UCLA SCHOOL OF LAW EXTERNSHIP PROGRAM
UCLA has an extensive, well-established and diversified student externship program. Students can work either as an extern law clerk to a federal judge or in one of our agency externships at a government agency, public interest law firm or non-profit organization. Unlike most law school programs, all UCLA externships are full-time, semester-long programs. Students receive 11 units of credit for the placement portion of the externship and an additional 2 units of credit for a concurrent tutorial or seminar. Students may take an externship in their fourth or fifth semesters of study.
The main goals of the UCLA School of Law extern program are to develop students' research, writing and analytic skills through intensive work on a variety of assignments; to give students the opportunity to study legal process through their participation in the work of a legal institution; to permit students to gain experience in specialized areas of the law through practical experience that will supplement elective course work; and to enrich the student's classroom experience upon return to the law school.
To these ends, the law school has developed a core group of judicial and agency settings in which it regularly places students. Students can propose a new agency placement that is tailored to the particular students academic goals.
Judicial Extern Program: Students in the judicial extern program work as full-time externs in the chambers of federal trial and appellate judges, and California Court of Appeal justices in the Los Angeles area. This provides a remarkable opportunity for students to observe and participate in the judicial process while still in law school. At its best, a judicial externship offers several special opportunities:
- To see how judicial decisions are made and to understand the pressures and considerations that influence those decisions
- To participate in the shaping of legal decisions, and
- To observe someone in a critical position of social power
Students must enroll in an accompanying judicial process seminar.
Agency Extern Program: Alternatively students may work in public interest settings such as the ACLU or the Natural Resources Defense Council, or for governmental agencies in Washington, D.C. such as the Department of Defense, the Department of Justice, or the U.S. Attorney's Office in Los Angeles. In addition to day-to-day supervision by highly experienced lawyers at the placements, students keep in regular contact with UCLA faculty through concurrent semester-long tutorials. The range of available placements includes the following:
- International law placements such as the Office of the Legal Adviser to the U.S. State Department
- Civil rights practice such as the American Civil Liberties Union or the Brennan Center for Justice in New York
- Communications/entertainment settings such as the Federal Communications Commission
- Environmental practice such as Natural Resources Defense Council
- Securities practice such as the division of Enforcement at the Securities and Exchange Commission.
The Director of the Extern Program is Susan Gillig. The Program Coordinator is Wendy Haro.
