LA city attorney vs externship with state judge Forum

[Anonymous User]

About the same? Which is better?

[adonai]

Same. Go with what interests you most and what might help you get a job later down the line. Both those options probably won't do the latter. The judge might give you more substantive writing assignments and you will probably get to experience a variety of practice areas. Friends have told me 1L LA city/district attorney gigs are basically admin interns. If I had to choose, I'd probably choose the judge if it was an area of law that I liked.

[Anonymous User]

Not all City attorney jobs are created equal, though. A friend of mine is clerking at DWP LACA office and absolutely loves it and has gotten a lot of good work (not to mention a marketable area of practice.) Police litigation certainly has it's perks, too, but I'm not entirely sure about other areas of the CA's office.

That said, I agree with adonai that they may not give you as much interesting stuff as a 1L (assuming that's what this is for.)

[adonai]

Yeah, they tend to emphasize "exposure to the system" more than anything else for 1Ls it seems. That means a lot of sitting in on court hearings/trials, and making case binders. I don't think they do a lot of writing so memos would be a rarer occurrence, depending on what division you extern for. The more sensitive/high profile the unit, the less substantive work you'll get. From my research, LA City takes 100 or so summer externs, so I wouldn't count on getting much substantive work. LA superior court judges each take only a couple externs, so there would be much more substantive work to do there.

[Myself]

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[Anonymous User]

OP here,

I think I will be in the civil section dealing with like slip and fall cases for the city attorney position. But it seems like the state judge has more substantive work according to you guys.

[dood]

About the same? Which is better?

yes. the person u get along with better, i.e. not just judge but clerks, other interns, etc.