City Law School offers cash for NGO internships

Londons City Law School has launched an 8,000 scheme to help students on its international law LLM fund internships at top charities and campaign groups.

The scheme, introduced this year, will see up to four students a year receive a scholarship of 2,000 each to help them fund internships at non-governmental organisations (NGOs) such as Amnesty International, Greenpeace and Reprieve.

Director of City Law School, Professor Peter Kunzlik, told Lawyer2B.com: Students on our international law LLM often want to do internships at NGOs, but the problem is one of funding. Charities like to keep a tight grip on their finances and students arent always able to fund internships themselves, and this scheme opens the same kind of opportunities to students on our international law LLM that students on our international commercial law LLM already enjoy.

As first reported by Lawyer 2B (October 2006), City Law Schools international commercial law LLM launched a scheme last year for students to compete for internships at law firms Sidley Austin, Howrey, Thomas Cooper, and Cohen Milstein Hausfeld & Toll. Each of these internships pays students around 5,000 for an average of three months work in the fields of shipping, trade or competition law.

To win one of the NGO internships, students studying public international and human rights law will have to achieve the highest marks in the year for their first-term coursework. They will subsequently be invited to an interview, after which the final selections will be made.

Students can arrange their internships either during the LLM between May and July in which case the law school will provide an automatic two-month extension for the dissertation or within one year of the submission of their dissertation.

The scholarships will be awarded at the start of the internship following written confirmation of the placement from the organisation concerned.

No organisations have yet been chosen as official partners for the international law LLM internships, though Kunzlik said it was early days.

Dr Omer Elagab and Joan Small, City Law School tutors who specialise in human rights and public international law, will provide advice and support to the students selected.