Still Searching: Late Start to Legal Summer Jobs

If you have not been able to secure a summer job yet (especially as a 1L), I don’t want to alarm you, but it’s really time to get to it. Perhaps you missed my tip to get your hustle on in the late fall, but what’s done is done and you’re still looking somewhat late in the game.

Before I move on, I just want to sympathize because I didn’t get my first summer job until April (!) my 1L year. So I get that life happens, and when you’re not in the know about how this process works you don’t realize what needs to be prioritized.  But regardless, you need to secure something for the summer: what are your options now?

One. Go to your career service. I know, they are often maligned and some offices can be really hit and miss. But your school’s counselors should have their finger on the pulse, and can direct you to some type of options and they should be very willing to help you.  Why? Because they benefit from showing that their students get  good internships/clerkships so they’re not going to just ignore your situation.

Two. Come to terms with your upcoming experience. It’s not likely that this late in the game you’re going  to get your first choice of a plummy job experience. Not to say that you’ll have a horrible experience, but likely most well-known programs are full. So when you go to your career counselor and they suggest you apply to some firm/agency that you normally wouldn’t consider–consider it. It doesn’t mean you’ll have to do the work for your entire career and it’s only 10-ish weeks–you can put up with it.

Three. Start cold-calling. Not literally, because no one uses the phone anymore. But smaller agencies may be open to taking an intern/volunteer but they normally don’t seek them out because they don’t have the capacity to run a program.  This is how I got my first summer job. I emailed the directors to many small non-profits and thankfully one wasinterested in taking in a volunteer.  It may seem weird and requires your time–individualized cover letters and emails, searching for contact info, etc. But you should make the effort because these experiences matter.

Finally–one big hurdle is always finances. I remember going to one of my first meetings with my career counselor who semi-shamed me for missing a large public interest job fair a few weeks prior. I tried to explain to her that I had been scheduled to work that day and needed to make rent. It sucked to 1) not even know how important that job fair was (like, what other opportunities was I missing?) and 2) to have known I would have missed it anyway because I needed to pay rent. So–take some time to work out your financial summer plan now.

How did you get your 1L/2L summer job?