The weather has turned chilly and the leaves are changing colors. The arrival of fall means one thing for law students: time to think about your next internship or externship! You do not have to wait until the summer to gain work experience. Taking every opportunity to test out work environments and areas of law will be the difference between graduating with a job in your preferred career field or dreading your first post law school stop.

While in law school, I had two informative semester internships—one with the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland and another with my current employer, the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. Since I received course credit for the internships, I had to attend a weekly seminar at my law school in addition to my internship hours. The seminar was a space to work through workplace dilemmas, like how to assert boundaries or how to ask for help on an assignment, while building my professionalism and legal ethics through readings and scenario role play. Both of my internships were impacted by COVID-19 and ended up being largely virtual experiences outside of a singular tour of the courthouse in Greenbelt, Maryland.

In 2021, as a judicial intern, I researched discrete legal questions and drafted a civil opinion for the Honorable Charles B. Day, a United States Magistrate Judge of the District Court for the District of Maryland. My supervising law clerk was very busy juggling Judge Day’s calendar, but she was dedicated to creating real writing and research opportunities for me. As a second year law student fresh off writing onto my journal and a summer of training for my law journal’s duties, I welcomed writing and researching outside of the law school space. I was particularly honored to be working for the first African American Magistrate Judge for the District of Maryland. In this position, I learned how to self advocate for myself to create career building opportunities and I caught my initial interest in clerking after law school. I was right there as the court was navigating COVID restrictions and saw firsthand the legal professional adapt to meet the moment as I attended virtual hearings, discovery proceedings, and chamber conferences. This internship peeped my interest in becoming a law clerk. When I eventually became a law clerk, I could navigate virtual proceedings with a level of technical efficiency and on your feet thinking that was very helpful to work through emergencies and to accommodate for judges who were physically scattered across Virginia.

In 2022, as a law student policy intern for the Legal Defense Fund, I worked considerably more hours than I did as a judicial intern and on a wider set of issues and in a broader set of jurisdictions. The weekly seminar at school helped me navigate the grueling demands of the internship on top of writing a note for journal. Even though I worked part time in addition to my classes and extracurricular activities, I felt like I could balance my schedule prior to my policy internship. Still, I appreciated being stretched in a semester internship rather than during a summer job; that way I was well prepared for my summer associate position.

At the Legal Defense Fund, I was introduced to the concept of persuasive writing for a political audience as I worked on city council testimony opposing increased police surveillance. I no longer looked at cases, reports, or interviews objectively. I still needed to analyze my sources for strength but with an advocacy glean. In some instances, I had to push back on what was the status quo as I wrote memorandums on policy recommendations. The internship taught me that the research, analytical, and writing skills from law school courses are important but will only take me so far. It was my job to take those skills into a particular field and blossom.

While in law school, it might be easy to stay focused on your courses, but the classroom does little to prepare you for your legal career. Now is the time to apply for spring internships. Refresh your resume and create a generic cover letter. Speak with professors about internship opportunities, especially the ones who did something outside of academia for a while or the ones who are adjunct and have a separate career from their classwork. You might be able to simply intern with their solo practice or law firm if they have seen good work from you as a student. So many organizations also take semester internships because they can offer pro bono or course credit and do not have to pull from limited funds. The internship options are abundant! Maximize your legal education with semester internships and give you as many opportunities as possible to figure out your career path. Then, you will be one step closer to your vision of practicing law.  

Imani Brooks serves as a Policy Counsel at LDF. In this role, Imani primarily focuses on the organization’s political participation efforts and is engaged in numerous State Voting Rights Act coalitions across the country. She has successfully advocated for the enacted of State Voting Rights Acts in Maryland, New Jersey, and Delaware and has led successful introduction efforts in Louisiana and Georgia. Imani brings legal and policy experience to her role following her clerkship at the Court of Appeals of Virginia and internship at The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights. She is a graduate of American University Washington College of Law, where she was a staff member for the Journal on Gender, Social Policy and the Law, led the If When How: Lawyering for Reproductive Justice chapter, and provided pro bono legal services on the Navajo Reservation. Imani received her B.A. in International Studies from Emory University.

While at Emory, Imani became a member of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc. (DST) through the Omicron Xi chapter as the youngest member in the chapter’s history. For DST, she served on the National Programming, Planning and Development Committee for five years for and is now a Member-at-Large in the South Atlantic Region.