All students must read the Rules for Supervised Field Placements before registering.
In this course, each student is placed in a company's legal department to experience the work of in-house counsel. The student may take the course for 1-3 credits with 50 hours per credit to be completed during the semester. Substantive projects are assigned by the company and may include corporate policies, codes of conduct, employment law, vendor and supplier agreements, SEC filings and documents, international and comparative law, finance, lease review, and intellectual property. Each student will also experience in-house practice through a variety of opportunities such as joining meetings, attending company events, informational meetings with attorneys and other executives, and other ways to observe the flow of work and life in the corporate world. Students must complete a number of assignments, such as weekly journals and a final reflection paper, and they must attend several meetings with the instructor during the semester.
For more information, see https://www.law.umn.edu/corporate-institute/externship-companies
Students must do the following:
- Register for the course as you register for all other classes. If you would like to be placed in an externship position, register for Section 1. If you have arranged for your own corporate externship, you must seek approval to register from your faculty supervisor (Kiri Somermeyer) and following pre-approval, you may register for Section 2 using the WorkFlow system linked below.
- By registering for Section 001 and submitting a resume to Kiri Somermeyer, you are committing to accept any corporate externship placement that is assigned to you.
- While the Corporate Institute will review student preferences for certain placements, there are no guarantees that requests will be granted. The companies participating in the Corporate Externship Program vary from semester to semester, and there is no guarantee that you will get one of your top choices.
The registration form for Section 2 is at this link: Topical Field Placement Form. Clicking on the link more than once will open multiple forms under your name. Only do this if you plan to submit more than one form for approval.
To edit a form or check the status of a form you already submitted, go to wfgen.umn.edu and log-in with your UMN ID and password. On the home page, click on “My requests in progress” or “My actions to do” if an action is assigned to you. You can also find a request by entering the request number (this number is in the email notification you received when you submitted your form) in the search box (the third empty box in the upper left corner). Note that you cannot edit a form once it is submitted for approval.