Mitchell Hamline students Jacqueline Peña (left) and Kari Beaudry are profiled in the 2018 Women in Law issue of Attorney at Law Magazine’s Minnesota edition. You can read the entire article online.
Beaudry and Peña are taking part in semester-long residencies with the Minnesota Supreme Court this semester.
The residencies aren’t typical internships for law students; they’re essentially full-time clerk positions. The students are earning a semester’s worth of law school credits while doing research and writing memos for the justices.
For Peña, the experience has given her a real world look at the law, something she doesn’t think she could have gotten just by studying in a classroom. “I think there’s no better way to learn how to do something than by doing it,” she said.
Beaudry said the residency is helping her forge a path toward a career in public interest law. She taught in St. Paul for a decade before starting law school. So far, she’s found her experience teaching English and her passion for writing have come in handy working for the court.
“I love being able to research and go more in-depth in areas of the law,” she said.
The Minnesota Supreme Court isn’t the only place where Mitchell Hamline has residencies in place. Students have also had semester-long stints with the Minnesota Vikings and 3M. That effort is now expanding with dozens of additional corporations, law firms, government organizations, and courts expressing an interest in hosting residents from Mitchell Hamline in the future.
Businesses, corporations, government and nonprofit organizations, and law firms interested in offering semester-long residencies to Mitchell Hamline students should contact Rick Petry ’98 (HUSL), Mitchell Hamline’s assistant director of career and professional development.
“When graduates arrive at a law firm, or start working for a judge or inside a business organization, they show up far better prepared than if they hadn’t had this kind of an opportunity,” Petry said.