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I was offered a judicial internship for my 1L summer... but it is with a judge in small claims court (under 15,000). There will be a lot of paperwork and a chance to mediate and/or see some cases move through court from start to finish, but I'm afraid there will be too little opportunity for research and writing - which I'm sure employers will be looking for in 2L interview season. Should I take this job or should I wait to hear back from other potential employers?

holyroller wrote:I was offered a judicial internship for my 1L summer... but it is with a judge in small claims court (under 15,000). There will be a lot of paperwork and a chance to mediate and/or see some cases move through court from start to finish, but I'm afraid there will be too little opportunity for research and writing - which I'm sure employers will be looking for in 2L interview season. Should I take this job or should I wait to hear back from other potential employers?

Tough call. Any way you can accept for half the summer? That way, if something else comes along, you can do both. And if nothing else comes along, you could spend the rest of the summer writing a publishable article (to get your fill of research and writing and boost your resume if you can get it published).

I might be able to do that 2 days a week, and another thing 3... does that make sense?

holyroller wrote:I might be able to do that 2 days a week, and another thing 3... does that make sense?

The downside to only working two days a week would be that the judge can never give you anything to do that would take more than a day or two to finish (that is, for a project that would normally take a week, the judge would need to wait more than three weeks for you to finish, which he/she probably will not do). But maybe in small claims court there won't be those kinds of projects anyway? I dunno. But I think you'd pretty much be limiting yourself to observation and whatever paperwork you mentioned earlier.

Doesn't sound like the greatest opportunity tbh, but otoh what are your options? Do you have anything pending that seems better with a realistic chance of landing it?