Summer Jobs 101: What You Need To Know To Get the Job You Want

Law School OCILaw school isn’t like college. As an undergrad, you could spend your summers in a variety of different ways. Maybe you’d intern, maybe you’d get a menial job to pay some bills, maybe you’d travel, or maybe you’d do nothing at all. Some of these might have been better options than others, but how you spent your summers really didn’t matter all that much in the grand scheme of things.

That’s not the case in law school. As a law student, your summer jobs are critically important, particularly after the second year. If you have any desire to work in a large law firm after graduation, you need to do a stint as a summer associate. Then, if all goes well, the firm you “summered” with will make you an offer to return as a full-time associate after you graduate.

If you stray off this path, your odds of ever working in BigLaw are drastically reduced. For public interest careers, it’s also important that your summer jobs are related to what you want to ultimately do. Believe it or not, there’s a lot of competition for these relatively low-paid positions!

Read on for advice on getting a summer associate position via OCI, and for succeeding once you have the job. You’ll also find tips for 1L job hunting and public interest work and some of our favorite summer job-related podcast episodes from the Law School Toolbox podcast.