How can I find legal work experience? Forum

[bns212]

I recently decided I want to go to law school, and would like some kind of work experience to give me some exposure to the field. Where do I start looking for relevant internships and jobs?

[cavalier1138]

You can find work as a paralegal or legal assistant by looking for job postings on any regular job search site, but that sort of experience won't really give you "exposure to the field" in terms of showing you what life is like as a lawyer. But it also depends on what kind of law you're interested in. Working with legal aid or the ACLU might give you a better idea of the kind of work done at those organizations, even if you don't experience what attorney workloads at those places are like.

[Babe-Loblaw]

Seconding regular job sites. I got a part time copy gig off CL and was a legal assistant by the end of the year. You will likely do clerical work as opposed to any kind of real legal work, but if you're already in your desired geographic area it can give you hella connections.

[poptart123]

Depending on your state government some legislative offices may be looking for legislative assistants or something similar.

[qiranger]

hit up your local public defenders office

they will willingly give you an internship

[joeytribbiani]

+1 to what everyone else said, and also a lot of schools have programs that help you set up job shadowing so you could get in touch with your school's career services department (they usually help post-grads as well as current students) to see if they have any lawyers/professionals in the legal sector (since lawyers aren't always receptive because of confidentiality/busy schedules) you could shadow aka see what they do and begin a bit of networking - they might know of a current opening somewhere or just become a useful contact later down the line (not that 1 day of following someone around is a great connection but it's at least a way later if you need to send an email and to say hey remember me from that time...)