summer

Does a “Not Real Job” On a Resume Mean Anything? Yes, and Here’s Why.

/ Catherine Beveridge / Leave a comment

The fall feels like the time of year everyone works on their resumes. Along with the changing New England leaves and pumpkin spice lattes, current and prospective law students all partake in a seasonal refresh after a busy summer. 

It was before one of these seasonal resume workshops I heard a common talking point. 

“Oh I’ve never had a real job.” 

“Is it bad that I have no political work on my resume?” 

“I was stuck working retail during the pandemic.”

This is an anxiety that many, if not all, law students have encountered at some point. Maybe it was during our application process, or maybe it’s manifesting now. We fear our experiences are not relevant to this field. Our skills from assisting with college orientation to dishwashing are not applicable to being an attorney. 

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One Genuinely Good Thing: The PILF Auction

/ Michael Deere / Leave a comment

If you’ve ever watched The Good Place, you know how hard it is to do a genuinely good thing. And for those of you who haven’t seen the show…it’s hard. Really, really hard. Because the world just doesn’t work that way. Neither does goodness. A genuinely good thing is like the perfect seating chart at a wedding; it doesn’t exist. Or if it does, only in theory, and never in practice. 

But…

I have a genuinely good thing for you. A top-to-bottom, high-quality, solid gold good thing. No strings, caveats, codicils, amendments, addendums, or restrictions. Just a good thing; and a good time. A Night Of Jazz. Why? Because A Night Of Jazz is the theme for the 36th annual Public Interest Law Foundation auction in support of PILF’s summer stipends program, and that is a genuinely good thing.

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The Duality of 3L

/ Reilly Doak / Leave a comment

Returning to BC Law after 2L Summer – no matter your internship – takes an adjustment. Over the summer we have been trusted with real legal responsibilities, worked on case teams, represented clients in court, drafted transactional and litigation documents, and previewed the careers waiting for us upon graduation. 

There are two emerging approaches to tackling our 3L year. The first is escaping school work and maximizing experiential opportunities, the second is soaking up every moment of student life. I fall in the first category, my friend Taylor MacDonald falls in the latter, and we will do our best to encapsulate these two approaches.

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The 1L Summer Internship Search: Four Things to Keep in Mind

/ Tess Halpern / Leave a comment

When I was a 1L, I thought I would secure my summer internship over winter break. However, I quickly realized that was a bit of a pipe dream as I kept applying to opportunities and getting little response. I wasn’t too concerned until February rolled around, when I started to fear it wouldn’t happen for me. I was a hard-working student! I had good grades! What if I never got an internship?!

If you’re at this point in your 1L summer internship search, be sure to remember the following:

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The Most Important Advice I’ve Received about My Summer Job Search

/ Michael Deere / Leave a comment

Along with every other 1L, I am applying for a summer job. I’ve been to networking events, workshops, panels, and how-tos. My notebook overflows with well-meaning advice and guidance. The problem is that none of it applies to me. I don’t have a resumé; I’ve never had one. 

I’m what people call a “non-traditional” law student. I came late to law school after building a career as a professor. I did have a distinguished undergraduate career, filled with awards, accolades and accomplishments. But I can’t put those things on my resumé. That was twenty some years ago. It would look weird, my notebook says. Out of place (underlined). They were important things. Bright, big things. They mattered then, and they matter now. But it won’t help me land a summer job. Employers don’t want to see that, quotes the notebook. So, /select/highlight/delete, and just like that, parts of my life are cut away. Besides, I need that space so I can focus on my strengths (circled; exclamation point). Because the resumé manuals tell me I have to…wait, where is it…oh, right. Lead with my core competencies (question mark). And above all, circled and twice underlined and given arrows all around it, the number-one-most-important-thing-to-remember-is…just be yourself!

But the problem with being yourself is that it’s hard to know who that is.

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Lawyering and Breathing: Three Lessons from My Summer Experience

/ Devon Sanders / Leave a comment

Today I am hosting a guest blog from my friend Melody Mathewson, a member of the Class of 2022. -DS

What am I doing this summer? Well, the law, of course. I am drafting agreements and policies, researching admissibility, and reading trial transcripts and state statutes. It’s all very glamorous and novel to you as aspiring or fellow law students, I know. 

More importantly, I am learning how to run a marathon. Not literally. Literally, I walk for an hour every day, but I do not run. What I mean is, I am learning how to endure and thrive through the marathon of being a human attorney. I am learning what I wish I had learned two years ago, both before and during the first year of law school. 

Here are three lessons from my 2L summer experience. 

Summer Experience Lesson No.1: It is perfectly acceptable to demonstrate your strong work ethic and hustling attitude from Monday through Friday, and “breaks” can coexist with “weekdays.”

I have been listening to some really thoughtful and insightful podcasts while going for my long, near-daily walks outside, and on the weekends I lie by the pool and read similar kinds of books (or completely lose myself in a perfectly curated playlist of summer bops). On a daily level, this hour-long walk is my mid-day break. It is my exercise, my fresh air, my break from a computer screen, my break from legal jargon, and most importantly it is time I am not working, not thinking about work, not worrying about work, and not pressuring myself to get back to work. 

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Prepared for Success

/ Travis Salters / Leave a comment

This past January, I remember thinking to myself that I couldn’t wait to submit my last final exam at the end of May. It was an exhilarating feeling that lasted for a day or so until I received the Writing Competition email with hundreds of pages of materials. I was eager to complete the assignment over the next two weeks, so that I could finally take a breather. I submitted my competition materials, but it was on the same day that my summer internship started. Oh yes, and then grades were released. Then, the window for OCI (on-campus interview) applications were opened. Did I mention the anxiety of class registration for next year in the middle of this?

If this all seems like a lot… it is! Yet, every first-year law student persisted through this process and thrived. Although the past year felt overwhelming for a variety of reasons, we were all able to persevere because Boston College Law School prepared us.

On my first day of my summer internship at the Massachusetts Office of the Attorney General, I was handed three assignments. One task was writing a memorandum that needed to be submitted five days later. Another task was assisting a supervising attorney by acting as a judge in a moot court as she prepared to argue before the Massachusetts Appeals Court. The other assignment was drafting a motion for an upcoming proceeding. All of this was in the first week.

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Musings on a Still Virtual Summer

/ Devon Sanders / Leave a comment

I am sitting at my desk in my childhood bedroom, in the home where I grew up, starting my summer internship virtually and feeling admittedly silly as I pour a cup of coffee and don professional clothing while I am surrounded by mementos of my youth. Though the coloring books and childhood photographs on my desk have now been replaced by my laptop and a Bluebook, things still feel eerily similar to what I remember growing up.

It makes me think back to this time last year. Coming home last March as the pandemic shutdown hit was almost incomprehensible: sitting in the home that felt so familiar to me, I was also painfully aware of how foreign just about everything else around me really was. I watched my professors (and later my summer employer) scramble to get a handle of how best to continue on in a world that was suddenly unfamiliar. I adapted to virtual meetings, technical difficulties, and Zoom hangouts. I took on the unfamiliarity with an open mind, trying to adjust to the temporary surroundings I believed I was in.

But now it has been a year, and the unfamiliarity has transformed into the ordinary. What was once a few weeks at most is now over a year of remote school and work. Summer internships, clinics, classes, and virtual events have come and gone. Countless in-person events and programs have been transformed to account for the virtual world we remain in. I and most other rising 3Ls (ouch), are entering into another remote summer internship.

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My Unexpected Summer Experience

/ Courtney Ruggeri / Leave a comment

To put it simply, I did not have the summer I expected. Like many of my peers, my summer associate program was cancelled, I had to put vacation plans on hold, and I was forced to think about the post-grad job market way more than I wanted. But this unexpected turn of events (thank you, COVID-19) led to an incredible opportunity at Citrix.

During the fall of my 2L year, I took a Privacy Law course with Peter Lefkowitz, Chief Privacy & Digital Risk Officer at Citrix. I had gotten to know Peter pretty well over the course of the semester, and had gone to him for career advice before. So, when I discovered I suddenly had no summer plans, I took a chance, reached out to Peter, and asked if he had any suggestions for how to gain privacy-related experience while I had this downtime. Lucky for me, Citrix was in the middle of launching its first legal internship program, and Peter had the perfect opportunity.

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Your Good News This Week: BC Law Comes Together to Meet Needs

/ rjkenney22 / Leave a comment

To help address the impact of COVID-19 on students’ summer work plans, the legal needs of individuals and public interest organizations, and to support ongoing research projects, BC Law faculty and staff have come together to offer two new opportunities.

The BC Law COVID-19 Legal Services Project (CVLSP) provides legal assistance and advice to individuals and organizations affected by COVID-19 disruptions or who provide public interest services. In this virtual law firm, law student volunteers, under the supervision of experienced practitioners, will advocate for and assist those in need. The anticipated work includes habeas corpus petitions and bond hearings in the Federal District Court on behalf of ICE detainees; interviewing and counseling individuals to facilitate receipt of unemployment benefits under the CARES Act; consumer debt assistance; compassionate release legal assistance; and legal research to organizations and entities.

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