I was wondering if anyone had any tips on how find law internships as an undergrad, because it seems like wherever I look its always saying they want L1 or L2/L3 students. I have a resume made, at this point I’m just going to call up law offices in the local area for the summer. Any tips? I have an interest in international law, but I have no idea how to even broach applying for those, it seems most of them are abroad, and I’m working over the summer so I can’t go abroad if I got accepted. Any advice really would help. Thank you ahead of time!
If your parents or their friends are large clients, any law firm will hire you for an internship. Your school’s placement office or alumni network may also be useful for this. Note: you wouldn’t be doing legal work and it wouldn’t be the same job as the 1Ls and 2Ls (who are law school students) do. You’d be helping with things such as marketing or helping with client pitches- nothing “legal”.
You do NOT need “law interships” as an undergrad. When I worked in a large law firm, if an undergrad was hired, it was just for a runner position - literally someone who would walk/run to the court to make a filing. Don’t worry about that for undergrad. You need really good grades, a really good GPA, and great letters of recommendation from professors to get into law school.
@HappyAlumnus My parents definitely aren’t, middle class, I know I wouldn’t be doing any legal work, but I’d like to get a bearing of different types of law and what I would want to go into, rather than going to law school blind, wherever I may go.
@suzy100 I know about the LSAT and GPA being really important, as well as letters of rec, but I want to go top 10 law schools preferably, I’m willing to work my a** off for it. I just feel like when everyone applying has the LSAT scores and GPA for the T10 I need something else to differentiate me, if you catch my drift?
Law internships won’t help you get into law school. But they’re a really good idea anyways, especially for someone who wants “international law.” That’s a big red flag that someone doesn’t know much about the practice of law. I advise reaching out to your local district attorney, public defender, or legal aid. They’re often in the market for free labor. Your undergrad may also have resources to help connect you.
Also, I did legal work during my internship in college. It was under supervision, of course, but it does happen. Different firms work different ways.
I have mixed feelings on the usefulness of law internships for undergrad. I did one the summer after my freshman year, and I will tell you this:
– The work you do will in NO WAY be reflecting of what actual lawyers do. (You’ve probably figured that out by now, but I just wanted to be clear.) You will be working as a legal assistant at best or a case researcher. You will not be analyzing cases, writing briefs, or doing any of that stuff.
– Like the above poster says, it won’t even help you get into law school. Law schools care about GPA + LSAT/GRE. They MAY care about some really spectacular work experience like Peace Corps, starting a really successful business or non-profit, etc. But working at a law firm is def. not considered “really spectacular work experience.”
– It won’t really help you network. I mean, maybe if you live in a tiny town and everyone knows each other AND you maintain those relationships for years and years until you’re out of law school… but probably not.
– What it WILL do is give you an idea of the culture of what you’re looking to do. For example, whether you work at a law firm, an agency, or whatever setting, you will get an idea of how stressful it is to work there, what kinds of people work there, the hours they work, etc. If you just want to immerse yourself in the CULTURE of “law,” then it may be worthwhile. But it’s not like, a strategy to get into law school or be guaranteed a job afterwards by any means.
@Demosthenes49 I know its a big red flag, I don’t much about what the different law fields are and entail. I want an internship to help get exposure to that tbh. I saw for the district attorney in my area but for the summer I missed most of the days since I started looking for this a bit late 
@thetransfercoach I don’t want it for law schools, I want it for the exposure tbh, I want to explore different legal fields and kind of figure out what I’d like to go into before law school.
Thank you both! If any tips on how to get them outside of undergrad resources, I’m a CCC transfer, waiting on UC decisions.
What do you even mean by international law? Cross-border corporate transactions, international arbitration, cases that will end up in an international tribunal like The Hague, immigration law? International law is a buzzword that means many different things and many larger firms do something that could be labelled “international” law. You are in California…if you are in or near any of the major legal markets (San Diego, LA, SF, Silicon Valley), almost any firm will have some exposure to “international” work. Whether any will hire undergrads for anything other than administrative work, that’s another question altogether.
@hailey5799: That’s ok! You have the right mindset, which is to get an internship and start learning what there is. I highly encourage it. No reason you can’t intern during the school year. Your college may even offer credit (this is how I did my internship). Or you can wait for next summer.
FYI in the private sector there is really no such thing as “international law”. You practice the law of the jurisdiction where you’re admitted to the bar, and you outsource all other law (even other US states’ law) to other firms in those other jurisdictions. Even if you could practice “international law”, there’s nothing glamorous about it in the private sector; pushing paper in an office is most of my practice, and deals that have foreign buyers or foreign investors or the like just mean that conference calls happen at bad hours (5am, 9pm, etc.). You can work with a firm whose head office is not in the US, and you will then have to travel a lot internationally (I did), but going to Dublin for a one-day meeting with your co-workers, in a hotel conference room, is certainly not as enjoyable as study abroad in Dublin, for example.
If only I’d known!
@runnersmom That’s the point, I have no idea, I was interested in international humanitarian law, but I really don’t know much about international law, I’m curious is all, trying to figure it out. What are the different branches and what do they entail typically? Thank you!
@Demosthenes49 I might just try for the school year next semester and next summer, since I found out about all of these a bit late. At least I know about them now. Thank you!
@HappyAlumnus You’ve worked in a branch of international law? What type did you work in? What was it like? Thank you in advance, I’m just curious 
There is really no such thing as “international law”…as @HappyAlumnus noted, it’s either practicing in an international jurisdiction or working with clients who happen to be located somewhere other than the US. Most international humanitarian work is done by lawyers who work for non-profit organizations, unless you are talking about being an immigration lawyer in the US. If you are talking about war crime prosecution and the like, you are probably talking about practicing in front of an international tribunal in a place like The Hague…those are what law students refer to as “unicorn” jobs, and I have no idea how an undergrad would go about getting such an internship. My D is a lawyer in NYC and she is working on a corporate transaction with a Canadian client. This is a cross-border transaction, and involves US and Canadian law - tax, corporate, securities, etc. International law, sort of, but only to the extent the parties are international.
When I practiced a long time ago, my primary client was a British company…I never thought I was practicing international law except as noted above…I often had to travel to London and our time schedules were off by about 5-6 hours.
@hailey5799, I worked in several European law firms, both in their home offices and in their US offices, doing private law (mostly corporate law and financial services law). Working abroad was neat, but work is work, and the practice of law itself is the same: hours parked in front of a computer screen and in conference rooms. Transactional law (doing deals) is mostly just dealing with paper; there’s little that’s exotic about it.
I still have international interests, but I’d rather work wherever I get paid the most (the US) and travel abroad for vacations, volunteer service projects, etc. Also, being in a law firm usually requires that you bring in enough business, and I figured that dealing with the typical challenges of work plus bringing in business, all in a country where I wasn’t a native speaker of the language and didn’t have roots, was just too much.
To give you the litigation side, I’ve also done “international” law. Which is to say, I’ve litigated cases on behalf of foreign individuals and companies (and also against them). You mostly spend your time either fighting about personal jurisdiction or about service.
There is also international arbitration, but unless US law is selected by the contract no one is hiring a US lawyer. You essentially do the case as usual from your US office, then get a trip to wherever the arbitration hearing is. You spend 16 hours a day working out of a hotel, see none of the sights, then fly back home after everything finishes. Clients are not paying you to take a vacation.
Thank you for all the advice, I really do appreciate it, except now I’m even more lost on what to specialize in. Do most law students know what they want to specialize in going into their L1? Or do they figure that out in law school?
When I was in college, I had an internship at the local Legal Aid office. It was part of an organized criminal justice class. I mostly went to the courthouse and watched trials that the attorneys didn’t have time to go watch themselves so I could go back to the office and report. It was actually a very useful exercise because I got to observe how a courtroom works, who everyone in it was and how different lawyers try cases.
I also was tasked with doing some rudimentary legal research and allowed to handle two clients, both of whom were candidates for a dismissal in the interests of justice. I interviewed them in the presence of an attorney, with whom I discussed my findings and who helped me with my research and paperwork. The work was mine but he oversaw to make certain that everything was kosher and his name went on the finished product.
What I learned from that internship was two main things - first, I really wanted to be a trial attorney and second, I really didn’t want to practice criminal law.
For over 30 years, I have been a civil trial attorney.
If there’s a class like that at your college, go for it.
My office hires college students in our legal department in the summer. They usually wind up helping out the secretaries. The lucky ones get to run around to court delivering things. We also hired 1 and 2L’s. I have never, in more than 30 years, ever given an assignment to a law student, not since the first one I tried went horribly south on me. I’d rather do it myself - I am not the mentor type.
@hailey5799, many law students don’t know what they’re going to specialize in even after they graduate. Law is not like medicine…you don’t go on to a specialized residency in the same way. Now, that being said, while you are in law school you will be exposed to many different facets of law, and you will have the opportunity, through classes, clinics, moot court, and summer jobs, etc., to identify what you do want. Sometimes it’s the broad knowledge that you prefer litigation (adversarial practice) in either the civil or criminal venue over transactional (corporate/business practice). Other times it may be that you take a class in, say, bankruptcy or corporate reorganizations during 2L or 3L and you decide you love it and point your future towards that practice area. In most cases, you don’t choose a law school because of a desire to study a specific area of law - most 1L curricula are pretty identical, no matter where you go. Contracts, Torts, Civil Procedure, Criminal Law, Constitutional law, Legal Writing, etc.
@techmom99 That sounds really interesting, was the Legal Aid Office at the your college or just for the area? I’m at CCC right now, but I’m transferring this fall, so I’ll make sure to keep an eye out for classes like that. Do most Legal Clinic/legal aid offices let you have as much involvement as you did or is it mostly secretarial work?
@runnersmom Well that makes me feel a little bit better, maybe its because I’m friends with so many engineering and pre-med majors. Also, you can choose your path as late as your 3L? Aren’t you supposed to have narrowed your path down by then?
Generally speaking, most law students I knew and know had no real idea of what they wanted to do, specifically, when they began law school. Yes, you may (and even this is not required or usual) know whether you are planning to do generalist small law firm work (in other words, everything…a little criminal law, a little family law, a little business law, a little litigation), try to get a job in biglaw, work in public interest (non-profit) organizations, work in government (local, state, federal) or clerk. However, if what you mean by “your path” you mean whether you will be doing mergers & acquisitions, capital markets, finance, bankruptcy etc. within the umbrella of biglaw corporate work, then no, you don’t need to have narrowed your path by then. Now, some students will, for whatever reason, know exactly what they want and will pursue classes, clinics, externships, and summer employment related to those interests during law school.
Right now, if you can, take advantage of whatever you can do to find out what different kinds of lawyers actually do on a day-to-day basis, get great grades in school, take some time after college to work (perhaps as a paralegal), and prep well for the LSAT. Where you go to law school can impact the jobs available to you after graduation so, as has been said on many threads, what matters in the end is your GPA and LSAT. For the most part, all law schools offer pretty much the same courses and training. Note: I know there are some schools that offer specific programs etc. that attract some students, but generally the most significant differences and outcomes, to me, are those related to post-graduate jobs, not classes.