Freedom Law Firm

I was able to complete an internship at Freedom Law Firm over the Spring 2022 semester, I sat at the front desk in the picture below. It’s a bankruptcy law firm and the internship itself is intended for those interested in applying for law school (which I am) or gaining experience in a law office. While the internship wasn’t quite what I expected it to be, I did still learn a lot and was able to work with the legal assistants and paralegals, learn what they do, and the process/what’s required to file chapter 7 and chapter 13 bankruptcy cases. It didn’t necessarily require knowledge of political science, which is my major, but I did use a lot of the critical thinking and analytical skills which came out of my studies.

This experience helped me to gain insight into the legal world and how a law office works, which is important because you don’t really get that specific training in any type of undergraduate program or before you enroll in law school. I really enjoyed the basic parts of the internship (building the client’s cases and thinking critically about how they were either helped or hurt by the different documents that they submitted), but found towards the end that I really knew more about what a legal assistant or a paralegal does than an actual attorney. I am interested in completing another internship this summer or before I graduate and focus on the role of the attorney specifically just to be sure that I want to commit to law school before I apply. Otherwise, from here I would need to get either my J.D. (complete law school) or paralegal’s certificate (in addition to my Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science) before I can start my career.

The biggest takeaway from this experience, though, is the importance of, like Jenna said, owning your career and advocating for yourself. I mentioned that I didn’t really get to see what an actual attorney does, but I also didn’t really consider asking until I was a couple of months into the internship because I was a little nervous about doing so so there wasn’t a lot of time left to work with them. This taught me that, especially in a field as competitive as the law, you really have to be able to recognize that you’re the only one fighting for yourself and can be either as successful as you want or as ordinary as it takes to get the job done.