By: Kara Cushman

The classroom can only take you so far. This summer, our students are finding out what comes next. 

For rising 2L Jessica Hessler, that looked like a summer at the NC State University Office of Equal Opportunity, an office that handles Title IX, ADA, and discrimination and harassment cases, but not in the way you might expect. The office isn’t adversarial. Its job is to make sure students and employees alike have what they need to navigate the process fairly, and that distinction shaped everything about Jessica’s experience. She’d spent her 1L year learning to think like a lawyer, to analyze, to argue, to advocate. This summer, the skill wasn’t arguing a position, but learning to sit with a story before deciding what it meant. 

She found herself in the room for some of the hardest conversations the office has: interviews with complainants, respondents, and witnesses in sexual harassment, racial discrimination, and Title IX cases. What struck her wasn’t just the weight of the cases, but the weight of the people in them. “There’s often more going on in a person’s life, whether they’re the complainant or respondent, than just what they’re coming in for,” she said. “Paying attention to what else is going on can give depth to the story.” It challenged an instinct she’d noticed in herself and her peers.

“We as future lawyers want to see the world in black and white, but the world is rarely so cleanly divided.” 

She also saw the preventative side of the work, sitting in on trainings and presentations designed to keep those difficult conversations from ever needing to happen. Between the two, she spent her time writing interview summaries, conducting preliminary reviews of reports, and researching how harassment law applies in educational settings, building the kind of practical foundation that doesn’t come from a casebook. 

All of it brought what she’d learned in her first year into sharper focus. “I have loved seeing some of the civil rights laws talked about in my 1L classes at work in the real world,” Jessica said, “and I’ve gained a new appreciation for how laws like the Americans with Disabilities Act, Title IX, and Title VI of the Civil Rights Act can work to support people in their everyday lives.” Her advice to anyone just starting out? “There is more than one kind of way to do legal work, and it’s informative to explore other options.”  

Jessica found this opportunity through Carolina Law’s Externship Program, which places students in real legal settings including government agencies, nonprofits, courts, and more, where they can apply what they’ve learned in the classroom to work that matters. Students earn academic credit while gaining hands-on experience under the supervision of practicing attorneys, all before they ever sit for the bar.