She had her life all mapped out, expecting her planned career to be realised at age 25. But unexpected circumstances forced Andrea Bernard to take the scenic route to being called to the Bar—a route that led her to teach in Spain and Cambodia before she returned home to begin her career as an attorney.
“My journey hasn’t been conventional. I’ve worn different uniforms and answered different callings, from police officer to teacher, and now attorney-at-law,” Bernard posted on her Facebook page last week, along with a photo of herself outside the Hall of Justice.
And although she reached this milestone six years later than she had planned to, she has no regrets about the detours she took.
“Had I not had setbacks and mishaps, I would not have gotten the opportunity to go to teach in foreign countries. And during that period, I was able to travel to 26 countries by myself,” she said as she detailed going to Vietnam, Indonesia and Thailand.
“It’s easy to sometimes take a bus; you can even take a day trip. It’s the same in Europe. Travelling through Europe is really, really cheap… Out there, you have so much access to different countries at a reasonable cost, when compared to in the Caribbean. Living in the Caribbean is all fun and games, but it’s very expensive.”
She told WE her journey into law began in 2015, when she entered as a mature student with just four CXC passes. She enrolled in the Academy of Tertiary Studies, in Curepe, doing law at a certificate level before moving on to the LLB. But a vehicular accident forced the former police officer to make a choice: use the insurance money to repair her car, or pay for her studies.
“And because it’s a foreign degree, it was not GATE-funded, so I had to pay for everything out of pocket.”
The Arima resident opted to put her studies on hold until years later, post-COVID-19, when she transferred her credits to the School of Accounting and Management in St Augustine to complete her LLB through Anglia Ruskin University in the UK. But then an opportunity, totally unrelated to law, came knocking.
“While working in the police service, one of my friends, who had done an exchange programme through the Centre for Language Learning at UWI, told me about the Teaching English as a Foreign Language programme,” which she decided to explore.
In 2022, she left the police service, moved to Spain and began studying Spanish while teaching English. But the winter was brutal, and she got really sick and was contemplating returning home. Then a similar opportunity fell into her lap.
“One of my friends, who was already in Cambodia, told me the school she was teaching at was hiring. I did the interview, they sent me the documents, I went to Paris to get my visa, and from there, I went to Cambodia and I spent two years and three months.”
She taught English as a nursery homeroom teacher before landing a job at one of the top high schools, CIA First International, Phnom Penh, teaching grade ten students.
“Which is like our form fives. I worked there as a multilingual learner specialist, under the student support services department. Being a teacher was not in my bingo cards because I didn’t feel like I had the patience for it.”
All the while, though, she continued to study online for her LLB, which was a challenge in itself because of the time differences.
“Spain was five hours ahead of Trinidad, and then when I moved to Cambodia, Cambodia was 11 hours ahead of Trinidad.”
She subsequently did online classes for her LLM through the UK-based University of Law.
Despite the challenges, she chose to look at the silver lining: being able to legally live and work in a foreign country, earning a decent salary, while getting the opportunity to experience so many different cultures.
“The cost of living in Cambodia is not high. I was able to pay for school, rather than having to take a loan. The master’s cost me approximately TT$120,000, and I was able to pay that with my salary…I am debt-free; I have no student loans or anything like that.”
In 2025, after attending the 19th International Human Rights Summit in New York as the delegate for T&T, Bernard returned home last September to begin her journey as a practising attorney.
“Part of the requirements to be admitted to the bar in Trinidad and Tobago, as someone who had studied abroad, is to do six months in-service at a law chamber. I did it at Allum Chambers, and fortunately, I am still here.”
As a newly admitted lawyer, she said she does a little bit of everything, but her heart lies with immigration law.
“That’s what I did my thesis on for my master’s.”
And as she finds her footing in her new career, she continues to make plans for her life, but with the first-hand experience tucked in the back of her mind that things don’t always go as planned, and with the willingness to yield to a higher power.
“I want to just climb the ladder, become a senior counsel, you know, and just keep going up. But I leave that up to God and what He has in store for me. Because I do believe at this stage in my life, everything that I am doing, every interaction that I have, people I meet, places I go, it’s literally God doing His thing. So at this point, wherever He sends me, no problem.”
