Employers: Sponsor An Externship
Each academic year we place around sixty students in a variety of legal settings. Externships are designed for students to work on the further development of legal skills in a legal discipline related to an area of interest.
Our school is committed to the development of competent and professional practitioners. Consequently, we infuse our curriculum with courses which teach doctrinal law and emphasize the importance of skills development. Our goal in the externship program is to allow students to enhance and test these skills in a setting where they will be supervised by experienced practitioners, and guided in their reflection on that experience by an experienced clinical professor.
Your organization benefits from the services of a skilled law student for the fourteen-week duration of an academic term. Students who are enrolled in the part-time program would work for 16 hours or 24 hours. Students enrolled full-time must work 40 hours each week to earn their credit.
Requirements for Organization
There is no particular rule regarding the type of organization which can participate in our program. Thus, we have placed students with courts, nonprofits, governmental agencies and private firms.
The Law Center seeks to ensure that our externship placements afford students a quality educational experience. We thus look favorably upon placements where students will work on developing a variety of skills and develop proficiency in an area of practice. While we require that a single individual serve as a field supervisor and coordinate a student's learning activity, we favor placements where a student will work with more than one professional.
Generally we require that a supervisor be in practice at least five years, and that each professional supervising the work, be proficient in the area of practice which will be a focus of the experience. While we expect that students will perform valuable legal work, the organization must be committed to ensuring that the placement is an educational experience.
Responsibilities of Attorney Field Supervisors
Attorneys who agree to supervise our externs are committing to ensuring that the student will receive an educational experience. This means that we expect the supervisor to monitor the type of work that the student performs to insure diversity in assignments, and to provide meaningful feedback to the student about how they are progressing. The field supervisor must also submit a mid-term and final evaluation, and be available to meet with the faculty supervisor at a mutually convenient time.
You may create a listing in our externship opportunities database today by filling an Employers Externship Form and e-mailing it to emusinsky@piercelaw.edu. If you prefer you may fax this form to (603) 225-9647. Please note that filling in the form is not a guarantee that a student will be placed at the site.
More information about the program is available in our Field Supervisor Handbook [PDF: 1.6MB].
