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could you tell me about your experience in law school, specific to being an international student please. im especially curious about what you did for the summer. were you able to get internships or some kind of work while on student visa?

you should be able to get a (paid) internship with a student visa without problem; while I don't recall the details, there is certainly a provision for this with F1 visas

a much more serious concern is finding a job upon graduation that'll sponsor a work visa

ETA: I see you're planning to attend the University of Wisconsin-Madison, do take note that only ~11% of their students manage to get a job in big law, which is the only sort of employer that you can reasonably expect to help get you an H1B

Hand wrote:you should be able to get a (paid) internship with a student visa without problem; while I don't recall the details, there is certainly a provision for this with F1 visas

a much more serious concern is finding a job upon graduation that'll sponsor a work visa

ETA: I see you're planning to attend the University of Wisconsin-Madison, do take note that only ~11% of their students manage to get a job in big law, which is the only sort of employer that you can reasonably expect to help get you an H1B

Thanks for your reply!! Are you an international student?

if you're canadian you should qualify for a tn visa which are much easier to get but temporary

Edit: sorry i didn't realize you were looking for while still in school

Yes I'm looking for 1L/2L summer and after graduation

I'm an international student (3L).
It's definitely harder for international students to get jobs because you have less options (less employers willing to sponsor you). From my experience, you can't really count on small or even mid size firms, PI or government. So your focus should be on big law and in-house positions.
That said, once you find something, during your summers you can just use CPT or OPT. Then after you graduate OPT or apply for the H1B (or use TN if you're Canadian).

Unagi wrote:I'm an international student (3L).
It's definitely harder for international students to get jobs because you have less options (less employers willing to sponsor you). From my experience, you can't really count on small or even mid size firms, PI or government. So your focus should be on big law and in-house positions.
That said, once you find something, during your summers you can just use CPT or OPT. Then after you graduate OPT or apply for the H1B (or use TN if you're Canadian).

Thanks so much for the detailed reply.
If you don't mind, what did you do for 1L and 2L summers, and what is your plan for after graduation?
I went to college in the U.S. too so I have some understanding about CPT/OPT etc. my understanding is that for CPT, you need to receive credit from the law school. For OPT you have a total of one year so for example if you work 2 months under OPT in 1L summer and 3 months under OPT in 2L summer, then you can use OPT for 7 months after graduation and then use H1B (or use H1B from the start, but OPT is easier to get, and the likelihood of obtaining H1B also depends on the timing)

fisheatbananas wrote:

Unagi wrote:I'm an international student (3L).
It's definitely harder for international students to get jobs because you have less options (less employers willing to sponsor you). From my experience, you can't really count on small or even mid size firms, PI or government. So your focus should be on big law and in-house positions.
That said, once you find something, during your summers you can just use CPT or OPT. Then after you graduate OPT or apply for the H1B (or use TN if you're Canadian).

Thanks so much for the detailed reply.
If you don't mind, what did you do for 1L and 2L summers, and what is your plan for after graduation?
I went to college in the U.S. too so I have some understanding about CPT/OPT etc. my understanding is that for CPT, you need to receive credit from the law school. For OPT you have a total of one year so for example if you work 2 months under OPT in 1L summer and 3 months under OPT in 2L summer, then you can use OPT for 7 months after graduation and then use H1B (or use H1B from the start, but OPT is easier to get, and the likelihood of obtaining H1B also depends on the timing)

Sure. During my 1L summer I worked in-house for 16 weeks (no break at all) using CPT. You're right about having to receive credit from school. What I did was this: I registered for a supervised research with a professor, and I had to write a paper about some legal topic from my internship. So I ended up getting credit for the paper that allowed me to use the CPT (but I also had to pay summer tuition for that credit), and I got paid by my employer. During 2L summer, I worked at a big law firm in NYC. I used OPT for that summer (10 weeks) since that would still leave me enough OPT time for after graduation. I'm coming back to the same firm after graduation, and they already filed my H1B petition (so if I win the visa lottery this year I won't need to use OPT; if I don't, I can still try the lottery again next year).

It seems like you were very successful with the internship and job search
At what point did you tell your employer that you would need to be sponsored for CPT/OPT/H1B visa? Do you know how likely you are to win the lottery this year? Sorry for asking so many questions

fisheatbananas wrote:

Hand wrote:you should be able to get a (paid) internship with a student visa without problem; while I don't recall the details, there is certainly a provision for this with F1 visas

a much more serious concern is finding a job upon graduation that'll sponsor a work visa

ETA: I see you're planning to attend the University of Wisconsin-Madison, do take note that only ~11% of their students manage to get a job in big law, which is the only sort of employer that you can reasonably expect to help get you an H1B

Thanks for your reply!! Are you an international student?

I'm an international applicant, won't be a student until this fall. There's more of us here: http://www.top-law-schools.com/forums/v ... 7&t=233438

Hand wrote:

fisheatbananas wrote:

Hand wrote:you should be able to get a (paid) internship with a student visa without problem; while I don't recall the details, there is certainly a provision for this with F1 visas

a much more serious concern is finding a job upon graduation that'll sponsor a work visa

ETA: I see you're planning to attend the University of Wisconsin-Madison, do take note that only ~11% of their students manage to get a job in big law, which is the only sort of employer that you can reasonably expect to help get you an H1B

Thanks for your reply!! Are you an international student?

I'm an international applicant, won't be a student until this fall. There's more of us here: http://www.top-law-schools.com/forums/v ... 7&t=233438

I will be a student starting this fall too... I think I've seen that forum but will check in there