Quick Guide to Law Firm Internships
Resources for Law Firm Internships
There are a large variety of resources you can use for finding law firm internships. The most valuable resource for law firm internships is the American Bar Association. The ABA offers both Commission Internships and unique internships that certain minority groups and people with disabilities can apply for. Some of the law firm internships are explained farther below.
The Pipeline Diversity Directory
This service provided by the ABA gives minority law students access to very large number of unique and sought after internships all around the United States. Some states don’t provide services under the Pipeline Diversity Directory but there are still over 118 offered from other states. The number of law firm internships offered through the pipeline for each state fall below:
• Alaska- 1
• California- 9
• Colorado- 4
• Washington D.C.- 14
• Florida-3
• Georgia- 11
• Iowa- 1
• Illinois- 13
• Indiana- 2
• Kansas 1
• Kentucky- 2
• Massachusetts- 5
• Minnesota- 3
• North Carolina-2
• North Dakota- 1
• New Jersey- 2
• New York- 22
• Ohio- 6
• Oregon- 1
• Pennsylvania- 3
• Tennessee- 2
• Texas- 4
• Virginia- 2
• Washington- 2
• Wisconsin- 1
ABA Commission on Disability Rights
This section of the American Bar Association provides a wide variety of internships for people with disabilities. The law firm internships are located all around the world, and there internships will varying levels of skill and qualifying factors. The individual internships are listed below along with a brief summary:
1) ABA-Prudential Summer Internships for Law Students with Disabilities- the law firm internship is located in Newark, New Jersey and allows a disabled person from an accredited law school with a minimum GPA of 3.0 to work within Prudential’s law departments.
2) American Association of People with Disabilities’ Summer Internship Program- this allows college student, law students, and recent graduates the opportunity to work within public service for ten weeks in Washington D.C. The student or graduate has the chance to work on Capital Hill, at federal agencies, and nonprofits and for-profit businesses.
3) Burton Blatt Institute at Syracuse University Summer Law and Policy Internship- this internship is located in Washington D.C. The internship provides disabled law students to pursue research, writing, analysis, and policy development within the area of Disability Civil Rights. This internship is only open to first or second year law students who have past experience in activist experience.
4) Eileen Sweeny Graduate Internship in Disability Policy- this internship is held at the National Academy of Social Insurance in Washington D.C. and lasts 12 weeks during the summer. This law firm internship is one of the most competitive internships in the country, but it gives the qualified person the chance to work with nationally recognized experts and make excellent professional contacts
5) Emerging Leaders Internships for Students with Disabilities- this is a general law firm internship offered to people with a disability who are still in an undergraduate university. A qualified person must have 60 credits from an undergraduate institution, have at least a 2.5 GPA, and have American citizenship or be legally authorized to work in the United States.
6) The International Disability Alliance- this is one of the most respected internships under the ABA Commission on Disability Rights. The program is open to a person with a masters degree in social science or law, who also has full competency in another U.N. language besides English. The person must show a strong likelihood of using the UN human rights mechanisms in the future as well. The internship occurs in Geneva under the Human Rights Council.
Boston College Law Internship Sources
Boston College’s career and law internships are linked with other universities and programs around the entire country. This resource provides one of the best guides toward internships from any institution around the country, and the following areas of law are addressed within the internship services:
• Entertainment
• Environment
• Government
• International
• Public Interest
• Mediation Negotiation
This resource links directly with the programs offered by the American Bar Association, as well as 10 other resources and their programs as well.
What steps should I take for an internship?
There are three steps you should take before applying for an internship. These steps are listed below and expanded upon:
Step 1
1) Decide whether you are looking for a paid internship or not. Can you afford to do an internship that doesn’t pay anything? If you are looking for compensation, consider an internship in business, finance, or technology and the associated field of law.
2) Decide if you can afford to live the area of the internship. Many law firm internships are located in metropolis areas that offer public transportation.
Step 2
Whether you’re in an undergraduate or law program, your school’s career center should have a link to a list of internships. If you belong to a prestigious university, you may have access to a database which provides thousands of law firm internships that are offered to multiple schools.
Step 3
This step is usually the most time consuming. You’ll have to prepare cover letters and critique your resume for every law firm internship you apply to. Some advice for resumes includes:
• Try and draw attention to your resume in a professional way
• If the internship is unpaid, you can list experience you have outside of the career field, such as volunteer experiences, extracurricular activities, and leadership opportunities. If you had a job that required little skill, you may want to leave it off the resume or simply list the job with no expanded explanation.
Similarly, there are a couple of options you should consider for your cover letter for the law firm internship:
• List up to four very specific and honest skills that make you relate to the internship
• List your GPA if it’s high enough—and especially if it’s high enough
• You should indicate how you know about the law firm internship and the law firm itself.
