The San Francisco City Attorney’s Office’s Law School Internship Program offers students an opportunity to work in a large and award-winning municipal law office, which has been nationally
recognized by the American Bar Association for outstanding excellence. The City Attorney’s Office seeks to identify prospective interns based on their intention to emerge as leaders in government
and public-interest law. Our internship program reflects an important priority for the City Attorney’s Office: to give back to the legal community in meaningful and important ways.
About the SF City Attorney’s Internship Program
Once accepted, interns work with one of 20+ teams within the Office, which are organized based on legal practice areas. Each team offers top-notch legal expertise to our clients: approximately
100 departments, boards, commissions and offices that comprise the City and County of San Francisco’s municipal government.
Interns work closely with deputy city attorneys who are mentors on a meaningful, yet manageable, caseload. Each team has an Internship Coordinator who works to ensure that program participants benefit from their assignments, are engaged in team and client interactions, and are fully immersed in the daily duties of the Office. Interns work with attorneys who provide
ongoing professional feedback and keep interns involved as team members and part of the office’s broader attorney-client relationship with city departments, commissions and officials.
Depending on their assignments, interns can take part in client meetings with department staff and elected officials; attend trials, court hearings, and depositions; observe public meetings and
closed sessions with city commissions and the San Francisco Board of Supervisors; and attend press conferences related to the Office’s work. City Attorney interns also benefit from events, tours and lectures that the office schedules every season. Special programming offers an inside-view of important and sometimes surprising work required of lawyers for a city as innovative, fast-growing and unique as San Francisco.
Teams within the Office
Attorneys in the City Attorney’s Office are organized into teams based on practice areas. We encourage intern candidates to state a team preference in their cover letter, however, final
assignments are based on office needs. Internships may be available on any of the following teams. Asterisks * denote teams that handle litigation matters.
• Airport (located at SFO)
• Child Protection and Family Services/Conservatorship*
• Code Enforcement*
• Complex & Affirmative Litigation*
• Contracts & Construction Team
• Data Privacy Task Force
• Energy and Telecommunications
• Ethics & Elections
• Finance and Real Estate
• Government*
• Health & Human Services
• Labor*
• Land Use*
• Litigation*
• Public Utilities
• Public Integrity & Investigations
• Transportation
• Workers’ Compensation*
How to Apply and Upcoming Deadlines
The Fall 2021 internship application is due by Friday, May 7, 2021. The program runs from August 24, 2021 through October 30, 2021, with a mandatory orientation on Monday, August 24th.
Applications must include the following: (1) cover letter, (2) resume, and (3) brief legal writing sample. Please e-mail your application to catintern.applications@Sfcityatty.org
Please list your preferred practice teams in your application. Please visit https://www.sfcityattorney.org/aboutus/legal-teams/ for information on our legal teams.