US Government Shutdown Leaves Law Student Externs Scrambling

By Karen Sloan

Those who planned to extern at federal agencies affected by
the closures must decide whether to hold out hope for the
government to reopen, find new externships or just take classes
instead.

Hundreds of law students across the country who expected to
extern this semester at federal agencies now find themselves in
limbo amid the nearly three-week-old partial government
shutdown.
Some are waiting to see whether their agencies reopen or return to
full operations in time to collect academic credit for the spring
semester, while others are rushing to line up alternate externships
at nonprofits and non-governmental agencies, or federal agencies
that aren’t affected by the shutdown, according to externship
coordinators at law schools that send students to the nation’s
capital to gain real-world experience. Still other students have
abandoned the externship plan this spring and are taking classes
instead, since the semester began Monday at many campuses.

“Just like the rest of the country, the shutdown has caused
confusion, anxiety, and a lot of disappointment,” said Jessica
Tillipman, assistant dean for field placement at George Washington
University Law School. “The students have been planning for a
semester to extern for credit. These are huge components on their
resumes. To not know when they are going to start is
concerning.”
Between 50 and 60 George Washington students are feeling the impact
of the shutdown, which represents about half of the school’s spring
semester externs, Tillipman said. Externs in the federal judiciary
are still on track to work, but that could change if the courts’
funding runs out in the coming weeks, she added.

Law schools thus far are facing few other consequences of the
shutdown beyond the uncertainty over government externships. They
aren’t directly funded by the government, and the shutdown has not
yet affected the federal student loan program, which is the single
largest source of funding for law campuses. Law schools receive the
occasional federal grant, but those awards tend to be long-term and
insulated from temporary shutdowns.

The one exception is the University of the District of Columbia
David A. Clarke School of Law, the only public law school in
Washington, where the federal government controls local government
spending. But the school has remained fully funded and open thanks
to an exemption granted to the District of Columbia through the
Office of Management and Budget. It has largely been business as
usual, according to interim Dean John Brittain.
Even so, the school surveyed students, faculty and staff Tuesday to
find out how many people have family members furloughed under the
shutdown, which might impact their financial circumstances.

“We want to express empathy, and find any other way we can
accommodate them during this shutdown period,” Brittain said.

This isn’t the first time law schools have needed to help
externs during a government shutdown. Large swathes of the federal
government shuttered for 17 days in October 2013 amid Congressional
disagreement over the budget. The timing of the current shutdown
was less of a problem for law schools because it began during the
holiday break instead of the middle of the semester. That situation
made it easier for students to change direction and take classes
instead or line up a different externship before it got too far
into the spring semester. Still, law school administrators say this
shutdown is more worrisome than in 2013.

“We’ve had externships delayed in the past due to shutdowns, but
this is more extreme,” said Julie Fromholz, director of the
international rule of law and security program at the Arizona State
University Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law who also oversees the
school’s Washington program. “This is more stressful for everyone
because it’s so uncertain.”

Students who require security clearances for their externships
but who have yet to receive them face an additional hurdle. Even if
the federal government fully reopens in the next week, externs
could be further delayed by a backlog of security clearance
requests. Thus, it’s that cohort as well as students in their final
semester of law school who face the most pressure to either find a
new externship or take classes to ensure they receive enough credit
to graduate. Third-year students who are soon to graduate don’t
have the option of taking additional credits later on or extending
their externships into the summer because of a delayed start,
Tillipman said.

Half of the students in ASU’s Washington program have been
affected by the shutdown, according to Fromholz. Three opted to
stay in Phoenix rather than risk a cross-country move without any
certainty that their externships would move ahead as planned.
(Unlike students from Washington-area law schools who typically
extern part-time while also taking classes, those in Washington
programs offered by schools outside of the D.C. area often extern
full-time. And a growing number of law schools across the country
have such programs.)

Another four students at ASU are waiting to see if their
government externships come to fruition, Fromholz said. Those
students aren’t lining up other externships just yet, and if
necessary they can extern with several international law projects
that are part of the McCain Institute for International Leadership,
A Washington-based think tank affiliated with ASU.

“It’s not ideal for them,” Fromholz said. “It’s not what they
intended. But in the short-term it can get them the credit hours
they need for the first two or three weeks.”

The University of Georgia School of Law is tapping its alumni
network to help students in the school’s Washington, D.C., semester
in practice program whose full-time externships are on hold. Those
students were due to begin their externships Tuesday.

“Because the end of the shutdown is difficult to predict, we are
reaching out to our large alumni base in Washington, particularly
those alums working for committees on the Hill, non-profits and
those agencies unaffected by the shutdown,” said Jessica Heywood,
who runs Georgia’s program. “We are extremely pleased with the
alumni response, and we are confident our students will have plenty
of opportunity for quality, substantive legal work regardless of
shutdown’s length.”

The lack of clarity on the likely length of the current shutdown
is part of what has made the situation so difficult for students
and law school administrators, Tillipman said, more so than in the
previous shutdowns.

“[The 2013 shutdown] felt long and it had an impact on our
students,” she said. “But it felt like we knew there was some
negotiating going on and there seemed to be an end in sight. When
you hear a statement like, ‘This could go on for months or years,’
that’s not reassuring. This feels like the parties are so far
apart.”

A continued shutdown could also sour some students from pursuing
careers in the government, she added.

“We have a lot of students who want to go work for the
government,” Tillipman said. “You never want to see a law student
discouraged from that by seeing lawyers who are getting shut out of
work without a paycheck.”

Culled fro m .law.com