WSU Legal Externships
Western State University College of Law offers a variety of educational real-world externship placements for eligible students. Under the supervision of the faculty externship directors, students receive academic credit for the legal work they perform in a judicial, civil or criminal law setting. The directors interview and screen interested students to determine which placement will best fit their overall goals, experience, academic standing and expectations.
I had an externship with the Court of Appeals in Riverside. The school set it all up. It was a five-unit class, and then in addition to that you have the externship. The school prepares you for it. You go to the school Student Services, they help you with the resume, the professor in charge of the course sets up the interview, so all you have to do is show up. Very easy, and then interview, and then the judge decides if they want you or not.
Our school provides externs to the Santa Ana courthouse as well as the Riverside courthouse and its at the Court of Appeals, so it’s an Appellate level externship which is very prestigious and hard to get and very cut-throat if you go to one of those “big schools.”
Well, my first day at the externship, I didn’t know what to expect, so I walk in there and I walked into the judge’s chambers and I waited for him to come get me and we like talked for maybe two minutes and then all of a sudden he looked at me and he goes, “Ok, do you want murder or drug possession?” And I was like, “What??” And I was like, “I guess murder,” ok, and then he just drops this big pile of case filings and says, “Ok, go write the opinion,” and I said, “What do you mean, go write the opinion?” And he said, “Well, I don’t write my own opinions. Write my opinion.” So, I did all the research, I wrote the opinion, and it got filed when I was done with it and that was the decision on the case.
I didn’t know if I had what it took, but once he gave me the work and I started doing it I realized that the school really did prepare me.
I was a prosecutor in Orange County for 32 years. I tried over 160 jury trials, 35 homicide cases, bounty cases, drug cases, burglary cases, and sexual assault cases. I’ve seen all kinds of issues.
What I do is, because of the classes I teach—I’m the director of the criminal law externship program, where I place students both in the district attorney’s office and the public defender’s office. What I do is I work with the students not only in placing them, but I spend two hours a week with them in a seminar, dealing with the practical issues, dealing with criminal law. What it is like to be in real life as opposed to just academia.
I would say extremely important. Every student who has been through the externship program has basically said it’s probably the best class they’ve ever had, because it prepares them for real life in the legal world, not just academia. They’ll be able to read books, and answer questions, and pass the bar exam. But really how to deal with real-life solutions.
With our externship programs what we do is we place students in all different sorts of practices. If you’re interested in criminal law, we have criminal law externships. We have a wide variety of civil law externships. One of the great strengths of coming to this school is that there are so many major law firms, small firms, and government agencies that we have a relationship with, where we place students. I think it’s really important for a student to take advantage of externships, because that’s how you find out what area of law you’re really interested in. I know when I went to law school I thought I was going to be a criminal lawyer. That was what I was most interested in, and after I got to law school and took some positions in externship-type settings I realized that that really wasn’t what my interest was. So the externships give you an opportunity to sample and see what areas of law are appealing to you. A lot of times students end up being surprised. They have an idea coming in that you want to do one thing, and they end up doing something entirely different. But the externships give them that exposure.
My second year, I did an externship for the Norwalk community services, legal community services. That was a great experience. Very hands on. I even got certified as a law student and was able to try a full case in court as a law student with a supervising attorney next to me. Once I was done with that and I had honed in on some of my legal skills, by my third year, I served as a judicial extern to a federal judge in the Santa Anna Courthouse which was a very, very prestigious honor for me to even get that position. And really helped on my resume. Now that I’m working for a civil litigation firm, I’ve already been in contact with the director of Western States’ externship program and we’re going to add our law firm as another opportunity that students can use.