Diving Into the Charlotte Legal Diversity Clerkship
The Charlotte Legal Diversity Clerkship is an initiative of a diverse collaboration of legal employers in Charlotte, as well as law schools across the country. It aims to recruit and provide substantive legal employment opportunities for minority first year students who are traditionally underrepresented in the Charlotte legal community. The program was inspired by the success of prior diversity recruiting initiatives at firms, businesses and non-profits throughout the Charlotte legal community, and operates with a commitment to providing opportunities of professional involvement and career development to minority law students at schools across the nation . With this program, the Charlotte legal community seeks to build connections among students and employers while exposing students to the work of law firms, corporations and the public sector in Charlotte. The Charlotte Legal Diversity Clerkship seeks to assist its employers in attracting, hiring, and retaining the most exceptional minority law students. The Charlotte Legal Diversity Clerkship aims to involve law students interested in careers in private practice at law firms, as well as in non-traditional public interest and business oriented opportunities. Participating Charlotte Legal Diversity Clerkship employers include law firms, corporations, corporations, judges, non-profits, clerkships, and legal departments.
Eligibility and Application Process
The Charlotte Legal Diversity Clerkship is open to first-year law students in good standing who are enrolled in schools in North Carolina and South Carolina. Applicants must be candidates for a Juris Doctor degree from an accredited law school and demonstrate a commitment to pursuing a career in the legal profession. Seekers of judicial clerk positions throughout North Carolina, South Carolina and beyond encourage those meeting eligibility criteria to apply.
Since 2008, the Charlotte Legal Diversity Clerkship has provided opportunities for first-year African-American, Asian, Hispanic/Latino, LGBT, Native American, and people with disabilities law students enrolled in North Carolina or South Carolina law schools to secure summer internships with courts, government offices, private firms, corporations, and non-profits in the Charlotte area. Enacted by the Charlotte Minority Prelaw Pipeline Program, the Charlotte Legal Diversity Clerkship has made a direct impact and contributed to growing the interest in, as well as number of, law students choosing to pursue legal careers within their home states.
Clerkship Perks
The benefits that the Charlotte Legal Diversity Clerkship Program offers to law students go beyond the practical experience and exposure to a variety of practice areas that are offered to those who are accepted into the program. Students from diverse backgrounds are encouraged to apply and are offered mentoring opportunities with leaders from the judicial, community and corporate sectors, as well as hands-on experience that effectively equips them for practice. They are then paired with managing attorneys who serve as mentors as students put their academic experiences to work by performing meaningful entry-level work, and they are introduced to the culture of the firm within which they are placed. The clerkships generally last ten to twelve weeks during the summer.
Clerking Diversity in Life and Law
The Charlotte Legal Diversity Clerkship is a unique program designed to expand opportunities within the legal profession for underrepresented groups. The clerkship promotes diversity by selecting law students who have demonstrated a commitment to issues of diversity, equity and inclusion and whose life experiences contribute to the diversity of the Charlotte legal community. The program also aims to provide support to students from diverse backgrounds. Its goal is to encourage these students to pursue careers in law firms and corporate legal departments and remain in Charlotte after graduation. In this respect, the program has several sponsors and partners , a testament to the collaborative nature of the firm’s commitment to providing opportunities for those students who are underrepresented in the legal profession. In addition to an in-depth introduction to the firm’s practice and culture, the Charlotte Legal Diversity Clerkship exposes participating students to the Bar through presentations and programs, networking functions and welcoming receptions. The clerkship also offers one-on-one mentoring by Charlotte partners and associates, as well as the opportunity to volunteer with local nonprofit organizations that are dedicated to serving diverse communities.
Non-discrimination in Hiring
The Charlotte Legal Diversity Clerkship will not discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, disability, pregnancy, or any other basis of discrimination prohibited by law.
Testimonials and Success Stories
Past participants in the Charlotte Legal Diversity Clerkship Program have expressed their gratitude and shared their success stories, attesting to the transformative impact of the initiative on their careers. A former participant stated, "I am so grateful for the opportunity afforded by the CLDC program. I gained not only substantive legal experience, but also invaluable insight into what makes a law firm and an attorney successful."
Another successful former Charlotte Legal Diversity Clerkship Program participant is currently an associate in the Charlotte office of an AmLaw 50 law firm. Before she attended law school, she earned an MBA and worked in the finance industry for 10 years. She was one of the first recipients of the Charlotte Legal Diversity Clerkship Program in 2008. After participating, she accepted a clerkship with the United States District Court for the Middle District of North Carolina and returned to the Charlotte area to practice with the Charlotte office of a large law firm. In addition, the former Charlotte Legal Diversity Clerkship Program participant participated in the Leadership Council on Legal Diversity (LCLD) Pathfinders program and has been invited back to serve as a member of the LCLD Pathfinder mentoring group year after year.
Proud internship-alumni continue to spread the word about Charleston as a great place to work and live. "I came to Charleston in the summer of 2015 as a confused 1L looking to gain work experience and find out more about what North Carolina (and the lowcountry especially) has to offer. … All in all my experience as an intern (Charleston Legal Diversity Clerkship Program) has put me in a position to expand my network and career options significantly. I really appreciate the opportunity," says a Charleston Legal Diversity Clerkship Program past participant and current associate at an AmLaw 100 law firm.
Career Benefits and the Path Ahead
After the summer internship, most diversity clerks find themselves at a crossroads, where the path ahead may not seem clear. In a profession that is not particularly known for its explicit commitment to diversity and inclusion, it is hard to gauge whether the future holds a bright horizon of opportunities opened by a powerful new network, or whether the great experience and relationships built over the summer will fade in the long shadow of routine career paths. The path ahead is made even murkier for diversity clerks who do not fit the traditional mold of a summer law clerk. Minority students may be pulled in multiple directions as they decide where to work and what to prioritize. A clerkship in Charlotte may be of limited use to a student for whom family or school culture places a high import on geographical considerations. Further, for some, diversity does not equate to race; the wealth and educational background from which a student comes may be the issue of personal focus more than ethnicity. Other economic issues might come into play, as certain diversity clerkships involve only a small stipend, and not all firms fly students to their home cities for interviews. Quite simply, for some , the next great opportunity may be the one that is already pledged to them.
While there is not an exact metric available to quantify how many diversity clerks receive lawyer job offers as the result of their clerkship experience, we do know that many Charlotte Legal Diversity Clerkship Program participants have been sponsored for full-time, paying summer law clerk positions in Charlotte by the same firm or organization where they externed. Many other Fortune 500 companies sponsor their diversity fellows for jobs or internships in their legal department for the following summer. The Charlotte Legal Diversity Clerkship Program has a strong reputation across North Carolina and on a national level; many see it as an opportunity to gain a leg up on the competition.
During the summer, several Charlotte-area law firms participate as employers of diversity clerks. Each of these firms has a demonstrated commitment to hiring minority law students for permanent positions. Further, the program has a strong track record, where judges and lawyers involved in the program have been very impressed with the students. Summer partners at these law firms tend to receive outstanding reviews from their mentoring judges, and are often invited back for a role as a summer associate the following year.
