About Our Internships

Our office has a long history of welcoming and teaching students at many levels of their education — including law school and college.

For college students interested in an office internship

Jordan was an intern in our office for four summers while she was in college at the University of Vermont.

Each summer, Grossman Ripps & Albert engages an administrative-legal intern, most often a college student, to assist us in performing the administrative and business functions of a law office. Our summer internship is always a paid position (at market wages), but we also regard it as a learning opportunity for the students we hire.

Over the years, we have engaged students ranging from sophomores in high school to seniors in college to work with us during the summer, and occasionally during their winter breaks. We help our interns learn a variety of administrative and business skills that they will be able to use throughout their working lives. We also help them appreciate the importance of confidentiality, punctuality, and client/customer service, while at the same time teaching them a whole range of skills needed to operate the very sophisticated computer systems in our paperless office.

We typically have one student in this role each year, very occasionally two, though the role is usually different each year and the type of student may vary from year to year. Our former summer interns have gone on to careers in a whole range of professions, including teaching, nursing, accounting, social work, banking, college administration, engineering, computer science, wildlife management, and public relations. Three former interns are now paralegals, two are lawyers, and three are physicians.

To learn more about this opportunity, contact our office and ask to have your email directed to one of the lawyers. We typically fill the position the preceding winter but are glad to receive queries at any time.

For law school and college students interested in the law

Katherine did an externship in our office during her third year at Vermont Law School.

Grossman Ripps & Albert also offers periodic clerkship/internship/externship opportunities for law students and college students who are interested in working as apprentices, alongside the lawyers in our practice. Such students will both gain exposure to real-world legal work and learn what is involved in operating a law office.

Over the years, we have had a number of law students work as summer clerks. During these clerkships, we stress the application of the theoretical skills that students learn in law school to the real-life issues our clients bring to us. Our law clerks work only on matters that lawyers would otherwise handle. For more than 35 years, we have been committed to not having law clerks engage in clerical work.

We also regularly welcome students from Vermont Law School (VLS) during the school year. Some work with us full-time under the semester-in-practice program, while others work with us part-time through VLS’s externship program; both these programs are for-credit learning experiences.

In addition, on several occasions, college students who are wondering whether the law might be an appropriate profession for them have joined us for legal internships of varying lengths. Here, again, we try to help such students learn skills that are relevant to being a lawyer rather than just giving them clerical work.

All three lawyers in the practice take very seriously their responsibility to teach law students, as well as college students interested in the law, about the nuances involved in being a good lawyer. All three of the office’s lawyers regularly engage in educational activities with such students — and enjoy these interactions.

However, because we are small office, we have to plan carefully for each potential clerkship/internship. Here are some of the factors that we are mindful of as we consider such placements:

• We have found that full-time clerkships/internships work best. The character of our practice is such that it’s more challenging to work with part-time clerks/interns, since they aren’t able to see many transactions through from start to finish.
• Longer-term clerkships/internships work better. Three months (or even four months) is far better than three weeks. It takes at least a month for clerks/interns to come up to speed on our processes, and it’s best if we then have a month or two after that to work with them.
• Time of year matters. Our busiest months are May, June, and July. It’s a bigger challenge for us to integrate clerks/interns into our practice during those months — especially for periods of time shorter than the whole summer — when we are all busy getting work out the door.
• Lead-time makes a difference. It is easier to integrate clerks/interns into our practice when we have more time to plan ahead.

If you’re interested in a clerkship/internship experience with us, send a letter of interest to our office, asking to have your email directed to one of the lawyers and addressing as fully as you can these four factors, as well as your background and interests.