Finding an Externship
Traditional Externships
Southern University Law Center offers a wide variety of externship offerings that allow students to work in the field. There are traditional and non-traditional externships. The traditional externship are the ones that involve areas that the law school has been intricately involved in for over a decade. Those externships have existing work schedules and have integrated the law school into the normal program of study. They include the District Attorney’s office, the Appellate Court of Appeals, the Department of Environmental Quality, the Attorney General’s office, Legal Services, and the Public Defender’s office. There are other traditional externships that do not occur on a yearly basis due to the workload but may arise based on expectations. The traditional externships routinely qualify for 3 hours of academic credit per semester with a workload of up to 20 hours per academic week.
Non-Traditional Externships
The non-traditional externships are modeled after the Texas Legislative Internship Program, also known as TLIP. The non-traditional externships are extremely demanding and often exceed 40-hour work weeks. Students are integrated into non-traditional job assignments that provide not only exposure to different aspects of the law, but also to unique and meaningful opportunities to practice law. Non-traditional externships do not focus simply on legal or law related jobs but allow the students an opportunity to participate in an externship that fulfills the full spectrum of law related job opportunities. In non-traditional externships, students can earn anywhere between 3 to 12 credit hours per semester. Non-traditional externships give students an opportunity to become ambassadors for the legal profession and allow them the opportunity to explore the many facets that a Juris Doctorate degree will prepare you for. What is significant about a non-traditional externship is that it has no physical borders. Other non- traditional externships include but are not limited to, The American Bar Association, The Environmental Legal Defense Fund, Robert Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights, and many more.