Key Takeaways:
- The best internship programs match projects to each intern’s unique strengths and interests.
- Reusable onboarding templates, project archives, and intern-written SOPs turn a one-off internship into a scalable, self-improving program.
- Giving interns one contract area to master, while exposing them to the breadth of in-house work, sends them into the market with both depth and range.
Disclosure: I used GC AI and Gemini in reviewing this work. I represent that this content has been substantially modified, reviewed, and edited by me, and I consider it my original work.
Every legal team wants interns who add value from day one, but that outcome has far more to do with how you design the program than who you hire.
In my nearly ten years as a hiring manager and legal internship program manager at both Toast, a restaurant point of sale company, and Snyk, an AI security company, I developed a repeatable approach that consistently produced strong results for both the team and the interns. Here are the strategies that made all the difference.
Discover and Leverage Each Intern’s Unique Strengths
Interns arrive with skills that have nothing to do with law school, and those skills are often the most valuable ones they bring. One of my interns was a former data analyst who could build polished slide decks faster and better than anyone on the team. Another was an aspiring IP attorney who revamped our trademark cease and desist templates into something far sharper than what we had been using. A third intern started curating weekly legal news roundups that became a genuine conversation starter amongst the team.
None of these contributions came from a standard intern task list. They came from paying attention to what each person was good at and then clearing the path for them to do it. Early in every internship, I ask about prior work experience, side projects, and what they actually enjoy doing. The answers almost always reveal something we can put to work immediately.
Balance Depth and Breadth in Project Assignments
It is tempting to rotate interns through as many projects as possible so they get a well-rounded experience. There is value in that but breadth without depth leaves interns with a surface-level understanding of everything and command of nothing. I try to give every intern one core area to own. That area is usually NDAs. By the end of their internship, they can review and negotiate a standard NDA confidently and independently. That is a concrete, marketable skill they can deploy on day one of their next role.
At the same time, I make sure they sit in on calls with stakeholders from engineering, product, sales, and procurement. They see how legal work connects to business decisions across the organization. The combination of one deep skill and broad organizational exposure gives them a story to tell in interviews and a toolkit that goes beyond legal research.
Conduct a Mid-Internship Check-In
Even when the formal internship program does not require it, I schedule a dedicated mid-point conversation with each intern. This is not a performance review. It is a simple check: Is this experience meeting your expectations? Is there something you hoped to work on that we have not gotten to? Are there any members of the team that you have not gotten the chance to work with?
These conversations have led to some of my best course corrections. One intern mentioned wanting more customer-facing exposure, so I started bringing her to customer calls for the second half of her term. Without that check-in, I would have missed the signal entirely.
Build a Reusable Onboarding Framework
The first few days of an internship set the tone. If onboarding is chaotic, the intern spends weeks figuring out their role instead of contributing. I created a Google Docs onboarding template that I copy and customize for each new intern. It includes everything: system access checklists, key contacts, links to templates and playbooks, a glossary of internal terminology, and a week-by-week outline of what to expect. Each cycle, I update it based on what worked and what confused the previous intern. After a few iterations, the template practically runs itself.
Maintain a Running Project Archive
Alongside the onboarding template, I keep a living document with links to every major project a past intern completed, along with relevant workflows and context. When a new intern joins, I walk them through the archive so they can see the quality and scope of work their predecessors delivered. This does two things: it sets a clear bar and it gives them a head start. Instead of building from scratch, they can build on what came before.
Have Interns Document Their Own Work
Every intern I manage is expected to write standard operating procedures for their projects as they go. I ask them to write in their own voice, for themselves and their successors. The result is documentation that reads naturally and is genuinely useful for the next person who picks up that workflow. It also forces the intern to consolidate what they learned, which reinforces their own understanding. These SOPs feed directly into the project archive, so the program compounds in quality over time.
Trust Your Recruiting Team to Identify Top Candidates
When I first started managing interns, I insisted on being involved in every stage of the hiring process. I did countless interviews in each round. I have since learned that when the primary criteria are work ethic and eagerness to learn (rather than niche technical skills), if you have one, your recruiting team is well positioned to screen for those qualities. Letting recruiters handle initial screening and narrowing the pool down to three top candidates saved me significant time and, frankly, produced better candidates than when I was trying to do it all myself.
The ultimate measure of a good internship program is whether your former interns recommend it to their peers. That happens when they leave with real skills, real work product they are proud of, and the feeling that they were treated as contributors rather than observers. Every strategy above points toward that outcome. Build the program once, refine it each cycle, and let the results speak for themselves.
