Week 11: Why Would You Recommend This internship to your Classmates?: Treehouses

                As this summer slowly rolls to a close (just 5 more days left after today, so that means just one more week), the two prompts I’ve saved til the end are holistically reflective.  This one, particularly, is considerably presumptuous. 

                It’s a bit of a gamble, to set up the intern program with set blog prompts, and have one that outright assumes the internship will be recommendable on the other side.  That gambit, I believe, probably pays off 9/10 times.  Truthfully, it’s hard to believe there are all that many internships aimed at undergraduates that are better than Dwellworks. 

                But therein lies the rub.  My classmates are no longer undergraduates.  I have not been an undergraduate for 5 years.  My eligibility for anything but the legal intern position ran out 6 years ago. 

                At the end of the day, I can whole-heartedly say that I have enjoyed the internship.  I am thankful for the opportunity, for the people I’ve met and worked with, and for the skills I’ve gained.  But I don’t know if I would recommend it to the majority of my classmates.  But I say that, not because there is anything wrong with the internship, but because of the profound differences between what the internship aims to accomplish, and what most students entering their last year of law school are looking to achieve. 

                As I mentioned last time, Dwellworks legal department is combined with compliance.  That’s fine and it works for a company like Dwellworks- but it doesn’t lend itself to stereotypical legal experience.  There’s no filing motions, no going to court rooms, no real negotiations of settlements, etc. etc.  For me, that’s fine.  I spent the last year in a litigation setting and this was a welcome change of pace.  Indeed, it’s a good change of pace, and probably mirrors more realistic legal experience. 

                But it’s likely not what most of my classmates are looking for.  Top that with blogposts and an absolutely un-legal, undergraduate style group presentation, and it’s just not altogether an attractive experience, from the outside looking in.   But not all of my classmates are so cutthroat that they wouldn’t be interested. 

I would recommend this position to those who might not be all that excited about practicing law after law school (the amount of those is significantly astounding).  I would recommend it to anyone who has struggled to find their preferred practice field.  I would recommend it to anyone with a somewhat entrepreneurial streak.  There is certainly real and valuable experience in this internship, but it’s not exactly of the sort most of my classmates are looking for.

And maybe, just maybe, that’s exactly how it ought to be.  Perhaps those who don’t want it are the one’s missing out.

-Zack