“Since I worked from home, I set up informal virtual ‘coffees’ with different attorneys to learn more about their backgrounds and interests. It was different not to develop relationships in person, but I made an effort to connect with the rest of the team.”
Ben Cooper, 2L | Law clerk, Land O’Lakes (Read Q&A)

“The pandemic made finding a summer internship much more difficult, but I was extremely grateful to have found this experience in the end. I work remotely, with most tasks being similar to the Capital Habeas Unit’s ‘normal’ summer intern program, except that I could not visit our client in prison or tag along to interviews with witnesses as I normally would.”
Emily Curran, 2L | Legal intern, Capital Habeas Unit; Federal Public Defender, Western District of Missouri (Read Q&A)

“My summer at Winthrop was completely ‘virtual.’ Having said that, all the attorneys were extremely forthcoming, and [they] put in more effort trying to get to know the summer associates. I’d like to believe that the work I did was the same as it would have been inside of a physical office. Not being able to connect with people organically in the hallways, over lunch, etc., was definitely the biggest challenge.”
Parth Deshmukh, 2L | Summer associate, Winthrop & Weinstine (Read Q&A)

“Although I worked remotely this summer, I still got a feel for the culture at Maslon and I became an expert in Zoom and Webex meetings. I did miss my commute to the city, because it provided me with some much-needed alone time on stressful work and school days.”
Yemaya Hanna, 2L | Summer associate, Maslon (Read Q&A)

“I wouldn’t say [working remotely] changed the substance of the work I did, as I worked on projects that past interns were assigned. While I had less face-to-face interaction throughout the day, I was able to participate in certain things that I wouldn’t have been able to if I was in-person, such as the Department of Commerce Intern Webinar Series, where DOC interns meet via video chat to hear presentations from other DOC attorneys and to network.”
Emily Newman, 2L | Summer intern, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Office of the General Counsel (Read Q&A)

“I was grateful to be working in person! I met with clients, but with precautions and by appointment only. (Anishinabe Legal Services normally has many walk-ins). I also spent limited time in court, because tribal courts and rural state courts had fewer judges and took longer to resume hearing civil matters.”
Zoe Psiakis, 2L | Summer Clerk, Anishinabe Legal Services (Read Q&A)

“I was not optimistic that the abrupt shift to a fully remote experience would go smoothly, but it went about as well as any of us could have hoped. The work was challenging, and I got the opportunity to work on some interesting cases.”
Schuyler Troy, 2L | Summer associate, Fredrikson & Byron (Read Q&A)