Undergraduate Blog / Career Development

Business v. Law

My name is Christine Park, a rising junior at Babson College, studying Computational and Mathematical Finance and Legal Studies. As one of the recipients for the Internship Sponsorship Award for this summer, I will be blogging about my current summer internship as a legal assistant at Kim & Bae, P.C.

To briefly describe the firm, it is a boutique law firm situated in New Jersey and New York, with its subsidiary office in Seoul, Korea. It is one of the most prominent Korean-American law firm in the United States, constantly covered by the media. There are about sixteen attorneys practicing commercial litigation, securities arbitration, business and contract law, real estate law, bankruptcy, criminal and municipal, family law, and tax appeal. As a legal assistant, I will be assisting the attorneys in various ways such as: conducting legal research, contacting clerks, providing on site translation (Korean to English and vice versa) for non English speaking clients, translating legal documents, reviewing discovery in preparation for cases, document assembly, exhibit assembly, etc.

So why did I decide to intern at a law firm this summer as a business major? There were numerous factors that influenced my decision, but the primary reason would be to explore the legal field. My interest in the legal profession gradually accumulated as I worked with my clients’ attorneys as a financial consultant last summer, and as I took classes in Business Law and Contract Law during the school year. However, as a student attending a business school, I found it challenging to explore the legal profession outside of the limited amount of legal classes. In hopes to explore the field and clarify my career interests, I decided to spend my summer at Kim & Bae, directly exposing myself to legal practices in both United States and Korea.

As I am currently looking at my fourth week of internship, I can most certainly say that I made the right decision to intern at Kim & Bae this summer. Stay tuned for my next blog entry to find out why!