As much as we believe that law school is an intellectual haven for thinking seriously about Big Issues, we also know that it is a training ground for a future career. As we've told you before, our dedicated staff members in the Office of Career Services devote their entire working life (and many supposed non-working hours as well!) to assisting students in securing summer and permanent employment. We are quite proud of what our students end up doing, and we know they are as well, so we thought we'd provide you a series of posts telling you what the classes of 2007, 2008, and 2009 are up to career-wise. Lois Casaleggi, Director of Career Services, starts with this update on the class of 2009.
"Our first year students are taking advantage of the wide array of available opportunities for their first law school summer experience and are working in a variety of settings and locations. Every year we have significant percentages of our class working in the public sector, the private sector, and here at the law school, and this year is no exception. Our students working in the public sector are doing such a wide variety of work that we could spend an entire blog post on that topic, but I’ll give you a few illustrative examples. On the government side of the public sector world, we have students at all levels of government. Within the federal government, we have many students working at U.S. Attorney’s Offices and within other divisions of the Department of Justice. At the state and local government level, we have students working in prosecutor’s offices, the office of the Texas Solicitor General, and the City of Chicago Department of Law. Public interest positions range from the Public Citizen Litigation Group to Volunteer Lawyers for the Arts to the Sargent Shriver National Center on Poverty Law to the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda.
"Another popular option with our students is to work for a Judge during their first summer. The Office of Career Services organizes a Summer Judicial Internship Program to help facilitate these opportunities. This summer students will be working for federal judges at the appellate and trial court level, as well as the state supreme court level.
"About one-third of the first-year class will be working in the private sector this summer for law firms or businesses.
"Finally, we are always glad to have many of our first year students with us at the law school during the summer, working in one of our many clinics or serving as a research assistant to a professor.
"Our first year class will be working domestically and abroad in 19 states, the District of Columbia, and several foreign countries, including Chile, Israel, Japan, Puerto Rico, South Korea, and Tanzania."
Next time, the class of 2008.