With the new school year, senior CTE Law program students are beginning their year-long law internships

working at different locations across the city.

The CTE Law program’s internships aim to help build students’ resumes by working with offices specializing in a law field of their choice. For three years, students are trained to learn the important skills needed in different fields of law, preparing them to work during their senior year.

“For the first three years of the program, you learn the basics and important skills of different areas of law, which sets you up to work effectively in your internship where you get to experience how everything works in practice,” said Patricia Trejo ‘24, a law student in the CTE program.

Through their internships, students are able to gain real work experience that gives insight into the reality of law careers.

“While we have had three years of preparation in class that could help students determine if this is the career for them, being able to actually work in these internships is a very different experience in terms of responsibility,” said Trejo. “In class, whenever we have a mock trial we always work with hypotheticals, which is good practice, but it doesn’t compare to working with real cases involving real people.”

Gaining real work experience outside of a classroom has allowed students to learn the technical aspects of a law career that go beyond what is taught in school.

“I’ve gotten to learn about the more technical parts of the law field…sitting at a desk learning how to read different terms I haven’t learned in class and how to analyze and update different case files,” said Trejo.

Each student’s internship responsibilities differ based on the law field they work in and their office’s needs.

“I am interested in business and corporate law, so I’m currently interning with O’Malley & Madden P.C where

they specialize in transactional and employment rights law,” said Giselle Coronado ‘24. “What we do at our

internship varies by the day and the needs of our internship hosts. For me, most days consist of office work and learning about the different cases they are working on.”

Along with office work, some students may work in the courtrooms watching trials in action.

“I work at the Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault Court in the West Loop and am partnered with two assistant state attorneys,” said Rodrigo Vega ‘24. “I am in the courtrooms with the judges and attorneys, so I observe, absorb all the legal terms, and familiarize myself with the procedures.”

With the internships that the CTE Law program provides and the preparation its students must go through, students are confident that the program has strongly prepared them for a future career in law.

“The law program is very effective at Jones. You get what you give. If you commit to valuing the program and working closely with your peers and our amazing law teachers, you can make the best out of the 4 years of the program,” said Coronado.