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I see law school students posting about having an internship/work at a law office during the summer, but I haven't heard or read anyone go into detail what she/he does during the work day. One vlog I watch periodically says she works at a criminal law office and she off and on mentions how she played a game on her phone all day or she will actually record a few minutes for her vlog in the restroom...
If you have/had a non-paid/paid internship during the summer, please let me know what you did on the average day and what area of law it was.
Thank you.

Red_Bird wrote:I see law school students posting about having an internship/work at a law office during the summer, but I haven't heard or read anyone go into detail what she/he does during the work day. One vlog I watch periodically says she works at a criminal law office and she off and on mentions how she played a game on her phone all day or she will actually record a few minutes for her vlog in the restroom...
If you have/had a non-paid/paid internship during the summer, please let me know what you did on the average day and what area of law it was.
Thank you.

This is going to vary widely I'm sure.

Most interns will do a good volume of research, particularly if you're at a firm or corporation. At a smaller firm, you might get to take a stab at some motions. Not sure if that happens in larger firms, and it's pretty unlikely in larger corporations.

Personally, I think the more interesting internships are in the non-profit sector. If you're in the criminal world there's a good chance you'll spend time meeting and working with clients. Researching their cases and working on submissions to the court. Similarly, if you're in the civil world, say at legal aid, you'll be meeting clients at intake and learning about their complaint, gathering evidence, maybe advising on whether the office can/should take the case and generally doing a lot of the work.

Depending on the legal aid office, you may be able to actually represent clients in administrative hearings as a rising 2L - e.g. unemployment hearings or grievance hearings with the public housing authority. As a rising 3L, depending on state law, you may be able to get a practice certificate and actually represent the client in court (under supervision of an attorney).

My experience was in the civil/nonprofit side and I really valued the client interaction and the ability to represent them in hearings and in court. I don't know anyone who did that or PD/DA work who wasn't kept busy though. It wouldn't be a problem wo record a vlog for a few minutes, but no-one would be sitting all day playing games.

It really does depend entirely on the internship and on what you put into it. To the extent this random vlogger is telling the truth about her experiences, I doubt she's going to be able to use anyone from her current internship as a reference or turn it into a paying job after school. But yeah, you can totally get away with slacking off as an intern at most places if you think that would somehow be beneficial.

Some places are better about finding things for interns to do than others, especially if this vlogger is a 1L. If by "criminal law office" you mean firm rather than DA/PD, there could be a fair amount of down time depending on how well the office manages the intern workload. She could also be a slacker, too. I also know a number of people who interned for state trial judges during 1L summer and did a LOT of observing in court, more than substantive work.

I did a bunch of different internships but yeah, they basically all involved doing legal research and writing (usually memos or draft orders but sometimes language to go into a motion or other pleading). Also observing court. Did some client-based stuff as part of a clinic.

We hire summer clerks. Vast majority of time is spent doing legal research and writing memos. You typically work with multiple partners on a variety of different projects in different areas of the law. We try to take summer clerks to a variety of different functions, including hearings, mediations, depositions, etc. so you can see the practical side of the practice.

I had a clerk draft a quick and easy motion for summary judgment on choice of law and other issues.

As for criminal internships:

If you work for a prosecutor and are able to get "certified" to make court appearances (in California that means you're a 2L or 3L who has taken Evidence or is enrolled in Evidence, and has paid the appropriate fee to the state bar), we will let you appear in court and run suppression motions, expungement motions, protective order modification hearings, second chair trials, and maybe even run your own trial for really petty crimes (like meth pipe possession cases). The only rule is a supervising attorney who has been practicing for at least five years has to be somewhere in the courtroom behind the bar supervising you and be able to take over if the judge requests it.

Criminal defense attorneys typically don't let their law clerks appear in court for malpractice reasons, and because they would need to get the informed consent of their clients, and it seems pretty unprofessional to ask your client, "Hey person who is paying me $5k+ to represent them. Do you consent to me letting this inexperienced law student who has never appeared in court before run your suppression hearing?"

In addition to letting my clerks appear in court as much as possible, I also tend to give them a lot of transcriptions. The local rules of our court require whenever video or audio evidence is presented we have to pass out a transcript to jurors, judge, and opposing counsel so they can follow along. The sovereign I work for doesn't want to waste tax dollars on a transcription service, so we have to transcribe everything ourselves in Microsoft Word and that process takes hours to do and really sucks. Thus, our law clerks usually end up doing it for us. It's probably how they spend a good third of their time over the summer. It does suck for them, but it's probably the most useful thing they do for our office (especially the rising 2Ls who haven't had Evidence or CrimPro and are pretty useless for much of anything else).

Of course, sometimes you'll be requested to research a legal issue and draft a memo on it. I work for a city attorney's office that enforces a lot of local ordinances, the constitutionality of which tends to get challenged a lot more than the penal code does (since there's usually clear appellate precedent upholding the commonly enforced penal code sections), so there's a fair share of research assignments based in Constitutional Law. I just gave a clerk an assignment that had to do with the supremacy clause and pre-emption. Some find that sort of thing interesting.

And lastly, we always encourage our clerks to go watch trials in their free time. It's probably the best way to learn courtroom procedure and how to deliver good closings. Our office is located inside a large courthouse, and our clerks have access to the electronic calendar and minutes, so you'll frequently see them all running out together to catch a closing.

Bingo_Bongo wrote:Criminal defense attorneys typically don't let their law clerks appear in court for malpractice reasons, and because they would need to get the informed consent of their clients, and it seems pretty unprofessional to ask your client, "Hey person who is paying me $5k+ to represent them. Do you consent to me letting this inexperienced law student who has never appeared in court before run your suppression hearing?"

I'm not sure if this is the case in California, but in NY, public defenders will let students second-chair trials (with client consent). And if you really want to get stand-up time, I believe that interns for the Alaska PD basically get to do everything.

This is a lot of great information. Thank you to those who have shared so far. I was just worried about sitting and staring at a wall for most of the time. Haha
If anyone else has an experience to share, please do. Keep the information flowing!
Thanks again.

cavalier1138 wrote: I'm not sure if this is the case in California, but in NY, public defenders will let students second-chair trials (with client consent). And if you really want to get stand-up time, I believe that interns for the Alaska PD basically get to do everything.

Criminal defense interns and clerks can absolutely can make appearances in California, too. It's just much much much rarer for them because of the whole informed client consent thing. But it does sometimes happen, though. I've never actually seen one run a full trial (or even a suppression motion for that matter), but I have seen them second chair trials and motions, and they'll sometimes do routine expungements in the calendar courtroom and stuff like that.

Whereas law clerks working for prosecutors appear in court all the time, since the whole informed consent thing is not needed (and the malpractice liability is non-existent). These students certainly get a lot more time on the record working for prosecutors. Their court appearances are also much more likely to be substantive (like actually running entire suppression motions with the supervising attorney just kicking back and watching the whole thing; doing voir dire all by themselves and exercising their judgement who to pick; doing petty trials (simple one count meth pipe possession cases are the favorite) all by themselves, and stuff like that.