By Asha Davis, Justice and Legal Thought
This internship has been extremely valuable in preparing me for what I hope to do in the future in attending law school because the class proportion of the internship required us to draft case briefs and summarize oral arguments.
Hello everyone! The poster that I have created for you all today is centered around my internship at the Student Legal Aid Office. This is a University-sponsored office for Undergraduate and Graduate students paid through student fees. The goal of the office is to aid students through university charges or legal charges. Even if someone is not facing charges they can come to the office and get a contract reviewed and even verify the standardness of a lease with the attorney, Syndy Shilling. At the office, I am an intern, which means that I am tasked with doing client intakes. This means that when students come in seeking help, I am the person that greets them and takes their student ID for verification. Then, I walk them back to the intake room and get the details of their issue and contact information in order to prep Syndy before her meeting with them. All of this usually happens in a span of 15 minutes and then I am able to sit in on the attorney meeting and take notes (which I then send to the student). After this initial process, I am the contact person for the client and I do all follow up correspondence with them. This internship has been extremely valuable in preparing me for what I hope to do in the future in attending law school because the class proportion of the internship required us to draft case briefs and summarize oral arguments. Overall this was a great experience and I hope to continue to work with this office in the coming fall semester.
This project stood out to me, because I was very interested in learning more about the Student Legal Aid Office on campus and thought it was so cool that you were able to have an internship that serves your peers and classmates. I learned a lot about the responsibilities of being an undergraduate legal intern and learned that even as a sophomore, it is never too early to start exploring the field of law. One question I have for you is were you surprised by the kinds of issues students came in for or were you expecting the types of cases you received?
What stands out to me about this poster is that I've heard a little bit about the student legal aid office, but I didn't really know anything about it, but this poster gave me an idea of what the students who work for the legal aid office do. It's good to know that students have a place they can go to that can defend them if they get in trouble.
I really enjoyed reading through your poster and seeing what kind of responsibilities you were given at the Student Legal Aid office. I’m sure it was a great experience and I was surprised to see how much responsibility they give you with these tasks. I would like to know how much of a time commitment this was and whether or not you would recommend this to someone interested in the law?
This project stood out to me because I have already been told about this position and how great of an internship opportunity it can be. From this project I learned more about the responsibilities of a student intern at the Student Legal Aid Office. I already knew that it had a lot to do with connecting with clients, but this poster gave more of a detailed representation of the responsibilities. What I am interested in knowing more about is the kinds of cases the office takes.
I thought this project was so interesting because it is very different than the rest and had direct integration with the university. I also think this is something most people are not likely to know much about. I like that this internship allows you to develop essential communications skills and enhances your knowledge of how to draft case briefs and summarize oral arguments in preparation for law school. How difficult was it to obtain this internship? Also, did you find any significant differences between your internship (on campus) and internships off-campus? The internship sounds really cool!