How My Summer Internship Is Helping Shape My Legal Career

This summer, I had the incredible opportunity to intern with Fraternity/Sorority Law Group (FSLG), a small law firm that seeks to assist and help fraternal organizations, specifically smaller and culturally based groups in a broad array of legal assistance. As someone who aspires to go into the legal field, this internship gave me an amazing opportunity to look at the profession and provided me with hands on experience that helped me to not only build my skills in different areas but also to clarify my future goals before graduating from Whitman and choosing my next step. 

One of the best aspects of my internship was the chance to develop core legal skills that will serve as a foundation for future working positions as well as academic pursuits, such as law school or future law classes at Whitman. I had the chance to do significant legal research, which taught me how to efficiently navigate legal databases, find relevant case law and interpret complex legal decisions. From talking with attorneys in a wide array of legal jobs, researching and understanding how to find relevant case law is a challenge for almost every new lawyer, and I was extremely glad I got the chance to practice this while still in my undergrad education. In addition to research, I also had the opportunity to work on legal writing projects. After meeting with clients and researching, the firm then moves into drafting memos and legal policy to best suit the needs of the client’s organization. This was a very different type of writing than I have had the chance to work on in the past, and similar to the research, it was amazing to work on the skills even before law school. While working on these memos and policy projects, I also had the opportunity to start completing a writing sample, which I’ll be able to use for future applications. 

Beyond these technical skills, this internship gave me meaningful exposure to the day-to-day practices of attorneys and how to best approach client relationships. I had the chance to observe client interactions and learn how attorneys build relationships with different groups while also managing expectations and trying to give them the best legal service we can. This helped me really appreciate the human side of legal practice and gave me good insight into the difficulties of different projects and different clients and groups are often looking for very different results and have differing goals. 

Overall, this summer internship was a fantastic experience and affirmed that I want to continue pursuing a law career. Being able to work day-to-day in a law firm and with other attorneys made it clear to me that I am well-suited and would enjoy this type of work. I am extremely happy with the skills that I was able to learn and work on over the last couple of months and believe that it has prepared me well for future work.