Yesterday, the realization that firms already consider OCI to be late in the game turned a few heads. What’s next, recruiting people from undergrad? Well, yes actually.
Above the Law got this tip from an insider at Am Law 200 firm Butler Snow about a new partnership with HBCU students:
Yesterday we sent our first offer letter to a rising senior criminal justice major. She will work with us this summer in Huntsville, along with out 1L and 2L clerks. Butler Snow has let me know they are going to expand this undergrad internship program to all HBCUs where we have an office collocated so HBCU undergraduate students can get exposure to the workings of a law firm before they commit to law school.
Now that’s one hell of an internship! I was lucky enough to experience something similar — I worked as a paralegal at a mid-sized firm in New Jersey for about a year before I decided to apply to law school. Despite graduating with honors, the thought of going to law school intimidated me a bit — I didn’t have any immediate family who were attorneys and closest thing to lawyering I experienced up to that point had been Judge Judy re-runs. The routines I built from going to the firm and spending hours in Relativity made the prospect of becoming a lawyer a lot less scary. It is great that Butler Snow can offer similar opportunities to people that are thinking about becoming lawyers, especially in a climate where so many law firms are afraid that their outreach to diverse applicants could end up in a lawsuit. Looking at you, Blum.
The intern’s work experience will be similar to clerks in that they’ll do all of the fun stuff that television glamorizes about being a lawyer: organizing and managing legal files, scheduling appointments and meetings, proofreading and editing legal documents and the like.
Plans are in the works for the program to be extended to several other Snow offices: Atlanta, Baton Rouge, Birmingham, Dallas, Jacksonville, Macon, Memphis, Montgomery, Nashville, New Orleans, Richmond, Ridgeland, Shreveport, and Washington D.C. Each of these offices will have a full time rotation of paid HBCU interns every semester.
Chris Williams became a social media manager and assistant editor for Above the Law in June 2021. Prior to joining the staff, he moonlighted as a minor Memelord™ in the Facebook group Law School Memes for Edgy T14s. He endured Missouri long enough to graduate from Washington University in St. Louis School of Law. He is a former boatbuilder who cannot swim, a published author on critical race theory, philosophy, and humor, and has a love for cycling that occasionally annoys his peers. You can reach him by email at cwilliams@abovethelaw.com and by tweet at @WritesForRent.
