introduction to Legal System : Law: O.C. Bar Assn. job program exposes youths to profession they might not have otherwise considered.

Spare Vicky Huynh the lawyer jokes.

The Santa Ana high school senior knows the unflattering stereotypes--and she isn’t buying.

“Most people think that lawyers are taking money from us,” Huynh said. “They’re not there to take money from us. They’re there to help us.”

If Huynh sounds like an advocate for the advocates, in a way, she is.

Huynh was among 29 Orange County high school students honored Friday for working in law firms through a new summer-job program sponsored by the Orange County Bar Assn.

At a closing ceremony in the historic Old Courthouse, the students were told to be “ambassadors” of the legal world.

The students were chosen from more than 100 applicants to work in the trenches of the legal world--performing the collating, filing, copying and labeling on which the justice system seems to rest. The $6.18-an-hour pay topped what’s on the baby-sitting circuit, and the office duds--navy slacks and skirts with white shirts and blouses--were provided free.

Most important for some students was a close-up view of a legal system they know only through movies or the O.J. Simpson trial.

Josefina De Rosas, a junior from Orange, said she was scared of participating before she started her job at the Orange County district attorney’s office.

“I didn’t know any lawyers and they always look mean when they’re up there [in court]. But when you know them, they’re easy to get along with,” she said.

De Rosas and Dung Nguyen, 16, of Westminster, worked in the district attorney’s homicide unit. They got to watch a DNA expert testify in a murder trial.

And both were sounding like hard-nosed prosecutors.

“I know most criminals are guilty,” said Nguyen. De Rosas said she hoped to be a court reporter and maybe become a detective.

“I [used to think] prosecutors were mean people. I thought they were convicting people for no reason. But now I understand them,” De Rosas said.

Not all of the young workers are ready to sign up for the law boards. Huynh, who worked at a Costa Mesa firm, said she loved the job and the people. But the business of lawyering looked, well, not fascinating.

“I think what they do is a little bit boring. I’ve given it a chance,” Huynh said. Advertising, she said, “is more me.”

The idea behind the program was to boost confidence, not recruit new lawyers, said Donna Fouste, executive director of the bar association.

“Maybe they didn’t think they could or know they could. And now they’ve discovered that they can do this work,” Fouste said. “We wanted to open doors for them.”