Photograph: Eagle statue outside law school.

Externship Program Course Description

The externship program at Washburn Law provides a wide variety of off-campus, hands-on practice opportunities for students. Students interested in any specialized area or areas of law can work for civil, criminal, governmental, or judicial entities that focus on a wide variety of legal work. Students work side-by-side with practicing legal professionals and handle real issues and assignments, which affect the lives of the people involved. Externships allow students to develop skills and contacts within the profession while they explore various legal career opportunities.

Students may earn a maximum of four credit hours of externship work and most placements are limited to two hours in a semester. This allows students to gain experience in up to two distinct and different practice areas during their law school career. Students must perform 50 clock hours of work at the placement per credit hour. Thus, a normal semester two-hour course will require 100 clock hours of work or an average of six to eight hours per week.

The externship program offers two separate tracks. One allows students to explore a wide variety of placements in the civil, criminal and governmental legal fields. The other allows students to focus on the local, state and federal court systems in the judicial track.

Civil/Criminal/Governmental Externships

Civil, criminal, and governmental externship placements provide students with an opportunity to enhance their legal education through off-campus placements in a variety of non-profit, criminal prosecution and defense or governmental settings. Students have the chance to learn through hands-on experience in the legal field, handle real issues, and work on real assignments that will affect both the parties to the legal matter and society in general.

In these placements students will get a focused exposure in the particular specialized practice area that they choose. Students will become intimately familiar with policy and procedural issues, enhance and improve their research and writing skills, and learn and think about ethical issues and professional responsibility requirements of attorneys who work in these specialized placements.

This course will help students be aware of and navigate the challenges and opportunities provided in their chosen placement and practice specialty. This course includes three group meetings each semester, six reflection papers about professional issues students may face during their externship, and a final paper as a capstone to the semester and as an assessment of students' participation in the program.

Judicial Externships

The Judicial Externship program provides students with an opportunity to enhance their legal education through off-campus placements in a judge's chambers. Through that placement, students will have the chance to learn through hands-on experience in the legal field: they will handle real issues and work on real assignments that will impact the lives of the litigants involved.

Throughout a judicial externship experience, students will become familiar with civil and criminal procedural issues, will enhance and improve their research and writing skills, and will learn and think about ethical issues and professional responsibility requirements of attorneys who work for the court.

This course will help students be aware of and navigate the challenges and opportunities of a judicial clerkship. The course includes three group meetings each semester, reflection papers about professional issues students may face during their externship, and a final paper as a capstone to the semester and as an assessment of students' participation in the program.