Creative Collaborations with Career Services Offices

This panel explores the relationship between externships and career services and asks whether the benefits of creative collaboration between externship and career services programs are outweighed by potential negatives. For example, Externship Directors often shy away from being too closely identified with the career services offices at their schools out of the perceived danger that it will send a message that externships are “nothing more than” job placement opportunities. At a time when resources are thin, there is also a concern that schools will cut costs by absorbing what should be an academic position into an office with a traditionally student services function. On the other hand, as the job market has changed for law graduates, career services offices find themselves needing to do much more than traditional job placement and career counseling. Career services are being re-conceptualized to include a more explicitly teaching function of building the skills that will help them get jobs: networking, creativity, resilience, and professional development. These skills can usefully be reinforced across the curriculum through closer collaboration between externship programs and career services offices. In addition, the possibility of granting externship credit for paid field work may blur the line between the academic and career advising functions, making it desirable to explore collaboration, or at least coordination, between externship and career services programs