How can I find internship opportunities as a freshman?
How can I find internship opportunities as a freshman?
LAW
For Harvard undergraduates, pursuing a career in law offers a unique opportunity to apply rigorous academic training to real-world impact through public service, corporate leadership, or legal innovation. While US law schools accept students from a wide range of academic backgrounds, the application and matriculation process still requires thoughtful planning, strong analytical skills, and a clear commitment to the values that define the legal profession.
Academic preparation for law school should begin with building a strong foundation in analytical reasoning, writing, and critical thinking. Students are encouraged to challenge themselves with seminar-style classes and intensive writing courses, many of which are available through the General Education curriculum or departmental honors tracks. Faculty mentorship and research assistant positions can also deepen intellectual engagement while demonstrating a serious academic commitment to law-related themes. Internships during summer and term time – whether in law firms, government agencies, advocacy groups, or courts – provide exposure to the practical realities of legal work. Leadership roles, public service, and a demonstrated commitment to equity and justice also resonate strongly with admissions committees. Ultimately, students should seek experiences that sharpen their ability to reason, advocate, and lead. These are the core qualities of successful law students and legal professionals.
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Freshmen/Sophomore Year
In their first two years, Harvard undergraduates can prepare for law school by taking writing-intensive and analytical courses that build critical thinking and communication skills. These classes lay the foundation for legal study and help demonstrate academic readiness. Consider internships or work experiences in legal settings to gain exposure to the field.
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Junior Year
Spring and Summer: If interested in Harvard Law School’s Junior Deferral Program or Columbia Law School’s LEAD Fellowship Program, begin to prepare application materials. Draft your Statement of Purpose and Statement of Perspectives, update your resume, study for the LSAT or GRE, and ensure you have 2-3 letters of recommendation from professors or academic advisors.
Summer: Submit your JDP or LEAD application if pursuing the early application route. Most programs will reach out to candidates and conduct interviews in July.
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Senior Year
June – August (Between Junior and Senior Year): Take the LSAT (ideally once or twice); begin brainstorming and drafting your personal statement, diversity statement, and resume.
August – September (Senior Year): Finalize your personal statement and supplemental essays. Submit your applications as early as possible, preferably by October 31, 2025—even though most law schools remain open through February or March due to rolling admissions. Early submission generally improves your chances for admission and scholarships.
February - March (Senior Year): Application deadlines for most top-tier law schools
January – April (Senior Year): Admission decisions begin in January 2026, with multiple rounds (e.g. Jan 6, Feb 10, Mar 17). Most decisions—including denials, waitlist updates, and final acceptances—are completed by early April.
May (Senior Year): Deadline to commit to a law school and respond to waitlist offers.
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INDUSTRY PATHWAYS
01 CORPORATE LAW AT MAJOR FIRMS (BIG LAW)
Many law school graduates from top institutions enter large corporate law firms, working in areas like mergers and acquisitions, private equity, or high-stakes litigation. These positions offer high starting salaries, exposure to a variety of industries, and access to elite professional networks. While demanding, this path can lead to financially rewarding roles in law, finance, or business leadership.
02 PUBLIC INTEREST LAW AND CIVIL RIGHTS ADVOCACY
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For students driven by social justice and service, public interest law offers opportunities to work at nonprofits, legal aid organizations, or civil rights groups. While compensation is typically lower than in the private sector, many find deep purpose in advocating for marginalized communities, shaping policy, or litigating landmark cases. Loan forgiveness programs and fellowships can help support this path financially.
03 GOVERNMENT, POLICY, AND REGULATORY WORK
Law school can open doors to impactful roles in federal or state government, including agencies like the Department of Justice, SEC, or roles on Capitol Hill. Legal training is also valuable in international diplomacy, policy think tanks, or regulatory bodies. These careers appeal to students interested in shaping public policy and working at the intersection of law, governance, and society.
04 ACADEMIC, ENTREPRENEURIAL, OR INTERDISCIPLINARY CAREERS
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Some law graduates leverage their legal education in academia, legal tech startups, journalism, consulting, or impact investing. This path is ideal for students with broad intellectual interests or those who see the law as a tool for innovation and leadership in nontraditional fields. It offers flexibility, creativity, and the potential to drive change across disciplines.
INDUSTRY SPOTLIGHT
"THE PROFESSION WILL CONFRONT DIFFICULT CHOICES IN ORDER TO RECONCILE ELEMENTS OF THE LAW RELATED TO ITS FUNCTION... ITS FUNCTION AS A TRUSTED PROFESSION IN SERVICE TO OTHERS AND PROTECTING OUT MOST CHERISHED RIGHTS."
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LAW
NEAL J. REENAN '93
Looking back, how did your time at Harvard College shape your path toward law?
As a Government concentrator, I was constantly exposed to the importance of law in society, both in the U.S. and in Europe, where I grew up. European integration was accelerating, and there were many dramatic and exciting changes taking place in the fundamental legal structures governing the European Community (as it was then called) and its member states. I studied the Maastricht treaty, that came into effect the year I graduated, which created the modern European Union and laid the groundwork for the Euro currency. So, law, along with economics, was always a core academic interest of mine, but I didn’t decide to go to law school until several years after college.
Were there any professors, courses, or extracurriculars at Harvard that had a lasting impact on your career direction?
I studied under some amazing professors, including European integration with Peter Hall, Andrew Moravcsik, and Louise Richardson, human rights and international relations with Stanley Hoffman, and economics with Martin Feldstein, Lawrence Summers, and Gregory Mankiw. They nurtured my intellectual interest in politics, law, and economics. But my sophomore Government Tutor, Gideon Rose, who later became editor of Foreign Affairs,
a premier journal of international relations, had the biggest impact on my career. He pushed me very hard to improve my writing, a crucial skill for a lawyer. And, though I didn’t know it at the time, my roles at Harvard Model UN were, in hindsight, very important in preparing me for the business aspects of my career. In those, I began to learn about leading talented peers, serving “clients,” negotiating agreements, and managing a budget, all of which have been important aspects of my career ever since.
Also at Model UN, I met the woman who would become my wife and the biggest supporter of, and really partner in, my career.
Did you always know you wanted to pursue law, or was there a turning point during or after college?
I was always interested in law generally, stemming from my interest in government and politics. Initially when I considered a law career, I thought of becoming a trial lawyer. I was inspired by leading courtroom lawyers like Arthur Liman and Louis Nizer, as well as one of my heroes from childhood, Daniel O’Connell, the “Great Liberator,” and father of Catholic Emancipation in Ireland. After Harvard, I joined the accounting firm PWC, who sponsored my MBA, and in that role, worked on the accounting aspects of mergers and acquisitions (i.e., buying and selling businesses) for private equity funds and leading corporations.
I worked often with lawyers, and saw they had a very close relationship to the client personnel leading a deal and were “in the room” in the negotiations with the other side on a transaction. That appealed to me and so when I went to law school at the University of Michigan, I was more interested in corporate law. I had a professor there for several classes, Karl Lutz, who was one of the leading private equity lawyers in the country and he had a significant influence on my choosing that path and joining the law firm in Chicago where he had practiced. So, my path was an evolution which began in college and was influenced by my experiences afterwards.
What does a typical day (or week) look like for you in your current position?
My primary role is serving clients “doing deals.” I mainly represent private equity firms, or companies they are invested in, when they buy or sell businesses, raise capital, or restructure their investments. I do this as part of a team of talented lawyers with various specialties within law, sometimes as small as a dozen lawyers and often as many as 150 attorneys on large, complex deals. The main activities involve investigating the target business and assessing its legal risk profile (which is called conducting due diligence), structuring the deal (which can be complicated depending on the ownership structure of the business and whether it operates in multiple countries) and the legal risk
profile of the target, and drafting and negotiating the documents that give legal effect to the deal (the merger or acquisition agreement, the financing agreements, etc.), and guiding the strategy to get the deal through any required regulatory approvals and to implement the financing of the deal. I have other roles, including training and mentoring more junior attorneys and new partners, helping my law firm grow relationships with clients and attract new clients, and helping manage certain operational aspects of the firm. I’m fortunate to do all of the above with a terrific group of colleagues that includes both attorneys and professional staff, which makes it a lot of fun.
Many students think of corporate law as high-stakes and high-pressure. How accurate is that perception, and how do you manage the demands of the job?
On one level it is high stakes and high pressure. Our clients are very sophisticated and insist on excellent work, and M&A deals often proceed on very tight timelines and require long hours. “Time is the enemy of the deal” is our mantra. Also, large amounts of money are at stake, many competing interests must often be addressed to bring a deal together, and regulatory bodies must approve many deals, especially large transactions or those in regulated industries like healthcare, financial services or energy and infrastructure. Businesses, and therefore deals, are increasingly global, which compounds the number of constituents and complexities. On all these dimensions, the issues are nuanced and interrelated, the judgments to be made are rarely black or white, and decisions must be made on fast timelines, often with imperfect or incomplete information and often in a competitive environment where other parties are trying to win the deal. So, those stakes can certainly generate pressure. I am not a solo practitioner, so I lean heavily on the tremendous colleagues who are my teammates, and we handle the stakes and stresses together. Also, being Irish, I believe having a sense of humor is very helpful in navigating life generally and certainly during tricky deals. And finally, it is important to maintain perspective. My wife and three of my Harvard roommates became doctors. Unlike in their field, nobody’s life is at risk when I am at work! There are lawyers (and one of my former roommates is one), who have dedicated their careers to practices that can involve a person’s liberty and sometimes their life. And many corporate lawyers like me do some work touching on those kinds of stakes as part of our professional
commitment to providing pro bono (free) legal services by, for example, representing clients who are prisoners seeking clemency or early release due to terminal illness or immigrants seeking asylum. So various paths in law can certainly be intense and high stakes, which makes it fun and rewarding, but it is important to have mechanisms and support systems (i.e., most importantly good people around you) to help you thrive in your career and in your life in general.
What qualities or skills do you think set apart successful lawyers today?
Obviously, the basics – substantive knowledge, a strong work ethic, sound ethics and being a good team player – are always important. In addition, having a client service ethic is crucial – clients come first, always. This has to be your orientation as a lawyer every day, and school doesn’t always prepare new lawyers for that. But clients want to know that you really care about what they have asked you to handle for them. Effective oral and written communication is vital. Clients and colleagues alike highly value lawyers who can explain complex legal concepts simply and succinctly and who can write pithy e-mails.
And in this unprecedented era of rapid change driven by AI, being adaptable and willing to learn new skills and areas of the law that are just developing and using new tech tools will be key determinants of success. Finally, the hallmark of all great lawyers is excellent judgment in challenging and complex situations, making the right call repeatedly in uncertain and ambiguous circumstances. Cultivating that, which takes humility, open-mindedness, experience, and thoughtfulness, is career-long endeavor but should be a focus from the beginning.
How should undergraduates interested in law think about building their experiences before law school?
Learn how to write well and learn how to learn and be adaptable. Those skills are more important than the subject matter. It can be a big advantage to have some prior experience serving clients or customers and working on team projects, regardless of the specific field, so getting some experience where you do that is helpful. It does not need to be in a legal role. Prior to law school, I worked in dining halls and libraries at Harvard in work study, at a bank, at golf courses, in accounting, consulting and book manufacturing. While my path was atypically long, increasingly
legal employers value candidates with at least a year or two of prior work experience. Also, try to talk to lawyers about what they do. There are many different forms a law career can take, and often law schools are geared to a few well-worn paths, especially those of the big law firms. But there are many ways to have a meaningful career in law and the best way to learn about what’s out there is by talking to lawyers with different types of practices and clients. You will get more out of law school if you have some idea what you’d like to do coming out of it.
What trends do you see shaping the future of the legal industry over the next decade?
I see four main trends. First, continued regulatory change and complexity will continue to drive the need for sophisticated legal advice. The last decade has seen much more extensive and impactful regulatory activity than did the first part of my career, and I don’t see any signs that will abate. Second, like many areas of society, law and what lawyers do will be heavily impacted by AI. That’s where the need for lawyers to be adaptable and excel at learning new things becomes pivotal. New specialty areas of law at the intersection of AI and society will be created across different fields. Third, very recently, some states have been experimenting with non-lawyer ownership of legal practices, which has seen large accounting firms, among others, enter the legal business. It will be interesting to see how that evolves and the extent to which it impacts the current operating model of big law firms, which has been relatively static for more than a century. Finally, the role of law itself - and lawyers - in our Republic is being questioned and tested in unprecedented ways. The profession will confront difficult choices in order to reconcile elements of the law related to its function as an occupation in the marketplace, its political functions, and its function as a trusted profession in service to others and protecting our most cherished rights. Professional norms and structures of the legal ecosystem that have been taken for granted for many decades are being challenged, and the ultimate nature and extent of the changes this will bring remain to be seen. All of these trends mean people considering law as a career cannot assume that law practice in the future will look exactly like it has in the past. Aspiring lawyers will need to be very thoughtful about how they will practice, adaptable and nimble in learning new things, and, for the good of the profession, principled, ethical and civic-minded.
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