Summer Externships Abroad

Building upon its excellent reputation in the field of International Commercial Law and Arbitration, Pace Law School established the Summer Externships Abroad Program in 1994 to offer students with fluency in a foreign language the opportunity to work with a law firm in a country of their own choosing in order to gain expertise in both the legal language and the Civil Law of that country, pursuant to building a career involving cross-border transactions.

Since that time, Pace externs have practiced with prestigious law firms in countries around the world, including Australia, Korea, Japan, China, India, Argentina, Brazil, France, Portugal, Italy, Spain, Germany, Austria, Greece, Russia, Lebanon, Slovakia, Hungary, and Croatia. This list grows each year. Due to student demand, a limited number of “English-only” externships have also been created. The externs have benefited enormously from the experience, and the law firms have also benefited, in each case requesting another Pace extern for the following year.

PROGRAM OVERVIEW

Each externship runs for 8 weeks (320 hours) during June and July.  After attending the two-week academic seminar, the externs work full time for their firms for the remaining six weeks. They receive 6 academic credits for this course of study and therefore, according to American Bar Association Guidelines, they cannot receive any monetary compensation for their work in the firm. Pace externs are entirely self-funded and are responsible for their own air and ground transportation as well as their housing, food, and other related costs. Suggestions and assistance in locating appropriate housing are, however, greatly appreciated by the students.

Each extern must complete one significant piece of legal writing during the internship, based on the work assigned by the student’s field supervisor. (This work should not take the form of a separate research paper, but rather grow out of the naturally occurring work of the law firm during the eight weeks of the externship.) Externs are also required to complete a daily work journal.

Each extern is assigned a field supervisor(s) within the firm who provides the student with adequate supervision and meaningful learning opportunities, which might include legal research, the preparation of legal memoranda or documents, attendance at court or arbitral proceedings, meetings with clients and/or members of the profession, or other work that the supervisor considers significant. The field supervisor’s assessment of the extern’s performance is heavily considered, along with the quality of the extern’s written submissions, in assigning the externship grade at the end of the program.

For further information, please contact Kathy Lambert, Special Assistant to International Programs, at klambert@law.pace.edu.