Upon entering Chapman as a transfer student in the fall of 2019, I was immensely excited about the opportunities that the school would provide me. I was fascinated by the amount of companies associated with our school, and that wanted to hire our students. I was lucky enough to be one of those students this past summer.

I attended Chapman’s Career Fair during the Spring 2020 semester, where I met an amazing amount of different businesses and companies interested in recruiting Chapman students. Of the companies that spoke with, I met Higbee & Associates National Law Firm. I remember being so insecure. I was nervous and thought they would overlook me. However not long after the fair was over, I got an email to arrange my interview. This was a moment that made me realize that I had a lot more potential than I gave myself credit for.

I accepted this position because I have an interest in pursuing the field of law after my undergraduate studies. I am interested in entertainment law, so I took on a role in Higbee’s copyright division. I was the most excited about this position because I knew it would open very large doors for me moving forward. Prior to this, I never thought I could land a position at a large law firm! Yet there I was, doing just that. The biggest things I wanted to learn about was how life was inside of a corporate office, and get a more concrete understanding of the work lawyers do. Being a communication major, I wanted to utilize everything I studied and apply it to this new work. Since I took on this internship during COVID-19, I realized my knowledge of communication would be applied in a virtual manner. In this way, I realized I would have to interpret and express different ways of communication to my coworkers without relying on nonverbal cues, which was challenging. It was difficult to navigate, however it was fun to experiment with. Overall it is extremely important to apply ideas of communication in the legal field. It structures relationships with team members, the public, and most importantly with clients.

Next I will be sharing about how the rest of my internship went, and how it ended successfully!

-Cristina