Background Checking 1L Summer

Although it's been pretty much all finals all the time around here for a while, I do realize life will go on after Thursday at 5 p.m. when finals are over. In fact, I start work as a public defender intern on the 17th. I haven't had time to give it a great deal of thought, but I'm definitely looking forward to it. On an application for summer funding, my future supervisor described my summer job as follows:

The student will assist his supervising attorney by conducting factual investigations. He will interview witnesses, collect significant client records of treatment, photograph crime scenes and prepare trial exhibits. He will also conduct legal research. He will prepare legal memoranda and pleadings. He will assist his supervisor in court at trials and hearings.

Sounds like fun, doesn't it? Filling out paperwork in preparation for the job (mostly for background checks so I can spend my summer in jail), I get this twice:

You are advised that all information given this questionnaire will be investigated and any inaccurate, untruthful, or misleading answers may be cause for rejection.

Yikes. I guess this is when I appreciate the fact that I was always one step ahead of the cops during my youthful crime sprees. Kidding! But I also have to authorize "the release of the following data or records:" employment, including military; bank, savings, loans & investments; credit; education; medical & military medical; selective service (such an unfortunate name when reduced to an acronym, no?); veteran's administration; police & judiciary; arrests/convictions (criminal & traffic); prior polygraph information; birth and citizenship.

I wonder how long it will be before forms like this also require disclosure of any websites, blogs, or discussion fora to which you are a regular contributor. Maybe never, but I do wonder what I'm going be able to say here on ai about whatever it is I'm doing this summer. Speaking of which, this post inaugurates a new ai category: "1L Summer." I hope to populate it with hilarious and breathtakingly compelling anecdotes and observations (or just random notes about my summer experience), if that's possible. Since starting ai I haven't needed to be too concerned about what my employer might have to say about what I write here; I've been unemployed for a year now, and before that I worked for a public university and I didn't worry too much what it thought. Something tells me working at a public defender's office will raise all sorts of fun "can I say that on tv?" questions. We'll see.

Posted May 3, 2004 05:58 AM | 1L summer