Prepared for internship 1L

[ionisnotme]

Just curious, did you feel like your first year prepared you well enough for your duties as a 1L intern?

[NeverTrustKlingons]

Yes.  Knowing stuff about law is a plus in the 1L Internship, but not at all required. 

Your question also assumes that 'the law' is something knowable and definite; it really is not.  It's a discourse made up of ways of speaking and supporting what you say with arguments.  There are many lawyers in the courts today who know much less than anyone on this board, and have forgotten everything they studied in law school.

[vap]

Yes.  Thank you legal research.  Thank you legal writing.

[1Lchica]

Agree with the responses. I don't think I've used anything substantive I learned in school for anything yet. Just how to research and write.

[laurenlaw]

Eh.. Sometimes I feel like I could have learned more of the basics that come up.  For example, criminal procedure basics would have been nice, but it wasn't a class we took first semester.  Con law also could have come in handy, as could corporations.  I believe that it simply depends on the internship you take.  Either way, I don't think any 1L internship requires intimate knowledge of the law.  This information would be nice to know, but I don't believe it's expected/necessary for good performance.

[rohan]

If you're doing corporate work as a SA, you are in no way prepared.

Would you expand on this? I'm starting 1L in a few weeks and my interest is corporate law. I'm wondering whether or not my background (non-trad with extensive business management experience) adds to the preparation that is otherwise missing for the more traditional student?

thanks!

[rohan]

If you're doing corporate work as a SA, you are in no way prepared.

Would you expand on this? I'm starting 1L in a few weeks and my interest is corporate law. I'm wondering whether or not my background (non-trad with extensive business management experience) adds to the preparation that is otherwise missing for the more traditional student?

thanks!

Law school is highly slanted toward litigation training. Your background may help some, but I doubt you did much in terms of due diligence or drafting complex agreements?

But, regardless, you've got no need to worry -- law firms understand and recognize that schools do very little to teach the skills necessary to be a good corporate/transactional lawyer. You will pick up those skills at your summer jobs and will continue to develop them once you start full time. I've only done 2 weeks of corporate work this summer out of 12 total, but I learned a hell of a lot about what corporate lawyers do during those 2 weeks.

I've responded to numerous due diligence inquiries when acquiring other companies or attempting to obtain funding from VC's for start-ups, changed articles of incorporation and negotiated contracts, as well as some ERISA stuff  -- tho I have not drafted these agreements (well, I've drafted some employment related agreements) nor been responsible for filing them. My understanding is that this experience is nice for me to have and I should certainly highlight it on my resume that I understand these processes- well, there's no way to avoid it! but for me to keep in mind that the actual work the attorney does is a bit different -- and I probably shouldn't be that guy (gal, actually) who constantly refers to what she did in her previous career just because it's related to what she's doing now.    Meaning, it sounds like I'll do well with the general domain knowledge involved, but of course there's much more to it than that ... which is why I'm going to LS in the first place. 

Ok, I've effectively sorted out my head *thinking* aloud here. Thanks for your response!

[rohan]

Thanks, Prodigy. I do actually have experience responding to due diligence inquiries (for M&A, and VC funding), and negotiating contracts and drafting not-complex agreements  for employment related issues, etc.. but of course there were always attorneys involved after me. So it sounds like my general domain knowledge will be a benefit (mostly for me, I guess, in that I know the other side of these situations), but I'm actually quite glad to hear that the work will be somewhat different. In fact, this is why I wanted to go to LS in the first place. I like the legal side of this stuff rather than the day-to-day operational/legal stuff you deal with on the employer/business side.

[TraciRai]

I felt like a lot of stuff from 1L year was useful.  legal research and writing, of course, but I also seemed to have used a lot of constitutional law.  It seems to apply to a ton of areas when you're not expecting a con law case to pop up.  I found it interesting that details weren't what helped me (you can always do research for that).  It was more helpful that my 1L courses gave me a vague idea of where to start my research, or allowed me to not sound like a dumbass talking with an assigning attorney, because I could see what issues were supposed to jump out at me when they gave a little of the factual background.

[jacy85]

I felt like a lot of stuff from 1L year was useful.  legal research and writing, of course, but I also seemed to have used a lot of constitutional law.  It seems to apply to a ton of areas when you're not expecting a con law case to pop up.  I found it interesting that details weren't what helped me (you can always do research for that).  It was more helpful that my 1L courses gave me a vague idea of where to start my research, or allowed me to not sound like a dumbass talking with an assigning attorney, because I could see what issues were supposed to jump out at me when they gave a little of the factual background.

Bolded is pretty much all you gain from 1L, aside from research and writing.  But even then, the starting point is really, really vague.

As people in this thread have said, law school doesn't teach you much about being a lawyer.  It only gives you some of the necessary skills to become one (namely, research and writing).  And even there, I've learn more from Brian Garner and some of the excellent legal writers I've worked with.  So go into a 1L internship being confident in your ability to learn rather than confident in any of your "knowledge", know you can handle any task you get, and do your best.