My 1L Summer Internship

I worked as a legal intern for a City Attorney’s office during my 1L summer. Here’s a reflection on my time there and what I learned!

Side note: If you’re looking for tips on finding a 1L internship, I have a blog post on that! Find it here. If you need interview tips and questions to prepare for, click here.

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What does a City Attorney do?

A City Attorney is a person who provides legal advice to the city departments and represents the city in lawsuits. They can be either appointed or elected. The attorneys who work under the City Attorney are the assistant or deputy city attorneys. This particular city is fairly small, so the city attorney’s office is small too. There was one City Attorney, seven Deputy City Attorneys, one paralegal, and three secretaries. (I was the only intern in the office so I got a lot of attention and guidance from everyone!)

Getting the Internship

I interviewed with this particular office in the beginning of March. My interviewers were two attorneys who supervise the interns of the office. I felt really good about it because I was able to connect with one of them on having gone to the same law school. Talking with the attorneys felt more like a casual conversation than a super strict and formal interview. I got an email that I was accepted around the beginning of April, and I was so excited to go home for the summer and commute to the town just 20 minutes over (also just excited to work anywhere because the semester was nearing an end and I was still internship-less). I was to start on June 15th when the attorneys returned from remote work (due to the pandemic).

My Day-to-Day Schedule

During the summer, I worked Monday-Friday 8am-4pm. Every other Friday was off because that was how City Hall operated. I made the hours and schedule myself, because my supervisor let me pick my own schedule (and I was an ~unpaid~ intern, so he was lenient). Work-life balance was really nice. As long as you finished your work, you were able to come and go as you needed.

For assignments, the system went like this: attorneys sent assignments I could potentially work on to my supervisor, he would print them out on assignment sheets, and I would pick and choose from the stack based on what I was interested in. If I had questions or needed clarification, I would ask the attorney who assigned it. Most of the assignments were legal research/memos. The assignment sheets had room for comments/feedback from the assigning attorney once I submitted an assignment to them. My supervisor also tried to get me some lengthier assignments for me to develop a formal memo that could be used as a writing sample. We had check-ins at the end of each week to discuss my progress, what I was working on, and if I needed any help. He also was a great resource to chat with about law school, internship applications for the following summer, etc.

I definitely tried to pick a variety of assignments because most types of law were available to me there and I wanted to branch out of my environmental law bubble. As the office representing the city, the attorneys there were dealing with employment, human resources, civil litigation, law enforcement, contracts, and advising various departments, all on a daily basis. Each attorney had their own specialty, so to speak. I spent a little bit of time with each one to get a variety of assignments. I dipped my toes into civil litigation for a bit, attending depositions and helping draft motions. Most cases were plaintiffs suing the Police Department (which we represented) over use of unlawful force and the like. This was especially interesting to see given the rise of the Black Lives Matter and anti-police protests nationwide around the same time. I also tried my hand at employment law, assisting in arbitrations of ex city employees disputing their terminations. Then there were more advisory-type assignments related to land use, permitting, parks and recreation, and economic development. These were the assignments I gravitated toward and spent the bulk of my time on. I wrote a lengthy memo on the California Public Records Act and the decisions of two appellate cases. I researched permit streamlining, CEQA, the Williamson Act, email record retention policies, and much more.

Legal research memo assignments were fairly straightforward. You’re given a legal issue or question, asked to research it, and report your findings. Most of the time, my research was submitted in an informal memo-style email. More on this in the “What I Learned” section. I was also asked from time to time to draft legal documents, find templates for drafting a legal document, and review contracts.

Fun Highlights

One of my favorite highlights of this internship was getting to see behind the scenes of a lot of City operations, in particular, the city’s Fire Department. Because I worked quite a bit with the attorney managing the Fire Department’s legal issues and employment-related matters, I got to interact a lot with the Chief of the Fire Dept. He would pick us up from City Hall and take us to some meetings with him! The Fire Dept. also coordinated a ride-along for me so I got to see some firefighters in action, tour a firehouse, and even see the dispatch center where people answer 911 calls. Overall it was something I didn’t expect to be doing at this internship in a million years, and I was very excited about it.

Going to court was another fun highlight. Due to COVID, must court operations were over the phone, but I did go to court in person once. We were arguing to dismiss a case against the city. I’m not sure how much I’m allowed to say about this case, but let’s just say the guy suing the city was absolutely crazy and throwing all kinds of conspiracy theories at the judge. It was entertaining, to say the least.

Switching over to the Fall Externship

After the summer was over and my 2L year began, I stayed with the office as an extern (like an intern, but for working for academic credit). I was going to receive two units of credit as an extern, so I worked 8 hours a week. This was a lot less than what I had been working over the summer, so I was able to really hone in on research assignments that had to do with my interests. Mainly, I did a lot of research on environmental and land use related legal issues. I also switched to working remotely, and went back up to Davis for 2L year. I communicated mainly with my supervisor through email and sometimes a phone call if the assignments was easier to explain that way.

What I Learned

Aside from all of the knowledge I gained on how local government works and all of the legal issues they deal with, here are some of the things I learned:

One of the main things I learned is to proofread, proofread, proofread. I am seriously lacking in that department and have so much room to improve regarding my writing. Also in the topic of research and writing, I learned to be more thorough when looking for the answer to a legal issue. Sometimes I missed something that could have been helpful to my research because it was in a section I glossed over or didn’t think to look at.

Another helpful thing I learned was how to craft an informal email response for legal research. Attorneys in the real world don’t need an intro, statement of facts, discussion, conclusion, etc. like you are taught to write in Legal Research & Writing. They really just want the answer to whatever legal question they posed. Most of the time my research findings were sent over via a short email, not a multi-page-fully-fleshed-out Word doc. This is where knowing how to be concise comes in extremely handy. My findings were often used to help respond to city employees that posed the questions in the first place, and it was nice to see what information the City Attorney would pick out from my research to use in an answer to their question. It helped me craft better informal legal research responses!

The main thing I learned: Imposter syndrome gets you nowhere! I wrote about experiencing imposter syndrome back when I was still working this internship, and I quickly came to realize that grades really only matter while you’re still in school and NO ONE cares where you went to law school or what the school’s rank was. The sadness I feel about not being in the top 10 or 25 percent of my class will completely disappear once I enter into the working world, where no one cares about GPA. From my previous post:

“When I got to my 1L summer internship, I looked at the diplomas of the attorneys proudly displayed on the wall and thought to myself, no one here cares what law school you went to, or what grade you got in Civil Procedure. Your grades and how well you perform in law school really doesn’t matter as much as you think it does. As long as you try your own personal best, you’re on the right track and doing great. Law school is just a small drop in the bucket of your legal career. If you’re stressed over your imperfect GPA, remind yourself why you came to law school in the first place, and work towards accomplishing that.”

Imposter Syndrome Tips and Tricks, Earthtojul

It’s hard to see the light at the end of tunnel when it comes to this, at least for me. I feel imposter syndrome and stress daily, but knowing that one day I’ll have a law degree and will be working out in the real world as an attorney, like all of my colleagues at that internship, gives me so much motivation and hope.

I hope you enjoyed reading about my 1L summer internship! I am always happy to chat about it or provide advice, head to my instagram @earthtojul 🙂