WHEN ALEX YARBROUGH BEGINS his law career someday, he’s going to be prepared.

He’ll already be familiar with criminal trials, arraignments and know firsthand about the slow-moving wheels of justice. He’ll know all the inside lingo. He’ll even know about the most mundane chores, like filling out reports and filing. Psychic? Not at all – just lucky enough to have landed an internship with Tom Green County.

“My dad was a D.A., and he came home talking about work,” said Yarbrough, a senior at San Angelo State University, of his father, Lamb County District Attorney Mark Yarbrough. “But now that I’m in the office, I can really see how it works.”

Yarbrough is just one of many students who will complete internships in Texas counties this year for college credit, a small salary, or both. Whether big or small, counties are increasingly getting on the intern bandwagon to benefit themselves and to prepare the next generation of county employees. “You’re exposing people to the system and helping them on their way, and maybe getting something back in turn,” says Molly Thurman, Yarbrough’s supervisor and director of victim services for Tom Green County.

Role-playing

Ask county personnel why they’ve chosen to add interns to their staff, and you’ll usually get a few reasons in response. First, practicality – with dwindling budgets and ever-increasing workloads, it’s nice to have a college student on hand to keep things from spinning out of control. Thurman uses Yarbrough and her other interns partially to help carry out general clerical duties.

“We’re sadly understaffed, and it really helps pick up our filing and just having help in the office,” Thurman said.

Most interns are skilled enough to perform many jobs, but it’s important to make sure that the help they provide is within the confines of the law. Tom Kozeny, director of juvenile probation for Bell County, uses his interns as hands-on aides to probation officers. However, Kozeny carefully monitors their duties to ensure that they aren’t taking on all the responsibilities of a certified officer, which would be in violation of the standards of the Texas Juvenile Probation Commission.

“Interns are free to do a lot of things, like assisting and helping make case decisions, but they do it with a certified probation officer,” Kozeny said. “They can’t make any case decisions on their own…you can definitely get a (notice of) noncompliance if you don’t have a policy prohibiting such things.”

Balance is important when determining the responsibilities of an intern. While Thurman’s students do perform office functions, they also observe trials and work in other capacities to enhance their educational experience and earn their college credit hours. “We try to let them have hands on everything,” Thurman said. “We let them work with all the offices, not just my department.”

Interns can also help counties realize the larger, longer-term goal of creating qualified, skilled employees who already know what it’s like to work for a county. Matagorda County District Attorney Steven Reis said his “full immersion” program exposes interns to every facet of the county’s justice system. The process gives experience to students who want to work as prosecutors, and weeds out those who may not realize yet that the field isn’t right for them. Reis said one of his interns actually quit law school after an internship in the DA’s office.

“After finishing the internship, she wrote me back and told me that after she saw the practice of law, she decided that investing three more years in law school was not what she wanted to do,” Reis said. “Her love was teaching, so she modified her major a little bit and got her teaching certificate. I think that beats spending three years and a ton of money in law school and being unhappy. ... Not everyone’s cut out for this work.”

Judy Springer, division director for Harris County Precinct 1 Commissioner El Franco Lee, said having a job before entering the postgraduate workforce can also teach students how to behave in a professional environment, which is something they don’t always learn in class.

“We have orientation before the job to tell them you need to be on time, you need to work hard,” said Springer, who helps coordinate Lee’s countywide intern program. About half of the county’s departments take advantage of the opportunity for interns.

Setting the Stage for Interns

Local junior colleges and universities should be the first points of contact for counties that don’t currently have intern programs in place. Departments directly related to county functions – such as law, criminal justice and sociology – are the best bets, but interns can be found in other fields of study. Mark Williams, director of juvenile probation for Tom Green County, said his department even works with the nursing program at San Angelo State. While they don’t perform medical duties, they do spend time with juveniles to evaluate other factors, such as family situations and emotional problems.

“The more people that can visit with those kids, it helps control their behavior,” Williams said. “They’re very attention-seeking, and will even do negative things for that attention. They get some of their attention needs met that way. If nothing else, it gives the kids someone to talk to.”

Mark Mendez, assistant county administrator for governmental affairs in Tarrant County, said most of his department’s interns have come from the North Central Texas Council of Governments’ Urban Fellowship Program, which connects area graduate students with city and county governments. Competition among departments for these interns is stiff, because the students are intensely familiar with public policy and are willing to work hard.

“They’re grad students, and more serious,” Mendez said. “We find that we get a more mature person to come in and take the job seriously. They will actually show up and know how to use the computer, and know how to do research, as opposed to an undergrad who might be just as happy waiting tables.”

“My mom has worked with [Reis] on some church activities,” Tucker said. “Once he heard I was in law school, he offered to let me come do an internship.”

The advantage to the informal approach is flexibility, Reis said, allowing him to take on students as young as high-school age, and to adjust the length of the internship to fit the student’s needs.

“We’ve done short ones during Christmas vacation for kids who just want to have an insider’s view of law and public office,” Reis said.

Since most interns are earning college credit, it’s important to work with their college professors to develop a detailed plan that includes information on what the students will learn during their experience. “The schools really determine what the interns do,” says Bell County’s Kozeny. “We make sure that they won’t just be filing, that they’ll be doing actual work.”

The required number of credit hours will also factor into the plan by impacting the hours the interns will be on duty. Thurman says her interns work anywhere from 20 to 24 hours a week, and their hours are usually worked in around their class schedules. They also try to stagger work hours so too many interns aren’t on duty at once, she added.

Paying the Players

By and large, Texas counties compensate their interns in the form of experience and education credits rather than paychecks. Reis said budgetary restrictions prevent him from paying his interns, but the educational goal of the experience also plays a factor. “

I’m very frank with them that I don’t want them here as a part-time employee,” Reis said. “I want them to learn, so I’m really not trying to get much work out of them. Plus, I think money can get in the way of education.”

However, some larger counties do have programs that pay interns. Lee’s program in Harris County hires 100 to 150 students each summer for 10 weeks. Paying entry-level salaries is still a bargain for the county, Springer said, because the employment duration is limited and perks like health insurance aren’t required.

“A lot of times we don’t have to go and hire part-time workers,” Springer said. “We’re quite busy in summer, but we don’t have to hire employees and have to pay them benefits. It helps us, because we don’t have to do any additional hiring.”

Some privately-funded programs do subsidize or pay interns’ salaries. Tucker, Reis’ former intern, secured a grant from the University of Houston that paid her for working.

“I would have only been able to do it for half the summer (if the internship had been unpaid),” Tucker said. “This allowed me to do it for the whole summer, without having to worry about finances.”

NCTCOG’s Urban Fellowship program splits the cost down the middle, reimbursing Tarrant County for half of the interns’ paychecks, Mendez said.

Whether paid or not, it seems that interns will remain a constant presence in Texas counties for the foreseeable future. They’re often not there long enough to complete a significant, long-term project, but county officials are confident that the education they provide their interns will cycle back to them eventually. Some of Thurman’s past interns have returned to Tom Green County as paid employees, some as legal assistants and one as a probation officer.

After her graduation in May, Tucker said she may pursue a career in criminal or family law, influenced by her experiences in Reis’ office.

“You don’t get so much experience so quickly (in another field),” Tucker said. “In a large firm, you wouldn’t get to do the trial work that you would in a prosecutor’s office. For a young lawyer, being able to do something like that is a great opportunity to hone your skills.”

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