{"id":27056,"date":"2023-08-11T14:52:18","date_gmt":"2023-08-11T18:52:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/?p=27056"},"modified":"2023-08-14T16:34:17","modified_gmt":"2023-08-14T20:34:17","slug":"law-firm-internship-helped-student-focus-on-future","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/law-firm-internship-helped-student-focus-on-future\/","title":{"rendered":"Law firm internship helped student focus on future"},"content":{"rendered":"

Before hitting the practice field to prepare for his fourth season on the Paladin football team, Blake Hundley \u201924<\/a> spent some time this summer in a different kind of practice: law firm Merline and Meacham.<\/p>\n

An internship at the firm, which concentrates on tax, estate planning, trusts and estates, corporate and business transactional law, was a good fit for the business administration<\/a> major, even if he may not go into the legal profession himself.<\/p>\n

\u201cEverything comes back to the law at some point,\u201d said Hundley, who is considering a career in private equity or investment banking. \u201cOur firm dealt a lot with mergers and acquisitions, which investment banking intersects with a lot, so I can connect to some people in that industry.\u201d<\/p>\n

Merline and Meacham<\/a>\u00a0partner David Merline Jr. is a 1980 graduate of Furman. Among the attorneys Hundley worked with in the firm\u2019s downtown Greenville, South Carolina, office were alumni Jonathan Colao \u201910, Phillip Martin \u201909 and Douglas O\u2019Neal \u201902.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was mostly helping organize their documents so they could present to clients more easily,\u201d Hundley said. \u201cThe lawyers have to read and revise the documents over and over again. Contracts, wills and trusts are so particularly worded, and you can\u2019t go back on them once they\u2019re written.\u201d<\/p>\n

Concepts and consequences<\/h3>\n

It was a different experience than studying contracts, wills and trusts in a lecture hall \u2013 which is one advantage of an internship, said Marion McHugh<\/a>, an associate professor of business and accounting at Furman.<\/p>\n

\u201cStudents who take internships<\/a> at Furman get to apply the concepts and ideas discussed in the classroom in a setting where actions have real consequences,\u201d he said. \u201cThey also learn the technical and interpersonal skills required for professionals in their area of interest. Perhaps most importantly, students get a better understanding of what types of work they prefer, of their talents and of areas they need to improve on in order to excel in a work environment.\u201d<\/p>\n

Internships are a key component of The Furman Advantage<\/a>, an educational framework that provides every student an individualized educational pathway and opportunities for high-impact learning experiences, noted McHugh, who oversaw Hundley\u2019s Individualized Internship course. The academic component of the course, an elective within Furman\u2019s business administration<\/a> B.A. program, requires students to reflect on their learning goals and experience before and throughout their internships, he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt facilitates both conscientious behavior while at the internship site and a better understanding of the meaning of their experience for their long-term career goals,\u201d said McHugh. \u201cOne great advantage is that graduates of Furman have performed exemplary work at internship sites in the past. This has led to a significant number of organizations with interest in providing internship opportunities to Furman students and several long-term relationships with these organizations.\u201d<\/p>\n

Finding fulfillment<\/h3>\n

However, not every internship will turn into a career \u2013 which is another advantage of the program, McHugh noted.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor students, an internship is a low-risk opportunity to test out an area of potential interest,\u201d he said. \u201cThey don\u2019t have to accept a full-time position to discover that another occupation might better align with their interests and talents. Their next position is more likely to be more fulfilling because of what they learned at an internship that didn\u2019t result in a full-time position.\u201d<\/p>\n

That definitely rang true for Hundley.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was interested in a law career before the internship,\u201d he said. \u201cBut there was a lot of desk work, and I\u2019m not too far into that. It was a good experience, though.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A summer in a downtown Greenville law office showed business administration major Blake Hundley \u201924 how the concepts learned in the classroom play out in a professional setting. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":265,"featured_media":27063,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,20,58,61,30],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-27056","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-alumni","category-business-and-accounting","category-internships","category-the-furman-advantage","category-top-stories"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27056","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/265"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27056"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27056\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27063"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27056"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27056"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27056"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}