Legal Internship or Externship

Congress Watch, a division of Public Citizen, is seeking new legal interns (or for-credit externs) for the Summer 2024 academic session.  Public Citizen is a national, non-partisan, public interest group with over 500,000 members and activists. The Congress Watch division engages in public education, grassroots organizing, and advocacy before Congress and administrative agencies on money in politics, open government, corporate accountability, financial regulation, health and safety, and access to justice.

The Congress Watch legal internship/externship is designed to provide law students with a better understanding of the role of legal research within the legislative and administrative process.  The position is designed to give a broad experience influencing U.S. Congress and Administrative agencies as well as varied activities to build a background in public interest policy and advocacy work.

Possible issue areas for legal internship placement are: civil justice, financial reform, good government, healthcare, regulatory policy, and worker safety.

Responsibilities:

• Assisting Congress Watch Advocates and In-House Counsel with duties including: responding to information requests from Capitol Hill, the news media, and national organizations; developing briefing papers, reports, fact sheets and other educational and lobbying materials; and aiding legislative campaigns, coalition building and media strategies.
• Providing legal research support on pending legislative issues. Interns will search for and review original documents (e.g. on-line databases such as Westlaw, Library of Congress resources, and documents from governmental and non-governmental agencies) as appropriate to fulfill research requests.
• Providing a small amount of administrative advocacy support including legislator research, deliveries, errands to Capitol Hill, and other tasks as assigned.

Requirements:

Knowledge: Current law school enrollment or completed Juris Doctor degree. Basic knowledge of public policy issues and the legislative process.
Skills: Excellent legal research, analytical thinking, oral and written communication, and organizational skills.
Qualities: Conscientious, accurate, and tenacious. Strong commitment to public interest work.  Willingness to assist with all aspects of issue advocacy work.  A preference will be given to applicants seeking academic credit for this internship/externship placement.

Public Citizen hires interns for the fall, winter, spring, and summer semesters with flexibility regarding start and end dates.

To Apply:

Public Citizen internships are available year round. Our internships are up to 40 hours a week for around eight weeks.  **We accept unpaid internship applications on a rolling basis and currently are accepting applications for paid internships for Summer 2024.**

Public Citizen offers unpaid internships (credit can be arranged) and a small number of paid internships ($17 an hour).  To be considered for a paid internship for Summer  2024, candidates must apply by March 25, 2024, and submit materials listed below.  Chosen applicants will be notified on April 15, 2024.

If you are applying for a paid internship, please include an essay outlining why you want to intern at Public Citizen and any other information about you that you wish to have considered, including your need for financial support (500 words or less). If you have completed the FAFSA, please also submit a copy of your Student Aid Report (SAR).

Submit cover letter, resume, and writing sample as attachments to Zachary Brown (zbrown@citizen.org) with the subject line “Summer 2024 (or Fall 2024) CW-Legal Internship.” Please specify issue area of most interest to you, if applicable.  No phone calls please. Please note: due to the very high volume of applications we receive, we are only able to contact those students who will be moving forward in the application process.