Parke Law Firm

This semester UNLV gave me the opportunity to intern with Parke Law Firm, a personal injury attorney's office. I had a wonderful time during my internship. I learned a lot about personal injury law, the day-to-day operations of a law firm, and how to conduct myself in a professional work environment. I would recommend this internship to anyone who was interested because of the insight it provides into personal injury law, the positive work environment, and the flexibility it provided me as a student.

When looking to apply for an internship at a law firm many students might feel intimidated. I know I was. I didn’t know anything about law besides the very basics, and I’d never even had a job before. I quickly discovered this didn’t matter. The staff at Parke Law trained me quickly and my job was easy to learn. The only prior knowledge I needed was knowing how to use google docs and sheets. Without any prior experience, it took me about two days to learn my job, and after a week or two, I was fully confident in my skills. When I made mistakes, my supervisors were forgiving; they corrected me, and we moved on.

My ultimate career goal is to become a lawyer and interning at Parke Law certainly helped with that. I do not recommend this job, or any legal job, to anyone not interested in law. My internship was great, but if I wasn’t interested in 1aw it’s not a job I’d find rewarding or particularly helpful to my career. The most this internship did for me was teach me what working at a law firm was like and about the very basics of personal injury law. This doesn’t really tie into my major of Political Science in any way. My goal is to become a lawyer, not an academic in Political Science, so this internship was never something intended to work in tandem with my major.

After working at Parke Law Firm for about three and a half months I’ve decided personal injury law isn’t something I’m going to pursue long-term. Working at a law firm is something I might want to do, although being a JAG (military lawyer) is my ultimate goal. This has always been the case and I never really expected this internship to change my mind. This internship didn’t make me want to work in personal injury law any less, it just didn’t persuade me that it would be a career I’d enjoy. If I did want to pursue this career long term, I could use the skills I learned at this internship to become a paralegal. Just knowing the basics of personal injury law is enough, even without a degree, to work at a law firm like this one. Going to law school would be the best way to make more money in this field, however.