Externships
Externship registration for Winter 2025 is CLOSED.
Registration materials for spring due March 10, 2025
The Externship Program provides law students with the opportunity to gain valuable legal experience while earning academic credit. An externship is an experiential learning course available to all LL.M. students and J.D. students who have completed one full academic year of law school.
Students engage in substantial lawyering activities under the supervision of a licensed judge or attorney at a variety of host sites. Through externships, students get out of the classroom and work in the field, handling real legal work, developing legal skills and substantive knowledge of the law, solving legal problems in real-life situations and learning daily activities of legal practice.
Externships follow ABA Standard 304 for Field Placements and include:
- An outside legal learning experience supervised by an attorney or judge at a host site.
- A 2-credit companion seminar. The seminar is an evening class lead by the faculty supervisor and is required for all first-time externs.
Learn More
- Attend an Externship information session. Information sessions are offered each quarter at lunch, check 12Twenty for dates.
- Sign up for the UW Law externship email listserv. This email list is for current UW Law students (using their UW email) seeking information about legal externship opportunities, updates to program policies and reminders about externship registration deadlines.
- Set up a meeting and/or send questions about externships to extern@uw.edu.
Graduate Program Students (LL.M./M.J.)
- If you are interested in participating in an externship, your first step is to talk to your academic advisor.
- Once you have spoken to your advisor, be sure they are on any email to the externship office.
- Specifics for graduate program students are different from J.D. students. Please reach out to the externship office about your desired plans.