Internship Programs

Internship Program

Study Outside of the Classroom

UDC-DCSL students attend school in the ideal city for gaining hands-on legal experience through interning. Our students intern - in paid positions, as volunteers, and for school credit - at government agencies, in the federal and local judiciary, nonprofit organizations, firms, and businesses throughout the national capital area.

UDC-DCSL's Office of Career Services announces paid and volunteer internship opportunities throughout the country in its weekly Career Bulletin. In addition, many students are introduced to internship opportunities through the school's exciting array of events and speakers, as well as through introductions by faculty members. Internships for school credit are coordinated by UDC-DCSL's Internship Program.

The Internship Program is an exciting and innovative program for students wishing to receive school credit for their internship experience. The Program offers both a ten-credit internship and a four-credit internship. These one-time internship opportunities are available in either Spring or Summer to students who have completed a minimum of three semesters of law school. The goals of the Internship Program are to provide law students with expanded opportunities for:

developing and improving their legal skills, especially legal analysis;
bridging the gap between legal studies and legal practice;
exploring career areas of particular interest to them;
engaging in critical reflection; and
identifying and analyzing professional responsibility issues.

The Director of the Internship Program, Professor William Robinson, places students with judicial, governmental, or non-profit entities in the D.C. metropolitan area and teaches a weekly tutorial throughout the internship. During the past two years, students were placed with the D.C. Employment Justice Center, Lawyers' Committee For Civil Rights Under Law, Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, Public Defender Service, Office of Corporation Counsel, Library of Congress, Superior Court, United States District Court, Office of the Solicitor Department of Labor, D.C. Legal Aid, and Office of Bar Counsel.

Internships have both a field placement component and a tutorial component. In the ten-credit internship, students spend 30 hours per week in service at the field placement site and two hours per week in tutorial at the School of Law. In the four-credit internship, students spend 14 hours (20 hours during the summer) a week at the internship site and one hour in tutorial at the School of Law.

During tutorial, students examine the broader social, political, economic, and policy-related ramifications of the work they are doing in the field as well as a variety of issues connected with the practice of law, including the role of lawyers in shaping public policy, the practice of public interest law, and the diversity of legal careers.

Professors William Robinson and William Henderson The Summer ten-credit internship is a special emphasis internship called "Civil Rights in the 21st Century." Wade Henderson, Executive Director of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights and the Joseph L. Rauh, Jr. Professor of Public Interest Law at the School of Law, co-teaches the internship course with Professor Robinson. Students are assigned to work at a government agency or non-profit public interest organization with a civil rights focus. Placement sites include: Lawyers' Committee For Civil Rights Under Law, Leadership Conference for Civil Rights, U.S. Civil Rights Commission, Civil Rights Section of the Office of the Solicitor in the Department of Labor, International Human Rights Group, National Women's Law Center, Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and other similar organizations and agencies.

The Summer tutorial offers students a unique opportunity for an in-depth review of a number of cutting edge civil rights issues including: racial profiling, racial justice and the death penalty, equal rights for gays and lesbians, the effectiveness and constitutionality of the Americans With Disabilities Act, the role of international law in domestic civil rights disputes, and detention and deportation of immigrants.

The Summer tutorial is open to both second and third-year students.

UDC-DCSL students who continue the hands-on legal training received during the Community Service and Clinic programs by participating in the school's Internship Program graduate from UDC-DCSL with extensive practical legal experience.