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I'm a 1L, and I have a few phone interviews coming up with various offices within the DOJ (both Civil and Criminal divisions). Those of you who have interned with the DOJ before - what was your experience like? What were the interviews like? How did you prepare? What do you think set you apart from the crowd?

I was an intern with CRT. Different divisions and sections within divisions will look for different things. Some will care more about grades. Others will care more about prior experience and demonstrated interest. The section I was in cared a lot about my interest in the mission of the section. I'm guessing even the divisions that care a lot about grades will care about your demonstrated interest in their field. I would emphasis that in your interviews.

Bump

Mine was a very casual phone interview. Be ready to talk about your interest, relevant experiences, and have a few questions and you'll likely be fine. For mine, I got the impression that getting to the interview was the real hurdle, and once there, I just had to be normal and show competence/interest.

I was in a non-civ/crim office, but still had a great experience. Even in the current political climate, it was an incredible experience where I got to do a lot of fascinating work and meet a lot of great people.

When I interviewed for ATR, I had three different people on the line from three separate units of ATR, all interviewing me for three different kinds of internships. I had just taken a big gulp of cough medicine because of a vicious cold I had been fighting, and the trippiness of the stuff kicked in partway through the interview.

It was also weird because one of the positions would have been much more policy focused, which isn't what I was looking for. Instead of trying to please both I just straight up said a more polite version of "that's cool but I wanna do litigation."

Interning at DOJ was amazing. Don't turn it down. You'll be hands on doing really interesting work.

Oh and in terms of setting apart: experience from 1L summer was highly relevant and demonstrated interest in their work.