|
Clerkships a ‘necessity’for law school students
By Dan McCue
Staff Writer
Milt Stratos sees the value in spending his summers working for a law firm as hard as—or harder than—he does in law school.
The second-year Charleston School of Law student from Mount Pleasant, who has a strong interest in commercial real estate law, interned as a legal aide with Crisis Ministries, helping clients with issues related to supplemental security income for individuals with severe disabilities and appealing requests for aid that had previously been turned down.
“Clerkships really are a necessity for a law school student,” Stratos said. “You can study hard and read all the books, but at the end of the day, you’re still not going to know how to practice law,” he said. “That you can only learn through hands-on experience.
“Getting involved with Crisis Ministries provided me with an in-depth look at specific legal issues that I never could have gotten in the classroom,” he continued. “Without that opportunity, I’d just be reading up on civil procedure.”
For students at the Charleston School of Law, Stratos’ experience is not unique. All students are encouraged to use some of their clerkship time in some kind of social justice related position.
“Social justice is one of our core missions,” said Richard Gershon, dean and professor at the Charleston School of Law. “In fact, we have a whole program in conjunction with the state’s indigent defense council in which students move to small towns throughout South Carolina and work with these attorneys in the field.”
Marta J. Borinsky, assistant dean of career services for the Charleston School of Law, said first-year internships are the first opportunity most law students have ever had to work in their chosen field.
That’s because most have never worked in associated jobs, such as paralegal, and because the American Bar Association, which accredits law schools, prohibits full-time students from working in law until they’ve completed at least one year of their education.
About 75% of the school’s 530 full- or part-time students are from South Carolina, and the majority of students seek summer clerkships in the Charleston area.
“We encourage them to look more broadly, but like everyone else, once they get a taste of Charleston, they want to stay here,” Borinsky said.
That’s not to say none venture forth. This year, for instance, Charleston School of Law students will be clerking in Atlanta, Chicago and North Carolina, and one will even be clerking in the legal department of the National Trust for Historic Preservation in Washington, D.C.
The options for the students are essentially four-fold.
“They can work as a paid associate with a law firm or in the legal department of a state or federal agency. They can work pro bono for those entities or for a judge. Or they can work for a not-for-profit legal organization,” said Shanda L. King, assistant director of career and student services.
One way the school itself helps students bridge the gap between academia and the real world is by inviting law firms in to make presentations on their practices and getting them involved in student activities such as the annual National Constitutional Law Moot Court Competition, a competition students from the Charleston School of Law won on their first try this past February.
“We literally had 200 local attorneys come in and judge, critique and offer guidance and feedback to our students as they competed among themselves to represent the school,” Borinsky said.
The march up to the moot court competition likely played a big part in which students the firms invited to be clerks this year, Hughes said
“A lot of local attorneys judged the competitions leading up to the nationals, and I think people do make a note of who impressed them at a school event,” she said.
Student Reagan Singletary of Orangeburg, a part-time evening student, worked in criminal law for her first clerkship, writing briefs and doing research related to seeking post-conviction relief for the law firm’s clients.
During the summer of her second year of law school, Singletary split her time between two firms, one in Charleston and the other in Santee, gaining practical experience in juvenile law, elder law and heir’s property issues.
“Those are areas of law that are important to my community and that I want to work in,” she said.
“Until I actually started my clerkships, I never realized how much the lawyers I worked with would depend upon me,” she said. “You really do get to see case law from a different perspective than you see it in the classroom.”
Dan McCue is a staff writer for the Business Journal. E-mail him at dmccue@charlestonbusiness.com.
|
E-Mail This Article
Printer-Friendly Version