Hello friends! I have some exciting news to share!
I have an internship lined up for the summer, after several interviews and many quiet moments of checking LinkedIn, seeing one of my classmates had already lined up an internship (starting in January, seriously how) and quietly despairing and worrying it wasn’t going to happen for me. I’m going to be working at the Connecticut Office of the Attorney General in their Child Support and Collections section.
I’m so excited about this opportunity. Working in Child Support and Collections should involve a lot of research - one of my major projects this summer will be pulling together past precedents in Connecticut family courts and putting it in useful form for the attorneys, which will be a good way to further hone the research skills I’ve been practicing in class and be great experience. I’ll also get to attend family court and watch the process in person, particularly the mediation process, which should be a great way to learn more about negotiation. Plus, the AG’s office has a large roster of interns and attorneys and hosts events for interns to learn more about the entire office’s work, like weekly lunches focusing on a particular section. The summer should be a great chance to learn more about lots of different types of law and network with a lot of attorneys and students.
In a perfect world, I’d be doing a summer internship in labor law since that’s what I’d like to practice long-term, but I’m still really happy with my summer internship. In addition to honing useful skills, it’s an area of law I can feel really good about practicing - protecting children who have gone through a divorce in the family (I know from experience how painful it can be, even when it’s the best decision for everyone) and ensure they have the resources they need to thrive. Plus, I’ve been counseled by people I trust that it’s very normal and totally fine to do something different than your long-term career goals the summer after 1L year - what’s important is getting experience under your belt so that when it’s time to look for a post-2L summer internship (which is really important for post-graduation job placement) you’re the best possible candidate you can be.
And speaking of labor law…I also did something I’m really excited about even if it was probably a questionable life choice given all the other things I have to do. I started a new campus organization, the Labor and Employment Law Society.
UConn Law has a bunch of what are called practice area groups: the Criminal Law Society, Tax Law Society, Public Interest Law Group, Family Law Association, and so on. We even have two different ones related to business and corporate law, which I’m sure would make more sense to me if I knew anything at all about corporate law. They host things like networking events with practitioners, speakers’ panels with more information about particular aspects of the practice area, and just-for-fun events.
But until now, we didn’t have one for labor and employment law, even though UConn Law offers four different courses on various aspects of work law and it’s a robust and growing field of law with resurgent interest in unions and workplace justice among young people. I was disappointed about this when I started looking at student organizations, but until recently I was just silently hoping that someone else would come to the same conclusion and start the group so I wouldn’t have to. For some weird reason, that strategy didn’t work!
I texted a few friends on campus about starting a new group and got encouragement, then started looking into the requirements for a new student organization. To get recognized, we needed an executive board, a set of bylaws, a faculty advisor, and a mission statement. Three of the four were fairly easy - I wrote some draft bylaws with help from a couple of 2L friends who are heavily involved in campus and sent examples from various organizations, the mission statement was pretty straightforward, and my Labor Law professor graciously agreed to serve as faculty advisor (possibly persuaded when I pointed out that, during 2.5 years on the College Democrats e-board as an undergrad, I’d met our faculty advisor once and was therefore cool with a minimally involved advisor). But I needed an executive board.
I decided to hold an interest meeting not long after spring break. Purchased snacks and sodas from my favorite union grocery store (on my own dime, since we don’t get a budget from student government until we’re recognized as a group), booked one of the student lounges on campus, and emailed out notices to the student body that we were holding a meeting, and included an interest form for executive board positions. Professors for the Labor Law and Employment Discrimination Law classes very kindly agreed to let me announce the meeting at the beginning of their classes. And even with all this prep work, I still had the jitters…especially when, ten minutes before the meeting started, I was the only person in the lounge.
Fortunately, my worst fears of being left alone and sobbing into a platter of cheese and crackers while contemplating the failure of my baby organization didn’t come to pass. With a few minutes to spare, people started trickling in. Ultimately, we had about a dozen attend the meeting in person, with one other joining on WebEx and a couple others offering sincere apologies for not being able to make it. We elected a full Executive Board, with enough people showing interest that we were even able to have two event coordinators and two social media coordinators. And while a couple people probably came more out of wanting to support me than an interest in employment law (including my amazing Women’s Law Students Association mentor), almost everyone there was really interested in work law and excited about the new group! We brainstormed event ideas and people had great suggestions beyond the usual career panels, like hosting events educating high school and undergraduate college students about their rights at work and helping a professor host movie nights with viewings and discussions of movies related to labor and workers’ rights.
With a proper executive board and all the other boxes checked, I submitted all the required documentation to Student Affairs and the Student Bar Association, our student government. Last night, they held a vote at their meeting to recognize both our group and a new debate club - and it passed! We’re a real club now! We get to have a budget for fall events and everything! I’m so happy that other people want to join in. My friend Grace even designed us an awesome Rosie the Riveter-inspired logo, check it out (and follow us on Instagram for more of her design awesomeness!):
For a final update, course selection for fall 2024 was a couple weeks ago, and it’s really exciting (and also a little nervewracking) for 1Ls since we go from course loads of almost entirely required courses to total flexibility, with only a handful of courses required for graduation. Most of my time in the fall will be in UConn’s Asylum and Human Rights clinic (fulfilling my experiential learning requirement), where we work with local community members seeking refugee status after being displaced from their home countries due to war, persecution, or similar circumstances. People who have done it before have told me it’s an amazing experience and I absolutely cannot wait! I’m also signed up for regular courses in employment discrimination law and health law, which should be really interesting, and I’m on the waitlist for a spot in Sexuality, Gender, and the Law (I’d drop health law if I got into that one).
I hope you all had clear skies for today’s solar eclipse - we had 94% of peak on campus, and while I’ve heard totality is an unbeatable experience, 94% was still really cool! One of my classmates brought a white sheet to lay on the ground and a couple of us brought colanders, so we could admire the crescent-shaped shadows, and I was able to snag a pair of eclipse glasses thanks to a good friend (plus even if I hadn’t, enough people on campus had them that everyone could at least take a look). Plus, tonight’s the national championship in men’s college basketball - I’m still devastated the UConn women lost (there were other opportunities to take/hold the lead, I know, but that foul never should’ve been called), but excited to wawtch the UConn men. Go Huskies!