Career Treks Connect BU Law Students to Boston-area Employers
A new Career Development Office program gave students an advantage in their summer job search.
It began with TripAdvisor last fall. Boston University School of Law students traveled to the Needham, Massachusetts-based company on a Career Trek organized by James Kossuth, assistant director for the private sector with the Career Development & Public Service Office.
That first trip developed into a series of visits to employers in the Boston area where students experienced the diverse settings in which they could employ their legal skills after graduation. In addition to TripAdvisor, Career Treks took students to Wayfair, Converse, the Suffolk District Attorney’s Office, and the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, among others. Students toured the offices, met with legal teams, and got a sense of the kinds of work in-house attorneys do.
Jennifer Webb (’19) took advantage of Career Treks to Converse and TripAdvisor during her first year at BU Law. “I’ve been trying to get a broad view of the companies and sectors I could work with,” she says, “and I wanted to see the settings and opportunities available to in-house lawyers.”
On each trip, Webb and her peers sat down with with multiple members of the legal team with different specialties in intellectual property, employment law, litigation, and mergers and acquisitions, among others. They shared their experiences in the legal field and with the company, and then opened the discussion up to questions from the students. “It was a great opportunity to ask questions that pertained to us personally,” she says. “We got to understand how we could shape our careers going forward.”
After the visits, Webb reconnected with one of the attorneys at TripAdvisor—a BU Law alum—when he joined a panel at a transactional law conference run by the Business Law Society. “I was checking people in for the event, and was able to welcome him and reintroduce myself,” she says. “We caught up more after his panel, and stayed in touch after the event.” When the application for a summer position became available, Webb applied right away. With the connection already established, she interviewed and was accepted for the position.
As a summer legal intern, Webb is gaining skills critical to the day-to-day work of in-house attorneys, from litigation to copyright and trademark law. “TripAdvisor runs the summer internships like a first-year associates program,” Webb says. “There are a pool of projects that get dispersed, so I’m not just working on contracts all summer. I’ll rotate through projects working on litigation, M&A, and contract review.” So far, she has reviewed nondisclosure agreements, researched current litigation on parity clauses, and reviewed the company’s onboarding process for new hires to ensure its compliance with state law.
Rising 3L Harold Primm (’18) saw the Career Trek to the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston and jumped at the opportunity to visit an employer whose mission aligned so well with his interest in economic policy and financial law. “I went on the Trek expecting to have a meeting with a bunch of attorneys,” he says, “but they brought in people from many different business and regulatory groups.” Those groups, Primm notes, discussed the Fed’s regulatory work and economic policy research, but also the organization’s legal needs for human resources, infosecurity, and even real estate, since it leases out office space in its Atlantic Avenue building. “It showed me how big and diverse the Fed is… and that I wouldn’t just be working on banking law, but would help in all aspects of the business.”
Primm secured a summer legal internship with the organization thanks in part to the connections formed on the Career Trek. Now, he’s getting exactly the kind of experience he hoped for. “I’m working with banking law every day,” he says. “Any time there’s a question about what types of banking activities are permitted, I get to do the research. On top of that, I’m helping with general business operations like contract review and employment law matters.”
Both Webb and Primm credit the Career Treks program with creating opportunities they could take advantage of to secure their summer positions. “There are a lot of networking events throughout the year, but you see students competing for the time and attention of the attorneys there, so the conversations tend to stay at a higher level,” Webb says. “But being in their place of work and asking questions that help you understand what people do on a day-to-day basis is so much more intimate. It’s a great complement to traditional networking.”
Plans are already under way to continue the Career Treks program. “Next fall, we’re shooting for one trip per month, and would like to split the public and private sector employers evenly,” James Kossuth says. “We’ll go back to some of the employers we visited last year, but we are also hoping to expand the program to open up new opportunities for our students.”
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