Law School

Prepping for your Summer Job

My 1L year, the month I was supposed to start looking for summer job options, I received bad news after bad news involving my family– all of which culminated when I was told that my dad had just been diagnosed with cancer (he’s fine now, thankfully!).  With all this added stress, guess who never made it to career services, or even knew that deadlines for jobs starting in MAY were approaching in December?  Me.  It was me.

By the time I could actually focus on finding some type of summer employment, I was scrambling to find any agency that was still looking for help.  Luckily, after cold-calling a few nonprofits, a local agency agreed to take me on to work in their immigration department and the rest is history.

It did work out for me, but it could have also been a big failure.  Planning for a summer position is serious work that requires some time and effort way before it’s even time to start submitting actual applications.  It requires effort for a lot of reasons, one being that you are competing against a tremendous amount of people for limited positions.  So, yes I know that at this moment time is a luxury, but if you start prepping now, you won’t be scrambling like I was in the spring, and you’ll help your chances in securing a position at the place you actually want to be!

preparing for your 1L summer job

One.  Visit your career services as soon as you can.  I know some centers aren’t helpful, but at minimum they should give you edits on your resume and tips for cover letters. Ultimately, a career service center  is a resource that you are paying for-use it and make it work for you.

Two.  Start organizing.  Do you know what you want to do?  Do you want a position in government, public interest, clerk for a judge?  Compile a list and determine if there are any deadlines for applications/fellowships for those agencies.  Then make a list to determine the requirements (writing sample, letters of recommendation, etc) for each position.  Figure out what’s missing and start working on the things you do need.

Three. Learn about the agencies/firms.  Once you’ve decided on where you want to apply, visit career services (again) or talk to your network to get information on where you’re applying.  Are there alumni at these firms?  Do they have diversity initiatives? Do any current students intern there now or in the past summer?  Knowing what the agency is like and what they’re looking for is vital for both your interviewing process and for you to decide if that’s the atmosphere where you want to spend your summer.

It may seem overly eager to do this now, but it’s much easier to do at this time then when you’re also starting to study for finals, prepping for oral arguments, finalizing memos, and dealing with holidays. By doing the work upfront, you will be arming yourself with knowledge about where you want to be and can plan to submit the best application possible.  This work will ensure that you won’t be caught by surprise and miss a deadline for a job, and more importantly you won’t let a possible stipend/fellowship slip from your grasp!  Happy hunting!