Law Offices - In-House Clinics
Applications for the Spring 2013 Semester of Law Offices
are now available outside of the 3rd floor cafeteria, in
the Law Offices reception area (suite 600) as well as online.
The due date will be announced at a later time, but it applications
are normally due a few days before registration begins.
ACCESS2PRACTICE
Legal Externship Program
A2P Legal Externship is a 4-credit hour non-graded program
which enables you to extern with a supervising attorney
in a wide variety of legal areas – private or public, civil
or criminal. Externships are available for the Fall, Spring
and Summer semesters. Some public sector externships enable
you to obtain a 711 license and appear in court.
Why Extern?
To become a good lawyer and to supplement what you learn
in the classroom, you need practical experience in real-world
legal work. Most students aren't fortunate enough to receive
a paid clerking position — or even a volunteer opportunity
— that teaches what they want to learn. LEP presents a unique
and important opportunity to gain exposure to an area of
the law in which you are interested and helps you significantly
broaden your future employment opportunities.
Students interested in civil law may extern in a wide variety
of places. For example, some have externed at the City of
Chicago Corporation Counsel's Office, Office of the Illinois
Attorney General, Illinois Commerce Commission, Immigration
Court of the U.S. Department of Justice, Internal Revenue
Service, and Environmental Protection Agency, as well approved
in-house corporate legal counsel.
Students interested in criminal law have externed at the
US Attorney's Office, the Office of the Federal Defender,
and at the offices of the State's Attorney and Public Defender
in Cook County as well as the surrounding counties.
Application Process:
Information and application packets for Spring 2013 are
now available both on
line as well as in front of the Spakateria, in Career
Services Office, and in Room 600 Law Offices reception.
If you would like more information, please check the Externship
web page: http://www.kentlaw.iit.edu/academics/jd-program/practical-skills-training/externships/students.
Externship Opportunities
Externship with Legal Affairs Department, Mérieux Nutrisciences
Corporation
Part of For-Credit Spring 2013 Legal Externship Program
Mérieux Nutrisciences Corporation is the leading internationally
accredited food testing and consulting network. It is comprised
of over fifty-five laboratories in 16 countries worldwide.
The corporation provides consulting, testing, auditing,
research and training solutions to companies who are searching
for an innovative and reliable service partner.
The Legal Affairs department is in charge of all legal
matters globally for Mérieux Nutrisciences, including sales
support, mergers and acquisitions, corporate compliance
and governance, and litigation. Some of the items an extern
can anticipate participating in:
Providing general advice to senior management on legal
implications of business and operational decisions;
Researching corporate governances issues impacting
global operations;
Developing tools to promote accountability for legal
and regulatory compliance;
Providing as-needed guidance to other functions, including
Finance, Sales, Operations, and Information Technology;
Drafting and analyzing a wide variety of commercial
contracts and vendor agreements; and
Assisting in the management of outside law firms and
legal resources.
Qualifications:
Extern applicants should be 2Ls only and rank in the top
25% of their class.
To Apply:
Applicants should send a cover letter, resume, and transcript
(unofficial on-line transcript is acceptable) by either
regular mail or email to:
Christopher A. McVety
Corporate Vice President of Legal Affairs
Mérieux NutriSciences Corporation
Suite 2300
111 E. Wacker Drive
Chicago, IL 60601
chris.mcvety@silliker.com
Application Deadline: Friday, November 23, 2012.
If you are selected to extern, please notify Prof. Gross
(vgross@kentlaw.iit.edu)
for permission to register for Legal Externship (4 credit
hours)
Summer 2013: Externships with U.S. Attorney's Office
Northern District of Illinois
If you are interested in exposure to and possible participation
in federal trial and appellate practice while assisting
the U.S. Attorney's Office in handling its multitude of
important cases, please pick up an application in Room 612
from Carole Ross, administrative assistant to Professor
Gross.
Completed applications must be received at the Office of
the U.S. Attorney by Friday, January 4, 2013. The
reason for this accelerated date is because each accepted
extern must go through a security clearance, which takes
several weeks.
To receive law school credit for this externship, should
you be selected by the U.S. Attorney's Office, you must
enroll in the law school's Legal Externship Program. Externship
applications for Summer 2013 will be available in mid-March
2013.
Professor Gross will be happy to answer any questions you
may have about either the Legal Externship Program and/or
the externship position with the U.S. Attorney's Office.
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Center for Open Government Blog
Voting in the Dark: Open Government
Under Siege in
Chicago Public Schools Elections for Local School Council
Members
June 1, 2012
When you enter the voting booth, how do you select who
will receive your vote if you have no information about
any of the candidates? Due to last-minute changes in Chicago
Public Schools’ (CPS) disclosure policy, members of the
public were unable to obtain information as basic as the
names of CPS’s Local School Council candidates prior to
the April 2012 elections. Local School Councils (LSC) are
elected bodies that play a critical role in Chicago’s public
schools, including approving budgets and evaluating the
school principals.
State law and CPS’s own policies require transparency.
The Illinois Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) compels government
bodies such as CPS to provide the public with requested
information so they may “fulfill their duties of discussing
public issues fully and freely, making informed political
judgments and monitoring government to ensure that it is
being conducted in the public interest.” CPS’ own election
guide requires schools to provide candidate information
to anyone who requests to review these materials prior to
a LSC election. Yet, CPS, citing privacy concerns, made
an eleventh hour change to their own well-established policy
which denied access to individuals requesting to review
the LSC candidate information in person at the schools.
CPS could have simply redacted the private information
in the LSC materials (such as Social Security numbers) and
made available the rest of the file for public review. The
Center for Open Government, Welles Park Bulldog and others
urged CPS to do so in order to safeguard any confidential
information and provide open access to candidate information.
Instead, starting in March 2012, CPS reversed its own policy,
requiring anyone seeking information about LSC candidates
to file a public records (FOIA) request with the central
CPS office. Given the short period before the April election
and the typically long response time by CPS for public records
requests, this “solution” essentially prevented the public
and media from obtaining important information about LSC
candidates before the election.
CPS trampled on fundamental principles of democratic government
by placing unnecessary barriers to the dissemination of
LSC candidate information. Citizens were forced to go into
the voting booth completely in the dark to select the individuals
making policy decisions about their children’s education.
CPS must comply with its own policies and the FOIA law for
future elections. CPS needs to assure the public that future
LSC candidate information is readily available to anyone
who wants it. CPS needs to know that we want the lights
back on in the voting booth.
Prepared by Matthew Kennedy (IIT Chicago-Kent College
of Law, J.D. candidate) and Natalie Brouwer Potts (Executive
Director, Center for Open Government, IIT Chicago-Kent College
of Law).
For a complete description of all clinical programs, please
visit the Law Offices' Home Page at http:\\www.kentlaw.iit.edu/academics/jd-program/practical-skills-training/legal-clinics
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