EXTERNSHIP IN LAW SCHOOL

EXTERNSHIP
               Spend your externship wisely. Externship is similar to internship in a way.  Externship is divided into two; court attachment and law firm attachment. It’s better to do your externship in a calm environment, with less traffic and less stress. Law school might not tell you but externship period is coded for reading.
I mean externship period is the period for reading. You are expected to have covered at least 80% of the syllabus by then on your own. How would you have time to read if you choose to stay in a very busy environment. Lest I forget, you have the liberty to choose the state and local government area where you want to do your externship. Start to think of the most convenient place for your externship because externship is important but reading is more importanter. What law school only does is to allocate you to a firm and a court within the locality you have chosen.
            The first part of your externship which usually lasts for 4 weeks or thereabout is the court attachment. You need to know your judge. I was quite lucky though. My judge was lenient and the supervisor was also great. During the court externship, I got to the courtroom around 8;30 or thereabout. Let’s say before the court session starts because court sits by 9am. I got to court early because of the attendance. We sit in the court, listen to the proceedings and all. The whole thing seems easy, shey? It could be if you are in the right environment. The tricky part is the logbook. The logbook is divided into two pages for each day. The activities page and the reflection page. On the activities page for day 1, you would include all that happened in court that day. Please refrain from writing long and lengthy and irrelevant stories. What you need to write as part of your activities are short and brief summary of what happened in court. For example, what case was called, did the counsel announce his appearance, what was the judgment of the court based on. In short, the procedural aspect of it. Although it is not limited to this. The second page as I said earlier is the reflective page. The reflective page is usually beside the activities page. On the reflective page, you reflect, comment and record your observations as it relates to topic you have been taught in law school. avoid going on a tangent of your own. For example, if you wrote as part of the activities for the day that the counsel was rude to the judge. You could use that on your reflective page and link it it to a rule in RPC that talks on the duties of a counsel to court. This applies to both the court and the law firm logbook.
                   The second part of your externship is the law firm attachment. You could be posted to a law firm, ministry of justice or a defunct law firm. A defunct law firm is a law firm that is no longer in existence. In such a case, you would have to fill a complaint form and you would be sent to another law firm. Externship is very important because of portfolio assessment. It is also important because you would have to submit your logbooks in school and you might be assessed orally on it. Moreover, the principal of your law firm has to issue out a report to you. The report basically assesses your character and performance during the law office attachment. You could also need to submit this report along with the attendance report to law school. So, it’s important to take it seriously.

COOKIES: the last blog post was on tasks. the cookie for today will contain the externship handbook, the NLS tasks in lagos campus for the year 2019 and some past questions. Best of Luck
CRIMINAL LITIGATION TASK NLS LAGOS 2019
criminal litigation past questions
Armed Forces Schedule
Corporate Law Practice Bar Final 2018
EXTERNSHIP-HANDBOOK-FOR-STUDENTS