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I have the opportunity to work with the regulatory services branch of a large corporation the summer before starting law school. I'd be working closely with a lot of lawyers (in an oil and gas related company).

However, I've been working or in school non-stop since senior year of high school. Some people have told me to just enjoy my last summer before law school.

I'd be making a decent amount of money I guess, and I would be willing to do that if it would give me a leg up on other 1Ls when applying for internships the summer after 1L.


So yea my question is - will working for the regulatory services branch where I'll get some interaction with one kind of law be useful for getting an internship after 1L? I don't know for sure what kind of law I want to go into but narrow it slightly economics/antitrust, human rights, or business law.

FWIW I worked as a paralegal before coming to law school (recognizable firm name & international office) and I got more questions about my 1L summer internship (federal agency) than I did than my last job during OCI. Sure, I got comments about what it was like to practice law in a foreign market and etc but I was surprised that interviewers decided to spend more time on my 1L summer experience even though personally I view my experience pre-law school to be much, much more transformative (to the extent that pushing papers and setting up binders can be transformative)

Purely my own personal take on this. I think it'll be hard for us to really tell how how much (or how little) it'll matter in the long run. This sounds a lot like a personal choice for you, imo. I took the whole summer off between work and law school and it was glorious.

If you've already worked for them, the marginal value of going back will be small unless your responsibilities change significantly (and perhaps not even then). Money is nice to have, and some schools expect you to earn something in your 0L summer, but even if so, my advice would be to do something else.