Law in Contemporary Society

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LawSchoolandInternships 8 - 13 Jun 2008 - Main.DanielHarris
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I'm curious about how others are feeling about their internships and clerkships so far this summer. I know there was substantial concern among students this past year about how law school was training us and will continue to train us to do the work of a lawyer. For what it's worth, so far, I've been pleasantly surprised. I've worked on various types of projects in various areas within a large Indy law firm, and I'm finding that there is nothing that I can't think my way through and bottom out on, by using the "tools" that we were exposed to in law school, which I don't think I would have been able to do nearly as effectively before I started law school. But I also know that it takes me substantially longer to complete a project than would be the case with someone who has more experience under her belt. I'm certainly relying on my low billing rate to offset this discrepancy. Granted, I know it's a long way from here to thinking about partnership, but at least I feel like I've got some basics down.
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 I think the difference in attitude that I have witnessed have to do with when and how work is done. As I said earlier lunch is pretty sacred. From about 1-230 literally nothing happens, emails and phone calls stop, and everyones out getting lunch. Plus the weekends are pretty sacred and not a ton of people come in over the weekends preferring to stay late and hammer things out during the week. Also, while I haven't witnessed it yet all my french collegues have warned me that things slow down drastically come end of July or start of August. Overall though I really love it here and think that the work culture is more relaxed and civilized. The other interns (we're not summer associates here, instead we are "Stagaires" which is the french term for an intern) are all really great people who have studied at some pretty cool and impressive universities here in France including quite a few from les grandes ecoles. What I do find interesting though is that despite the solid reputation in France and Paris of the firm I'm working at a lot of them seem to really want to try and get spots with US firms even if it is here in Paris (and many have already worked as interns in US firms).

-- AlexLawrence - 11 Jun 2008

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The thing I'm noticing most in my summer work is that the parts emphasized least by 1L (memo writing and even more importantly legal research) are those I find myself doing. Relatedly, I'm horrified at the thought of taking my muddled legal research to a for-profit setting where Westlaw/Lexis access is metered.

-- DanielHarris - 13 Jun 2008

 
 
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Revision 8r8 - 13 Jun 2008 - 02:38:44 - DanielHarris
Revision 7r7 - 11 Jun 2008 - 16:46:17 - AlexLawrence
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