This week’s Expert Opinion, on how to maximize your summer internship experience comes to us courtesy of Deb Ellis, Assistant Dean for Public Service at NYU School of Law, where she directs the Public Interest Law Center (PILC) and the Root-Tilden-Kern Scholarship Program and oversees the Judicial Clerkship Office. Prior to heading PILC, Deb had a varied public interest career, including serving as Legal Director of the NOW Legal Defense and Education Fund, where in 1992 she argued Bray v. Alexandria Women’s Health Clinic before the U.S. Supreme Court. She also served as Legal Director of the ACLU of New Jersey, and as a Staff Attorney at the ACLU Women’s Rights Project, and at the Southern Poverty Law Center. Deb graduated from Yale College and from NYU Law where she was a Root-Tilden-Kern Scholar. She clerked for the late Judge Frank M. Johnson, Jr., of the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals, in Montgomery, Alabama.
Exams are over and you’ve begun your public interest internship! How can you be the kind of intern that employers will rave about and hopefully want to hire as an attorney someday?
From my perspective as both a public interest practitioner and now a law school counselor, I have developed eight tips based on what I look for when I hire: individuals who take initiative — who can figure out what needs to be done on their cases and projects. In short, I look for people who are proactive.
Sometimes students find that it takes a change of perspective to be proactive after a year spent in classrooms, where their role is more passive. But in the work world it is essential to take responsibility for your own learning. If you make that effort — to think through your priorities, contribute as much as you can to your employer, and be a team player – you will learn the most, and have the most fun, too.
Read Deb’s 8 Tips after the break!