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Thanks for the help, guys.

Can you do both? They're a few people at my school doing both part time or the judicial/gov gig full time and 10-15 hours a week of RA work.

It would be hard to do both, as the RA program at my school requires us to work on-site, does not allow evening/weekend hours, and primarily wants people full-time. If we DO work only part-time, they require us to do at least two full days a week and an alternating full day every other week. This most likely doesn't leave enough time for the judicial externship, which also I believe wants people full-time. I MIGHT be able to swing it, but in the event I cannot, which would be better to do?

OP here. I hate to be that person that bumps my own post after I was the last person to reply, but as it's now gone on to the second page, I figured I would because I could really use some help here. Sorry. Assuming I can't do both, which would be better? Does a judicial externship with a state trial court look any better on the resume than a research assistant position?

Does the prof want you to work on anything even remotely related to actual practice? If so, I would take the money. Even if you would spend the summer checking footnotes on a 100 page "the law of 13th century silk trade in Mongolia" article, I would still lean toward the money.

I haven't been assigned a professor yet. It's kind of strange about the RA program at my school... We interview and are told we got the job, but don't know who we'll be working with until later. They match up profs and students based on interests later on in the year. I also might do work for other profs during the summer, if they need help at the time. So to answer your question, I'm not sure. Hopefully it will be at least marginally related to actual practice.

That RA set-up sounds terrible. They should just let professors hire students they want to hire and let the students and professor work out the details for hours, work assignments, etc.

I would do the judicial internship. You want to be able to talk about what you did over the summer during OCI and a judicial internship is much more likely to give you talking points than being an RA.

So you don't think it's a big deal that the internship is only for a state trial court? Employers won't "look down" on me for that?

If you got the offer from the judicial internship, you could certainly ask them if it's possible to do it 3 days a week as you need to work to cover expenses the other days.

Or maybe you can ask if you can do it for 2 months and figure out something paid for the other 6 weeks (or whatever) you have left in the summer.

I would do a judicial externship. I really enjoyed my experience. However, I did extern for a federal judge. I don't know what your work be like compared to mine. But ask the judge how much research and writing you'll be given. Are you going to do mostly rote stuff? I wouldn't do it. If you're going to be writing orders and actually doing important reseach, then I would take it.

However, you can't go wrong with the RA positoin. RAs at my school loved the experience. If the pay's good, even better.

I think both will give you good things to talk about at OCI.

1L doesn't really matter, a state trial court externship isn't anything special. Follow the dollar signs