The Long Career Launch Program (the “Program”) is designed to make it financially possible for recent graduates of The University of Texas School of Law to obtain legal work experience in unpaid internships while they are awaiting bar results and looking for permanent employment. Graduates who are selected to participate in the Fall 2013 Program will receive a stipend to support work in an unpaid legal internship with a government agency or a 501(c)(3) public interest organization. Internships with judicial courts are not eligible. The Fall 2013 Program is generously funded by a grant from the Joe R. and Teresa Lozano Long Foundation.
For more information, please contact Angélica Salinas Evans, Associate Director for Career Services, at 512-232-1159 or aevans@law.utexas.edu.
As an agency or organization that would not normally hire unlicensed attorneys or may not have the resources to pay interns, the Long Career Launch Program is a way to obtain much-needed legal assistance from outstanding UT Law graduates. The Program increases access to justice in the community and promotes public service work among our graduates. Response from past participating employers has been overwhelmingly favorable as more than 130 government agencies and public interest organizations have participated in the Program since its inception in 2008.
The Fall 2013 Long Career Launch Program is open to December 2012, May 2013 and August 2013 J.D. graduates of the UT School of Law who will be taking the July 2013 bar exam. It is open only to those who have not yet secured offers of employment; it is not open to those who have secured jobs but have deferred start dates.
Graduates who are interested in participating in the Program secure an internship with an eligible organization, identify their supervising attorney at that organization, and then apply for a place in the Program. If selected, graduates complete the necessary paperwork and begin their internships. The number of applicants accepted into the Program depends on available funding; we expect selections to be competitive.
Sponsored interns are required to work a minimum of 400 hours to be completed during the period between the July bar exam and the publication of bar results in November. The internship must begin no earlier than August 5 and no later than August 19, and end no later than November 22, 2013. Because it is our hope that Program recipients will simultaneously conduct a job search for long-term employment, this will allow them 16 weeks to complete the 400 hours.
Since graduates will be seeking long-term employment, it is possible that an intern would find a position during the projected tenure of the internship, but we would expect the employer and the intern to have an understanding regarding notice of departure. We also would expect that this job search process would not materially interfere with the intern’s business-day work, but ask for flexibility to accommodate a possible job interview or minor job-search-related interruptions.
If you are interested in hiring an intern as part of the Long Career Launch Program, you may begin posting a position on the Career Services Office’s online Job Bank on UT Law Symplicity.We encourage you to post positions no later than Friday, May 17, with an application deadline no later than Friday, June 7, 2013. As a potential sponsoring employer, you will have the opportunity to screen applicants before offering an internship. In addition, you may sponsor multiple applicants. Please refer to the sample LCLP job posting (PDF).
As a potential sponsoring employer, you will have the opportunity to screen applicants before offering an internship. In addition, you may sponsor multiple applicants. Please note that graduates have until Friday, June 21, 2013 to apply to the Program.
For those employers participating in the program, we ask that you please complete the Fall 2013 Long Career Launch Program Supervising Attorney Certification (PDF).
We hope you will take advantage of this opportunity to connect with some of the finest law students in the country seeking to work for the public good.