Internship Insights: How our students are making the most of career opportunities at the University

Internships are a great way to gain workplace experience, explore different career pathways and expand your professional network, all while completing your studies.

Internships can range anywhere from a few weeks to an entire year. They can often be flexible to fit around your studies and in almost any are of study.

Zoe Chan and Alyssa Chen are both Legal Design Interns with the Office of General Counsel alongside their studies during 2024. We asked them about their experience being interns and how this contributes to their study experience.

Zoe is a third year Bachelor of Design Computing student. Hear from her about the benefits of bringing an outside perspective to her tasks and newfound understanding and appreciation of legal processes.

Tell us a little about your internship

I am currently undertaking a Legal Design Internship under the Office of General Counsel at the University of Sydney! The main basis of my work has been redesigning lengthy legal-jargoned documents and webpages, to make them more accessible (and beautiful!) for non-legal background users. I started working at the Office of General Counsel in March this year and will be working there until next year March!

What has been the highlight of your internship so far?

Meeting people in the legal department! As I didn’t have any legal background before I joined the Office of General Counsel, I enjoyed learning about the different teams and areas of law – it was very new to me. Through collaborative projects with different areas of the University, I also got to meet other people from the University’s Customer Experience Team and learn their ways of working.  

What is one way you have seen your work have an impact?

I think I’ve seen my work have an impact through the process of using my non-legal perspective on condensing template documents. Through multiple iterations and feedback, I was able to publish and finalise some of the documents for University students and staff to use.  

How have you balanced work and studying during this internship?

I create a schedule to plan out my week, so that I know which tasks I need to prioritise. Working in the Office of General Counsel is also pretty flexible, especially during exam periods, as they are pretty lenient on taking study leave.

What is one unexpected thing that has come out of your internship?

My Microsoft Word and SharePoint skills have improved by a mile. 

Do you have any advice for someone thinking about undertaking an internship while studying?

100% go for it!!! It’s a good way to get a taste on how it’s like working 9-5 part time. Internships are also a good way to learn more about ways your field of study could apply in real life projects. 

Alyssa is a fourth year Bachelor of Law and Bachelor of Arts student, majoring in Visual Arts. Hear from her about the unexpected positive vibes working in an office and how this has helped contextualise and apply her legal studies.

Tell us a little about your internship.

I have been working at the Office of General Counsel since March. The internship goes for a year in total. So far I've been helping with a bunch of legal design tasks like creating presentations, fact sheets and visual diagrams :)

What has been the highlight of your internship so far?

Being in my 4th year of law school, it's nice to see how all these (sometimes dry) legal concepts we've been learning about in abstract for the past four years actually come into practice and spring to life in a workplace context. And on the arts side, it's so rewarding to see how design can interact with other disciplines to actually help people — I'm used to it being perpetually downplayed as a secondary skillset, so being able to use it for a more concrete cause feels pretty refreshing.

What is one way you have seen your work have an impact?

The people whose tasks I’ve helped with have all been so receptive to and positive about the work. These reactions have definitely heightened my awareness of design’s impact in a working legal environment.

How have you balanced work and studying during this internship?

To be honest, sometimes the internship work is kind of a nice break from studying.  Balancing everything does get a bit dicey around midsem/ exam season, but I feel like that would be the case internship or not given my chronic nighttime revenge procrastination, so it doesn't feel like a huge burden on my time overall at all (except that waking up early is literally the worst sometimes).

What is one unexpected thing that has come out of your internship?

It’s been interesting seeing how the uni operates from the other side. On top of that, it’s just been super nice joining such a welcoming and fun environment- I was expecting "Severance" conditions but the vibes and energy of everyone here has been such a comforting surprise from the beginning :)

Do you have any advice for someone thinking about undertaking an internship while studying?

At the risk of sounding preachy: if uni is about having new experiences + meeting new people + starting to figure out what you want to do with your life (whatever that means), I think internships like this can pretty much capture all of that, so just go for it! (At least it has for me)