Name: Bradley Posdal

Year: Sophomore

Majors: Economics, Legal Studies

CFS Program: Legal Field Studies

Employer: Saper Law Firm

I was initially disappointed in the Legal Field Studies internship offerings under the Chicago Field Studies umbrella. The law firms available for undergraduate CFS interns were not large industry leaders, unlike the consulting and finance companies that partner with Chicago Field Studies. Furthermore, the small law firms were unpaid and most did not subsidize transportation costs.

However, I am set on going into the legal profession, so I decided to set my doubts aside and apply for legal field studies. This proved to be one of the best decisions I have made in a long time. I ended up getting an offer from Saper Law Firm, a boutique intellectual property and entertainment law firm located in River North. Daliah Saper is the principal attorney at the firm and the clerks’ supervisor. As an important side note, CFS interns’ official title at Saper is “Law Clerk.” As this title implies, interns at Saper Law do much more than just deliver packages and pick-up lunch. Since starting at Saper, I have drafted contracts for clients, drafted questions for discovery for ongoing legal proceedings, written blog posts on law-related topics for the firm’s website, conducted search reports for infringing trademarks, filled out trademark applications, and many more substantive projects. Needless to say, I am content with the amount of exposure to the legal field I have experienced.

The work environment is also great at Saper Law. Organized chaos is the best way to describe Saper’s day-to-day functioning. There are always 5+ tasks to be working on at any given time and a steady stream of emails to address. I have yet to have a dull day interning! Daliah is enthusiastic, reasonable, and undoubtedly the reason that I have enjoyed my internship as much as I have. She has been a great mentor for me over the past quarter. The degree of access that interns have to the principal attorney at Saper is unheard-of at larger firms. Nor would undergraduate interns at large law firms be given such a diverse set of important projects. I now realize that my first impression of legal field studies was wrong: only offering internships at small firms is a benefit—not a detriment.