| Application
and Brochure |
 |
Information for Students
Participating Employers The current list of employer participants for the Summer 2008 Minnesota Minority Clerkship Program include: Board of Pensions of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in
America Student Selection Process The Minnesota Minority Clerkship Program is a program designed to foster diversity within the Minnesota legal community and invite you to participate. This program is designed to match selected students-of-color from Minnesota law schools and beyond with participating Minnesota legal employers. Participating employers will hire selected students-of-color after their first-year of law school for a summer associate clerkship and provide a “real world” legal experience to him or her. Conversely, selected students would provide the employer’s organization with valuable legal support, as well as a unique and diverse perspective. Twenty(20) students-of-color will be selected to participate in the Summer 2008 program. This clerkship program gives employers and students a unique opportunity to share experiences, to obtain “real world” experiences and to promote diversity in the legal profession. We invite you to participate in this program, along with many of Minnesota’s leading private law firms, corporate legal departments and government agencies—all practice settings in which diverse attorneys are currently under-represented.
This program is intended for students in their first year at a Minnesota law school-Hamline University School of Law, University of Minnesota School of Law, University of St. Thomas School of Law, and William Mitchell College of Law-who self-identify in one or more of the following racial and/or ethnic designations, as used by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission:
In addition, students in their first-year of school at a non-Minnesota
law school may also apply to this program, but must establish that they
have a tangible relationship to the State of Minnesota. No more than twenty
percent (20%) of the students selected for this program will be from a
non-Minnesota law school.
Interested, eligible students apply for the Minnesota Minority Clerkship Program at the beginning of the second semester of the first-year of law school, with applications due January 25, 2008. Applications for the Minnesota Minority Clerkship Program are available at each Minnesota law school’s career services department, as well as on the program website, http://www2.mnbar.org/committees/minority-clerkship/. In addition to a completed application form, applicants must also include:
In addition, every student who applies to the program will be granted an interview with a member or two of the Selection Committee in early February, 2008. Please note that this is a screening interview and different than those interviews with employers that the selected student participants will have. This is a screening interview which helps the Selection Committee determine whether to invite you to participate in the program as one of 20 student participants.
Program participants will be selected by a Selection Committee comprised of attorneys and other legal professionals from participating firms and members of the Diversity Committee. In selecting student participants for the program, the following criteria will be considered:
Once students have been selected to participate in the clerkship program and guaranteed a spot in the Minnesota Minority Clerkship Program—they will interview with each of the participating employers. Following these interviews, both the candidates and employers must rank one another. The Selection Committee will then match the students and employers together for their summer clerkship experience based upon their expressed preferences.
Participating employers will hire selected students-of-color after their first-year of law school for a summer associate clerkship and provide a “real world” legal experience to him or her. Conversely, selected students would provide the employer’s organization with valuable legal support, as well as a unique and diverse perspective. In addition, the Diversity Committee and State Bar staff will coordinate clerkship training workshops—including an orientation program in April for selected program participants. The Committee will also organize networking social events during the summer and will provide mentoring resources for participants—including, most importantly, a qualified and responsive mentor for each student participant selected to participate in the program.
Participants are at the beginning of their legal careers-an opportune time to explore practice areas and organizational structures. By participating, employers have agreed to hire their clerkship student for Summer 2008 and to provide the same salary, work experience and social experiences to their first-year clerkship student as provided to their other first-year summer clerks hired outside of this program. In addition, employers agree to consider their first-year clerkship student for an offer for future employment (e.g., work during the school year, the following summer and/or post-graduation). Employers, however, are not required to extend such an offer but must only consider their first-year clerkship student for such an offer. For additional information, please contact Marta M. Chou, Chair of the Diversity Committee of the Minnesota State Bar Association at mmchou@rkmc.com |
