Help deciding 1L internship? Forum

[Anonymous User]

Hi all. Juggling between two offers: one is in-house at an insurance company (paid), other is Office of the Attorney General (unpaid). My problem is that the OAG internship is in NY, my target market, while the in-house is in central NJ, where I've been my entire life and have all of my experience. If I take the paid gig, am I risking OCI firms being suspicious of me never having been outside of NJ for work, but now applying to NYC firms?

Opportunity cost of taking OAG is ~$9-10K. I'm below median at MVP so that's not an insignificant amount of money due to strikeout risk.

Thanks guys.

[champ33]

At OCI, New York firms are not going to care that you worked in NJ instead of NYC for your 1L summer. All things being equal, I'd definitely take the paid job. It's hard to be more specific without knowing what kind of work you'd be doing at the AG and the company. If you're interested in Lit and you'd be drafting contracts at the insurance company you might want to consider that. If your goal is a big firm at OCI though, I think the conventional and correct wisdom is that your 1L job does not matter, so long as it's legal in nature.

[Dr. Nefario]

No one will be suspicious of applying to NYC firms if you've never been out of Jersey. NYC is the biggest legal market, they couldn't care less about ties. Take the paid gig, make some money, and get ready for OCI

ETA: scooped

[zot1]

Follow the money.

[BmoreOrLess]

Yea, NYC doesnt care. Nothing on my resume was north of Baltimore at OCI, and even on the odd occassion that the 'why new york' question came up, some variant of wanting to work in the center of the universe, best work, best clients, etc. worked perfectly well. Take the paid gig.