1.2 What is an Externship?

Gemma Smyth

An externship is a for-credit placement with a law related organisation, typically accompanied by an integration seminar taught by a law school faculty member or adjunct instructor. Some schools use the term “internship” or sometimes “co-op”; however, co-op placements typically (although not always) do not require significant academic integration. Unlike some clinics, the law school typically has no governance authority over the placement sites; rather, the law school coordinates the placements themselves, and helps both the student and placement supervisor(s) reach appropriate learning goals throughout the term. Crucially, externships are also not “part-time jobs”. For a helpful video setting out the differences, see Professor Halle Hara’s video series, “The Law School Playbook”.

Critically, externships are not solely about “practice readiness” (although they do support students transitioning into the profession); rather, they are highly supported experiences that merge theory and practice, professional identity formation, and critical consciousness about law and lawyering. Ideologically, these experiences are less about “training” and more about “education.” They are rich opportunities to learn about and reflect on law, lawyering, and legal systems.

Externships are set up in many different ways. Some externship programs have a social justice focus. Some include judicial clerkships or internships. Some focus on direct client service while others have a strictly policy focus. There are different credit structures, academic policies, and student roles in each program. Regardless of these differences, externships have distinct elements when compared with law school clinical, volunteer, and pro bono programs.

In an externship, students in a single cohort are working in many placement sites at the same time. This opens up new avenues for inquiry and learning about the law, lawyers, clients, and communities. Externships investigate questions about the nature of legal workplaces, the different types of work that lawyers do, how work is conducted in each site, how clients are included (or not), different governance relationships, the context of law practice more generally, and so on.

Externships and clinics bear some similarities and some differences. For example, clinic students typically work in one site context and in a particular legal area. There are often many students in one clinic working on similar cases, such that case rounds and other more specific teaching and learning approaches are possible. We examine more deeply this relationship between clinics and externships later in this Chapter.

Pro bono or volunteer placements also take many forms, but do not earn students credit. These programs vary widely but typically do not have an extensive or stylized pedagogy.

 

Externship Definitions

While externship programs share many elements, there are some distinct approaches and variations in different institutions. See some definitions below. What similarities and differences do you see? What elements are emphasized in each definition?
“Externships are non-compensated positions in settings outside a law school, for which students receive academic credit. Linking theory and practice, externships provide experience in and direct exposure to a legal work setting. Generally students enrolled in an externship program work for a semester or full school year in a non-profit organization, government agency or judicial office under the supervision of a licensed attorney. Many programs supplement a student’s field placement with a required classroom component.” American Bar Association
“Externships are a form of “experiential learning,” in which students tackle the legal problems of real clients while gaining theoretical knowledge of the underpinnings of their work and learning about practice settings and skills through a combination of academic and hands-on work. Experiential classes also teach students about what interests them—issue, type of practice, work setting, etc.—by “trying it on.” Many employers (public interest, government, and private sector) value experiential learning because it provides reflective real-world experience under the guidance of a faculty member.” Columbia Law School
“Our (program’s) pedagogical goals call for students to observe the realities they are likely to face in practice, to develop some critical perspective on the conditions they find, and to begin to develop strategies for realizing their goals and values within these settings.” Peter Jaszi et al., “Experience as Text: The History of Externship Pedagogy at the Washington College of Law, American University” (1999) 5:2 Clinical L Rev 403.
“Unlike classroom courses or seminars, within an externship, you learn not from a text or a professor, but instead from experiences outside the law school while you engage in the activities of law problems. Your externship course places you alongside attorneys to work on the same problems and issues on which they work. You have the opportunity to exercise or to observe a wide range of lawyering abilities: client interviewing, courtroom representation, negotiation of deals, counselling of clients, drafting of documents of many more.” Leah Wortham et al, “Learning From Practice: A Text for Experiential Legal Education” (St. Paul, MN: West Academic, 2016).

 

Reflection Questions

  1. Often, law school is the first time a student has heard the term “externship”. What jumped to your mind when you first heard this term? You might wish to return to these ideas later in your externship!
  2. What elements of an externship experience do you think might set you up with solid ‘roots’?
  3. The author writes, “[i]deologically, externships are less about ‘training’ and more about ‘education’.” What does this mean? How might these two terms impact learning in an externship?
  4. The author starts this text with a quote by Paulo Freire, a Brazilian writer and activist who is a leading thinker in critical pedagogy:

Yet only through communication can human life hold meaning. The teacher’s thinking is authenticated only by the authenticity of the students’ thinking. The teacher cannot think for his students, nor can he impose his thought on them. Authentic thinking, thinking that is concerned about reality, does not take place in ivory tower isolation, but only in communication. If it is true that thought has meaning only when generated by action upon the world, the subordination of students to teachers becomes impossible. Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the oppressed (New York:  Herder and Herder, 1972).

What does this quote mean? How might it be relevant in an externship context?

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