Law Firm Internships for Students pt. 1

Dentons Law Firm - Shanghai Offices

This summer, I was able to get an internship at the Dentons Shanghai offices for 4 weeks. I’m a high school student at an international school in Shanghai and it was such an amazing experience to be able to see how a law firm works and learn from associates working on different legal tasks. Even while I was learning a lot, one of my main takeaways is that there is so much more about the field of law that I don’t know. Law, like all social sciences, isn’t an objective truth: the study of jurisprudence goes so deep into understanding ethics, morals, and justice–and applying the written law is much more complex than it sounds.

Dentons (大成) is a multinational law firm with offices around the world. The firm is the world’s 5th largest law firm by revenue and is the youngest law firm in the Global Top 10 ranking for law services. Dentons provides services in numerous practices and industries whether it be civil or criminal cases. Some notable fields of law that they specialize in include Corporate Law, Litigation, Dispute Resolution, Mergers and Acquisitions, and Public International Law.

During my internship, I worked under an associate and her boss, who was a senior partner at the firm. My friend and I were the two high school students interning and we worked together during the 4 weeks. On the first introductory day, we learned about the mechanics of working in law and choosing a field of law to specialize in. We got to talk to associates in different departments like Intellectual Property, Contract Writing, and Arbitration to learn about why they chose that path and what kind of work they did. In the following weeks, our associate taught us how to do certain tasks and assigned us work to do. One of our main projects was to write up a detailed report about Data Security and Privacy Laws in the EU, US, and PRC. Because China just promulgated a new Data Security Law, our associate wanted us to do further research into the laws and international standards of data legislation. Some of our other projects included corporate summaries made for clients, legal research for case laws, and contract drafting for Non-Disclosure Agreements.

Overall, the internship at Dentons was such a valuable experience and a great opportunity to experience a workplace environment while learning about the field of law. If you are a high school, college, or law school student, a short-term internship at a flaw firm has countless benefits and can really help you decide if law as a career is right for you!