Military JAG Externship Experience

By Jennifer L. Walker
Tidewater Tech Online Education Student

While serving as a paralegal intern with the Office of the Staff Judge Advocate at Fort Eustis, I had the opportunity to experience a wide variety of legal services and tasks as I worked side by side with a wonderful staff of military and civilian legal professionals. My first experience was working with the Claims Department. I sat in on, and assisted with, briefings regarding lost/damaged household goods. I assisted with the claims process and composed several demand letters on behalf of JAG. I also had the chance to research archived cases as well as familiarize myself with their filing system. As settlement payments came in, I logged them into the database, which was categorized by attorney, client, and settlement amount. I was also entrusted with compiling and making bank deposits for the Claims Department.

After spending some time with Claims, I moved on to the Legal Assistance department. In this department, I was able to interact with the clients and learn many things about family law as well as wills, trusts, and estate planning. I greeted clients, answered phones, created folders, researched the UCMJ, performed legal research for three different attorney’s, drafted letters, sat in on estate planning and initial client interviews, performed data entry into their CIS database, witnessed POA’s and wills, and various other legal office duties as they were assigned. I was tasked with creating and implementing Legal Assistance self-help fliers regarding identity theft prevention and the new bankruptcy laws, which recently took effect. After creating the fliers, I was asked to write newspaper articles regarding each respective topic. The articles will be published on the base newspaper as an informational service to Fort Eustis readers. As my internship came to a close, I was responsible for creating a legal memorandum which dealt with a confidential bar to reenlistment appeal.

Over the course of my three weeks with JAG, I learned many valuable things about civilian and military law. I enjoyed the legal office setting and I took my assignments very seriously. This was a wonderful learning experience and in all honesty, I was sad to go. Working with the paralegals and attorney’s at JAG has been the highlight of my paralegal education experience. I feel that I am now ready to make my transition from paralegal student to paralegal professional.