Supervising Law Students

I remember the first student I ever supervised as a new attorney.  It was an awkward relationship.  I was all of 9 months removed from law school and felt so out of my element asking this student to help me do research.  I was weak and hesitant in my requests, and remember being surprised when the student turned in her “research”–not a memo like I had expected, but rather print-out of a whole bunch of cases.  Yikes.  Though in her defense, I never once explained or clarified what kind of work I wanted from her.  Thankfully, I have learned a lot since then and am pretty confident in managing student interns.

Now working with students requires skills that we’re often not taught as attorneys.  We’re essentially managing, guiding, and teaching them lawyering skills.  Doing all of this successfully doesn’t come naturally to most people.  And I have seen plenty of attorneys who, after dismal results, decide that it’s not worth it and either don’t work with students or work with them very sparingly.   It is an ugly truth that working with students requires extra effort.

The main difficulty in working with student interns is that there is usually two seemingly competing goals.  You want to produce quality work and the student is trying to gain experience.  Often times, the attorney may feel that to get the quality work it’s just easier to do the work themselves.  A student may want to gain the experience, but doesn’t have the skill needed to produce the quality work.  So just upfront if you’re an attorney willing to take on interns, you have to accept that it will take a little more time and effort than normal.

So more time and effort.  Is it really worth it?

YES.  That is my resounding answer!

By working with students, especially as new lawyer in poverty law, I have gained so many skills that wouldn’t have occurred if I hadn’t worked with them.  Working with students has required that I gain a higher knowledge in my area of practice because often I have to explain nuances and legislative history–these are things I normally wouldn’t have bothered to learn, if not for the need to give students a better understanding of things.  I have also become a master editor (something my legal writing professors would probably find hard to believe).  By reviewing memos, cover letters, and other writings I have gained a critical eye that has improved my own writing and editing skills.  Most importantly, I have gained a real understanding on managing people.  Often I work with multiple students who are working on different projects and require different input from me.  I have to manage their deadlines, review their work, and make sure that I give them increasing responsibilities so that they gain something while working with us.  The supervisor roles in my area of law are few and far between, so working with students and honing these supervisory skills is a great experience in case I ever do become a supervisor or have to manage multiple people in some other professional setting.

Now, I won’t act like this is so easy for me to do because I’m definitely not perfect.  Being a good supervisor to interns requires time, patience, and also a lot of planning.  But I have found the following to really make a difference when it comes to being able to produce quality work, while also helping the students earn that experience they want.

One. Direct them.  You must give detailed directions.  Some things may seem common sense, but I’ve started to err on the side of caution until I know the student gets it.  Too often we attorneys (myself included) assume the student knows the area of the law or the purpose of the assignment and they don’t.  And maybe they’re too embarrassed to ask or too confused.  I try to avoid this by explaining as much as I can and giving detailed instruction.  A lot of work upfront, but explain it once (or twice) and then afterwards they’re usually capable of doing the same work without a tremendous amount of supervision from me.

Two. Give Timelines.  Notice, I didn’t say deadlines.  I don’t create headaches for myself by giving one big deadline that a student will inevitably miss and then leave me hanging.  Instead, I’ve started giving timelines: the first draft is due by the end of the week, then edits are due two days later, etc. This is much easier to manage because if they miss the first due date, I know that I have to keep my eye on them and it alerts me to not give them pressing work so as to not create a hassle for myself later.   I’ve also noticed that with shorter due dates, I’m able to clear up any confusion or guide them into a different direction early on, rather than weeks after they’ve been working on their big project.

Three. Confront.  We’ve talked about facing problems head on, and it’s still true.  It’s really important that when a student is failing to meet your (reasonable) standard that you have a conversation to figure out the problem.  It’s a disservice to them to allow them to continue with their bad habits.  At the very least discussing their problem behavior will let them know that you’re on to them, and not one that will be easily run over by their antics.

Four. Give Feedback.  Regardless of whether the student is stellar or not, giving feedback is an important component in supervising interns.  It is an important step not just because you’re (hopefully) helping an aspiring attorney hone their skills, but because you are flexing a muscle we don’t often use:  giving constructive criticism.  For most of us, this is awkward and challenging.  We so tend to gloss over problem areas because it’s not easy to do and people tend to get defensive.  But, try to get over that and really provide useful advice to the intern.  This is useful to them, but even if they don’t agree, you’re practicing a skill that will be useful for when you eventually rise up the ladder in your practice.

What do you guys think?  Working with students: love it or hate it?