Top Law Schools

Student at second tier school and basically right in the middle of the rankings.

Have already been offered a judicial internship for a district judge in a large city in the state I hope to practice in after graduation. The internship is for the first six weeks of the summer and I'm trying to determine what to do with the second half of the summer.

Right now I'm trying to decide between interning (most likely for free) at a small firm (potentially in the state I do not want to work in after graduation, but where I am attending school) or studying abroad for the second half of the summer.

Hesitant to study abroad because it will add ~10k to my debt load, but I'm already going to graduate with a relatively low amount of debt ~60k, so the extra debt load wouldn't be crippling. My thoughts:

1. I've always wanted to go to Europe and I really don't know when another chance will arise. I don't think many people graduate from law school and immediately start traveling internationally.
2. ~3k or 4k of that 10k will be spent regardless on tuition whether I take the classes here or abroad.
3. I feel like having a judicial internship in a large city for the first half of the summer and studying abroad for the second half is a fairly "impressive" way to spend your 1L summer. (I put impressive in quotes because obviously getting a big-firm internship would be the best, but some of us aren't that great at life......)
4. Everyone I speak to (at my school and others) say that the study abroad classes typically are guaranteed B+ or higher as long as you don't completely f*** around. So I'm paying a premium to be in Europe as well as potentially helping my rank going into my 2L year.

Any thoughts/insight/advice/shit talk would be appreciated.

To your 4th point: it sounds like your school could be different, but if not then grades earned abroad probably won't impact your ranking at your school. They will show up on your transcript from the foreign school. But for example, at my school you just get a block of 12 "study abroad units" that are pass/no pass as far as your home law school transcript/ranking is concerned.

Just something to consider when you're tallying up the pro side. But anyway since you would be working for the first half of the summer, and will have plenty of work to talk about at OCI, I don't see any glaring problems with spending the second half abroad. It would be best if you could tie your studies into something that your school doesn't offer/that would help you in your career goals, but if you can't I don't think it'll be that big of a deal.

Speaking of OCI, another thing to consider is when your school's OCI starts. My OCI started 3 weeks before school, so I didn't actually get a full 11-12 week summer. That might affect whether you would have enough time to go abroad.

I don't necessarily think this is a valid criticism, but i think there may be some folks out there who see studying abroad as an undergraduate endeavor.