Application Process for Public Counsel Summer Internship

Public Counsel has eight exciting law projects that accept summer interns who will work on a variety of direct services, policy advocacy, and impact litigation projects. Our projects include:

• A comprehensive children’s rights program that encompasses school climate and discipline, special education, adoptions, guardianships, and transition-age youth
• A community development team that supports and protects affordable housing and assists non-profit and small businesses with a variety of transactional needs
• An immigrants’ rights group that assists undocumented victims of crime, domestic violence, persecution, and torture
• A homelessness prevention unit that defends unlawful detainer complaints, advocates for public benefits, and eliminates outstanding tickets and warrants for persons at risk of homelessness
• A holistic legal initiative that addresses the specific needs of low-income women and girls
• A complex consumer fraud division that focuses on litigation and policies to prevent consumer victimization, including sub-projects focused on bankruptcy and pro se assistance in federal cases
• A veterans’ rights project that helps veterans and their caregivers overcome obstacles to obtaining VA benefits
• An impact litigation department (Opportunity Under Law) that addresses economic injustices on a national level through strategic lawsuits and other means to accomplish systemic reform
• Click here to learn more about each of our practice areas

Public Counsel seeks summer interns who share our commitment to economic and racial justice. The large majority of Public Counsel’s clients are working-class people of color who have experienced a number of intersectional forms of oppression, often barring them from access to legal representation. We seek to have a group of interns who have a personal and/or professional understanding of these experiences. We are especially interested in receiving applications from historically underrepresented students in terms of race, economic background, and other characteristics, consistent with our active, ongoing commitment to increasing equity and inclusion within our organization.

Public Counsel’s 2023 summer internship program will run for ten weeks, commencing Tuesday, May 30, 2023, and ending Friday, August 4, 2023. Both 1L’s and 2L’s are eligible for these internships. Applications are reviewed on a rolling basis.

Although Public Counsel does not provide funding to law students for its summer program, please be sure to consult with your law school’s public interest program to learn more about available scholarships and financial awards that might support your summer internship.    

To apply, please email a cover letter, resume, transcript (or list of grades), and writing sample to Sandra Madera at EMAIL HERE. Please list up to three of the projects you would like to work with in order of preference in the body of the email you send with your application materials. It is helpful to describe in your cover letter the reasons for your interest in the project for which you are applying. Please be sure to include the following in the subject line of your e-mail: “Application for 2023 Public Counsel Summer Internship.”  Your application will not be considered if the requested application materials or your project preference are omitted.

The following projects are hiring law school summer interns:

• Center for Veterans’ Advancement
• Children’s Rights – Adoptions
• Children’s Rights – Guardianship  (in-person clinic)
• Children’s Rights – Education Rights
• Children’s Rights – Transition Age Youth
• Consumer Rights and Economic Justice
• Consumer Rights and Economic Justice – Debtor Assistance Project
• Community Development Project (includes Early Care & Education subproject) 
• Homelessness Prevention Law Project
• Immigrants’ Rights – Anti-Detention
• Immigrants’ Rights – Pro Bono Asylum
• Opportunity Under Law (impact litigation)
• Women and Girls’ Rights