In-House Counsel

The Interns Cometh: An In-House Counsel Perspective On Shaping The Future Generation

Maybe not all interns are so bad; after all, they serve as good reminders as to how shiny and new we all used to be.

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About a billion years ago, give or take an epoch, I interned at a now-defunct entertainment magazine. My internship largely consisted of stuffing envelopes for some fundraiser or another, updating mailing lists, and dodging the grabby paws of the creative content director. This experience yielded several valuable nuggets including my now long-held belief that the concept of an internship program is great in theory, tricky to pull off in practice, and often ends in a half-ass attempt at structure and a bored-ass intern. Which is why I never suggest we hire one for our Legal department. It’s not that I don’t want to give back and foster the next generation. It’s that I know my limits.

Lucky for me, my business partners do not. It’s closing in on August and I’ve already had a half-dozen “I’m the intern for [insert name of business partner now dead to me] and I’d like to discuss the [insert horribly ill-defined project of questionable value]” meetings. In other words, it’s time for the annual foisting of interns onto Legal and other service functions.

Despite my utter lack of time to nurture the newbs, I always remind myself that at some point I was so shiny and new that the fact that I was taking up valuable office oxygen asking asinine questions was an annoyance to some seasoned vet. So, I try and tamp down my unique blend of snark and charm. But it can be really challenging.  Especially given what comes out of the mouths of these babes.

Take Taylor for example. Taylor is a products intern, who has made it abundantly clear that she’d rather be a marketing intern. To further add to her general dissatisfaction, Taylor has been saddled with assembling a playbook for onboarding component suppliers, i.e., a document that will be used by no one since the process is so simple and there’s very little effort involved. Still, as part of this exercise, Taylor has been asked to summarize the supplier terms and conditions. These are one page long. Taylor sends me a summary that is six pages long. But I want to be a good egg and build up “no parking tickets” karma, so I schedule a meeting with Taylor, who promptly informs me that her summary would be a lot shorter if we took out indemnification and the warranty. And even though I can feel the little vein in my forehead tapping out a frantic “get out while you can, Tay, shit’s about to get real,” I explain why we’d need such provisions even if they’re long. When I’ve finished what I think is a basic, pared-back explanation, she counters, asking why we’d need both, because you know, we could just sue the hell out of them. After mentally agreeing with Taylor that she should have been a marketing intern, I go down the rabbit hole of explaining why we don’t actually want to sue the hell out of anyone, citing exorbitant costs, the general uncertainty of the outcome, and potential bad press. She shrugs and says that sounds like Legal’s problem, not hers. And I have to agree.

Then there’s Kitteridge (Kit for short, he insists, though I’m not sure that makes it any better). Like Taylor, Kit’s been assigned a rather pointless task, this one centering around creating an FAQ for our new T&E policy. But unlike Taylor, he knows his assignment is useless and he treats it with the enthusiasm of one preparing for an invasive medical procedure. That is to say, he tries to get around doing it in every way he can imagine, including at one point, asking me to just do it for him and he’ll “review my work and clean it up.” Seriously, this kid has a death wish. Still, I remember all the times I did stupid, stupid things and I try to give Kit the benefit of the doubt by turning it back on him and offering to review and clean up his work. Kit is not impressed and later I get a call from his supervisor demanding to know why I’m not willing to work with his interns. All I can say at this point, dear reader, is that Kit is a marked man.

I’m not going to spend much time talking about Craig except to mention that the guy grabbed me by the elbow and asked me if I could copy some documents for him.  Instead, poor Craig got an earful about respectful workplace behavior and making assumptions about people’s roles. See? I’m shaping the future generations. I sincerely doubt that Craig will ever make eye contact with a female employee again.

I’m about to write off this year’s entire intern class as no-good-future-sales-team-wannabes, but Monique throws a wrench in my plans. From the minute she shows up in my office on time with a notebook (an honest-to-goodness paper affair and not a tablet or smartphone), I know I’m sunk. Like the others, Monique has been given an unenviable task of locating and summarizing all of this year’s sales contracts. I kind of want to ask her who she pissed off to merit such a Sisyphean task, but I can’t because she’s come prepared with a list of thoughtful questions. And before long, I’m promising to help Monique summarize these dumpster fires (and yes, all of the sales contracts are dumpster fires). Hell, by the end of it, I’m offering to take her to lunch. And I’m not talking about eating lunch at my desk, precariously balancing a cafeteria salad over my keyboard and hoping for the best. No way, I’m talking about one of those Biglaw type lunches where you actually sit down for a full hour and the company picks up the tab.

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I guess maybe interns aren’t so bad, and they serve as good reminders as to how shiny and new we all used to be.

Except Kit. Kit is a dead man.

Kay Thrace (not her real name) is a harried in-house counsel at a well-known company that everyone loves to hate. When not scuffing dirt on the sacrosanct line between business and the law, Kay enjoys pub trivia domination and eradicating incorrect usage of the Oxford comma. You can contact her by email at [email protected] or follow her on Twitter @KayThrace.

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