Summer Employment for Law Students
How a law student spends his summer can have a huge influence on the type of career he pursues after completing law school. Law students have many options as to the type of legal field they can enter, and summer jobs can open their eyes about what fields they may or may not want to enter.
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On-Campus Interviews
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Law students gain summer employment every year through on-campus interviews. Representatives of large law firms visit law schools and spend a day or two interviewing job candidates. They then select a few students to work at their law firms for about 10 weeks during the summer.
Summer Associate
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Summer associate positions are highly coveted, because the pay reaches thousands of dollars a week. During the summer, law students work as summer associates under lawyers in the firm. It is a weeks-long process for the student and the firm to decide whether the summer associate would fit into a regular associate position in the firm.
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Public Interest
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Some students want to enter the legal field to "give back" and help underprivileged people. These students want to practice public-interest law. Students working in public-interest law represent individuals, groups, causes or issues that are historically under-represented in society. These jobs do not pay as well as those of summer associates. Some of these jobs do not pay at all, but some programs offer students incentives to take these jobs by covering their expenses through grants or fellowships. Equal Justice Works offers fellowships to students who have obtained public-interest summer work. These students must apply for the fellowship. If approved, the student receives a financial reward at the end of the summer.
Internship or Externship
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Other students may want to work with a judge during his time off in the summer. A student may serve as an intern, sometimes known as an extern, for a judge. In this position, the student works under the direction of the judge's law clerks and staff lawyers. The student does research and writing for the judge, staff lawyers and law clerks. The student also attends trials and hearings in court. She can travel with the judge to different courts, but most of her time is spent in the judge's chambers. Some students receive grants for these positions, but even if a grant is not available, the student can receive course credit for this internship.
Research Assistantship
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A student can also work as a research assistant for a law professor. By doing so, the student can brush up on his research and writing skills and build a strong relationship with a law professor in the process. The pay would be the going rate for student employees at the university the student attends, unless the professor has received funding from outside sources. The student is in charge of researching legal issues for a professor who may be writing a law review article or working on a casebook.
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References
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