Every year, the Knight Institute brings on interns, legal fellows, and Columbia Law School externs to work with us for defined periods of time. Below is a brief description of each of these positions along with an overview of our schedule for hiring them.
Legal fellows. Legal fellows are recent law school graduates who spend one or two years at the Institute working on all aspects of our litigation. They spend most of their time drafting legal memos and briefs and helping us determine what legal positions to take and which cases to file; they sometimes work on initiatives led by our Research and Policy programs as well. They also supervise the work of our legal interns and externs. We generally have four legal fellows at any given time, and we hire them for one- or two-year terms. We generally post legal fellow positions in July or August and conduct interviews in October, with fellows starting at the Institute the following fall (typically, right after Labor Day).
Summer legal interns. The Institute’s summer legal interns are current JD students or LLMs who have just obtained their degree. Our interns work closely with our staff attorneys and legal fellows to support our litigation through legal research and writing; they sometimes work on our initiatives led by our Research and Policy programs as well. We generally take on between six and eight legal interns. We usually give 2Ls and LLMs preference over 1Ls. (If you don’t get an interview or an internship as a 1L, please apply again the next year!) We generally post these positions in October or November, and we conduct 2L and LLM interviews in December, and 1L interviews in January. We expect most of our interns to spend at least ten weeks with us over the summer, but we will consider applicants for shorter periods of time on a case-by-case basis.
Columbia Law School externs. The Institute’s externs are current Columbia Law School students who receive course credit for participating in a weekly seminar at the Institute and spending fifteen hours a week working on our litigation. For more information about the externship program, please see the posting in Columbia Law School’s externship catalog.
Research & Communications interns. The Knight Institute hires undergraduate (and occasionally graduate) students as research and communications interns for the fall, spring, and summer terms. The fall- and spring-term positions are open to Columbia and Barnard students only. The summer-term positions are open to all students. We typically solicit applications for the fall internship in July, the spring internship in November, and the summer internship in March.
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