After her first year at Minnesota Law, Jessica Gao ’17 knew she didn’t want to be a litigator going to court every day. So instead, she turned her focus to transactional law.
In her final year, Gao joined Minnesota Law’s Corporate Externship Field Placement—a course any law student can enroll in that lets them spend several hours a week working with a company’s in-house law department. Gao was placed with a German-based company called SICK, Inc., which continues to participate in the Field Placement program. As an extern, she helped with contract reviews and general transactional work. She also learned the nuances of what it means to be an in-house lawyer whose duty is to the corporation rather than individuals.
Today, Gao is an associate general counsel for Cars.com, and she also supervises current Minnesota Law externs. She credits her own corporate externship with helping her get her foot in the door.
“Having that exposure really helped me narrow down on what type of in-house positions I wanted to go for,” Gao says. “It also helped me during the interview process. I had valuable training from the in-house position that distinguished me from other candidates.”
The corporate externship program started about 20 years ago. Minnesota Law’s location in the Twin Cities—with numerous large companies headquartered in the area—made it a perfect fit for the program, says Kiri Somermeyer, executive director of the Corporate Institute, who oversees the program.
Students get placed with a range of companies of all sizes, from Great Clips and Sleep Number to U.S. Bank and Target. In the class that accompanies the semester-long field placement, students share their experiences, helping each other figure out what kinds of companies they’d like to work for later in their careers.
“Working in an in-house corporate legal department is a sought-after job. It’s one of the dream jobs for a lot of lawyers,” says Somermeyer, who was an in-house lawyer for Post Consumer Brands before joining the Law School.
“When you work in-house for a corporate legal team, you have a really sophisticated client—the company—and you’re working with talented business people. It’s a very interesting and challenging role, but it tends to provide a less stressful environment than many big law firms.”
The field placement is also unique among law schools, and working in-house at a corporation is not a job that many recent law school grads can easily get. Having early experience in the field can give them a head start a few years down the line when they’re applying for open positions.
Sydney White ’25 did a corporate externship through Minnesota Law with Cars.com before finding her own externship (and still getting credit) at Xcel Energy. White, who’s originally from Texas, plans to return to her home state after graduation and look for a government job in energy law. Eventually, she hopes to work in-house for a renewable energy company.
The opportunity has given White experience in energy regulatory work, and she’s also learned things such as how energy rates are set. “To see it from the inside has really opened my eyes,” she says.
Photo: Tony Nelson
Alex Jones ’25, who’s earning his JD and MBA in Minnesota Law’s dual degree program, combined his professional interests with a corporate externship at U.S. Bank. He’s had coffee chats with numerous members of the nearly 200-strong in-house legal team, which has helped him figure out what he wants to do after he graduates. He’s currently looking for jobs in financial law in Charlotte, North Carolina, where U.S. Bank and Wells Fargo, among other financial institutions, have large footprints.
“Everyone always says ‘network, network, network,’ and you don’t really know how to do that,” Jones says. “Through this process, you are actually talking to people who are super interested in your career. Almost every person I’ve talked to, including some who reached out to me, wanted to learn about me and help out.”
The companies, too, can get a lot out of the externships. Land O’Lakes, a farmer-owned cooperative headquartered in Arden Hills, Minnesota, hires summer interns between their first and second years of law school. Then for the following fall and spring semesters, the same students stay on with the Corporate Externship Field Placement. Some stay for even longer.
Katelyn Tarrolly ’25 stayed for nearly two years. She explains that one of the biggest benefits was gaining practical skills that are hard to learn in the classroom.
“Being in that working environment, you are on your own to problem solve and also to build your confidence in the application of your skills in a way that on a day-to-day basis in law school, we don’t necessarily see,” Tarrolly says.
Nathaniel Gier ’19, lead counsel for mergers and acquisitions and corporate ventures at Land O’Lakes, now oversees Minnesota Law externs. His path to working in-house was circuitous. During law school, Gier thought he’d go into immigration law and spent a lot of time working with the immigration law clinic.
Photo: Tony Nelson
After clerking for a year for the Minnesota Supreme Court and then working at a Minneapolis law firm, he realized that firm life wasn’t for him. He encourages current students to get the most out of the experiential learning opportunities that Minnesota Law provides. They might get a leg up on learning early on what career path they want to pursue—and then hone the skills they’ll need, like good communication, research skills, and time management.
“You gain the most skills and learn the most in the experiential learning opportunities in law school,” Gier says. The corporate externship “is a good peek into what in-house life is like, especially for those students who have a goal of working in-house at some point down the line.”