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So I had an enlightening discussion with my CSO this morning, and I realized that, outside of SA positions, I'm not too familiar with 1L summer jobs that would allow me to focus on transactional work. Maybe in-house internships? (How difficult are these to obtain?) Anything else?

Any help or direction would be greatly appreciated. My resume isn't very strong when it comes to demonstrating interest in business transactional law, so I'd ideally like to use 1L summer to fill in some of those blanks.

Sorry, didn't mean to post this anonymously.

Maybe an SEC position?

I think they do some 1L intern positions but then again they are taking lots of flack right now for being incompetent.

Judicial internships do some review of contracts but obviously in the litigation context. It will give you things to talk about though and depending on clerks one of them may have done transactional work before to discuss it in depth with you.

"that isn't much help... Sorry"

Look at small firms that do receivership / BK work. My 1L summer I got to be involved in a few deals coming out of BK and receivership court proceedings. Mostly real-estate and equipment sales. Not big m&a but transactional and in interviews I could say I enjoyed the thrill of working on transactions.

It doesnt matter at all. Do anything legal. You don't need a transactional resume. Most firms expect you to try both trans and lit during the summer anyhow. A few firms flat out said everyone wants to do lit...they have trouble finding people interested in trans.

If you want to do real estate, a decent number of nonprofits with lots of holdings/transactions have GCs that may be open to taking interns for the summer.

Organizations that help entrepreneurs may also give you some options, my school has a clinic but there may be independent nonprofits as well.

Just get a good legal job 1L summer. There are very few 1L summer jobs that involve truly transactional work because it's basically only big law firms that do transactional work and big law firms hire very few 1Ls. Federal judges and the Department of Justice are what you should be looking at. Firms like those. Otherwise just get something legal because it doesn't matter that much. Grades are the most important thing by far so don't spend undue time on this.

I'm going to do transactional (PE/M&A/LBOs) work.

and I generally echo this response - esp. the grades part:

Bronte wrote:Just get a good legal job 1L summer. There are very few 1L summer jobs that involve truly transactional work because it's basically only big law firms that do transactional work and big law firms hire very few 1Ls. Federal judges and the Department of Justice are what you should be looking at. Firms like those. Otherwise just get something legal because it doesn't matter that much. Grades are the most important thing by far so don't spend undue time on this.

Also, I used my 1L judicial internship for a Federal District Court as a means to really see whether I (dis)liked litigation.

But say you just don't want to do a judicial internship, In-House could work. These companies have all posted in-house type summer gigs at my school: Blackboard, HTC (the cellphone maker), Amtrak, WalMart

Appreciate the responses. This was really stressing me out yesterday, so it's great to get some feedback.

blowhard wrote:It doesnt matter at all. Do anything legal. You don't need a transactional resume.

+1 no one expects transactional experience from a 1L. Firms wouldn't care anyway unless you were in ibanking or something before LS.

Look for a position as a summer clerk in a bankruptcy court.

I worked in house for my 1L summer and did a lot of transactional like stuff

I want to do transactional work, and I did an in-house internship for a major company for my 1L summer. It was incredible material for interviews, because I was pretty much dealing with the company's outside counsel doing our corporate work every day, so I described how great it was to get a biglaw CLIENT perspective.

also got to see a lot of how big deals/acquisitions work, which was also great interview material; i think it made me stand out as most law students don't know jack about transactional work at all.

I stumbled into the job, but it ended up being awesome and incredibly invaluable. Either way though, like above posters say, anything legal is fine, as long as its SOMETHING. oh yeah, and get good grades.

tfer2222 wrote:I want to do transactional work, and I did an in-house internship for a major company for my 1L summer. It was incredible material for interviews, because I was pretty much dealing with the company's outside counsel doing our corporate work every day, so I described how great it was to get a biglaw CLIENT perspective.

also got to see a lot of how big deals/acquisitions work, which was also great interview material; i think it made me stand out as most law students don't know jack about transactional work at all.

I stumbled into the job, but it ended up being awesome and incredibly invaluable. Either way though, like above posters say, anything legal is fine, as long as its SOMETHING. oh yeah, and get good grades.

Yeah firms consider soft factors a lot more than schools do in the admissions process. They like finance, accounting, and economics degrees and work experience, they like federal government 1L jobs and cool in house jobs, and they like people who can project a corporate personality and general likability. However, the number one thing they like is good grades.

For those of you who had 1L in-house positions, can you speak more on how you got these positions, or how difficult (in general) it is to get these internships? I did a cursory check with some of the larger firms in my home market (including a few financial services firms), but none mention anything about legal internships. (And my knowledge on getting these things/which sorts of companies take legal interns is pretty much zero).

FWIW, I have an econ degree, but no work experience. Still working on the grades thing.

beachbum wrote:For those of you who had 1L in-house positions, can you speak more on how you got these positions, or how difficult (in general) it is to get these internships? I did a cursory check with some of the larger firms in my home market (including a few financial services firms), but none mention anything about legal internships. (And my knowledge on getting these things/which sorts of companies take legal interns is pretty much zero).

FWIW, I have an econ degree, but no work experience. Still working on the grades thing.

My position was unique and I got the job through a previous connection but I know of several other folks at my school (T10) that got in-house gigs. Companies are slower to list stuff so those who got in-house jobs NOT from connections got their jobs later than a lot of people it seems (March, April). Check your school's postings. The sense I got, was that they are not too grades focused. Everyone I know got paid, though not models and bottles money.