Written By: Seth Choi
Biking across the Brooklyn Bridge, sitting on a trading floor and reading regulations–what could these have in common? They were all part of my internship in the legal department of Tradition, the oldest inter dealer broker on Wall Street. If you are not sure what an inter dealer broker is, do not worry because they are a niche type of finance company. Their role is to facilitate wholesale transactions between large banks as a neutral intermediary for which they receive a commission. If a legal internship at a company like this piques your interest, keep reading—especially since this opportunity is exclusively available to Hopkins students. The general counsel of the company, a Hopkins alum, offers the internship as a way to give back to the university. Additionally, he provides a finance internship that might catch your attention, though this blog will focus on the legal internship, as my time on the trading floor was limited to a single day of shadowing as a legal intern.
Key Experiences
Over the summer, I worked on two main projects with a few smaller assignments. The main projects were researching a long list of regulations on data retention in different states and countries for the chief technology officer and streamlining compliance documents for the chief compliance officer. At the beginning, I worked on these projects alone but by the third week, the other intern arrived, so we collaborated on the projects. We co-authored a 57 page report on data retention regulations by reading regulations, analysis by law firms and interpretive notices of regulations, which explain the regulators’ thinking behind different regulations. We also combed through 582 pages of compliance documents to streamline compliance functions of the company. Our work on these two projects were important as they assisted the company to prepare for future audits. One of the smaller projects was assisting the general counsel of the company respond to regulators. Much of the work was the same as writing the report on data retention regulations, but we also edited responses to regulators and researched regulatory agencies.
Skills and Knowledge Gained
This internship gave me the opportunity to develop critical skills. By reviewing many long legal documents, I learned to search within them more easily and became familiar with the code of federal regulations (government) website. I also learned which resources I could consult outside of the text of the regulation itself. Furthermore, the general counsel of the company explained the evolving regulatory environment to the interns, which was informative. In particular, because the internship took place during June when the Supreme Court issued major decisions on regulatory law, the general counsel explained the implications of such decisions on corporations like Tradition, which was insightful. Lastly, a soft skill that I learned was adaptability, which I will explain more in the “Lessons Learned and Future Applications” section.
Impact of Objectives and Key Results (OKRs)
My life design educator suggested I set OKRs at the beginning of my internship. I based them on earlier discussions with my supervisor (the general counsel) in which he laid down our project for the internship. However, other departments at the company made pressing requests to the general counsel and the company had to respond to inquiries from regulators, so I had to adapt my OKRs to address the more pressing projects. However, I did follow through on my key result of presenting to the legal team as it is a hallmark of the internship. I presented on the latest on regulation around use of AI in the workplace, which was timely as it was something that the company was grappling with.
Lessons Learned and Future Applications
My internship taught me to be flexible. As I explained, the company’s priorities changed, which changed my assignments. However, I learned to align my priorities with that of the company as a result of this. As something like this will almost certainly happen again in my academic or professional career, I will be adaptable as I was in this internship.
Through my experience, I also learned about different career paths in the law. I learned that big law firms rarely hire from the government and the vast majority of their hires are from the department of justice. Additionally, I learned that companies usually only hire transactional lawyers rather than trial lawyers for in-house counsel positions. This made me realize that I will have to be careful about which field of law I go into early on as it will be difficult for me to transition from different fields. I also found the trial law aspects of my internship more interesting than the transactional law aspects, so I will try to pursue an internship or paralegal position in trial law in the future.
All in all, interning at Tradition was an amazing experience for me as a pre-law student and one that I would recommend to any future pre-law student at Hopkins.
I want to thank the Life Design Lab for funding my summer internship and for helping me to make the most out of my experience. It was invaluable, and I am grateful.
