Name: Soren Rossi

Year: Junior

Major:Economics

Minor: Political Science and Business Institutions

JCFS Class: Business Field Studies

Employer: HBR Consulting

This quarter, I am interning at HBR Consulting, HBR is a consulting firm focused on sourcing and managerial consulting for law firms. The company also provides software solutions and information governance implementation as secondary services for all types of companies, not just law firms. I was part of a class that was four CFS interns and six summer analysts. At the beginning of the internship, we were split up into different practice groups. I was put into the managerial consulting group. Halfway through the internship we rotated groups and I was placed into the software group. My time in the managerial consulting group, called Legal Transformation and Innovation, was very similar to what most people experience in mainstream strategy consulting. After our initial onboarding training, most days were spent creating analyses in Excel that were used in pitches for clients. My manager would provide me with data from our clients and would specify summary tables he wanted created using the data. When it came time to pitch our findings to the client my work would transition to quality control for our presentations. This work may seem monotonous, but I found it interesting to learn about law firms from the inside out as well as useful to practice excel and see what actually goes into a pitch for a client. As I was able to sit in on presentations to clients, I found that much of the work I was doing actually got included in what was shown to the client which I felt was very rewarding. I believe this practice group taught me a lot about typical consulting as well as the industry HBR serves. Halfway through the internship I was rotated into the software group, called Software Solutions. My time in this practice group was more similar to what you would find in a computer engineering internship. I worked on client reports pulled from the backend of our software as well as updating user manuals for our products. I felt this work was less apropos to what initially interested me about HBR which was the consulting, yet it was interesting to learn about the varying products and services the firm offers. The idea behind the rotation was to increase exposure for interns in an effort to find the right fit for candidates looking for return offers. As a rising junior, I was not looking for a return offer, so I felt that the rotation inhibited my opportunity to learn the side of the business I was most interested in. Regardless, experience in different groups is important as it teaches you about the complexities of a firm that offers different services as well as enables you to meet more people within the company. The best part of my experience was that I was given lots of autonomy. This meant that after being given tasks I was free to work on them at my own pace and was able to balance my time from work I was doing for my practice group, networking with people within the company, and working on our internship final presentation. I believe HBR is a great internship for people who are self starters, are interested in consulting, and are extroverted. I am proud of the work that I did and felt that my time was valued by the company which can’t be said for other internships.