Zachary Peterson shares about their internship with Social Media Law Center
“Hello, my name is Zachary Peterson. I am going into my sophomore year at Whitman and I have had the honor of interning at Social Media Law Center this summer. SMVLC is a firm that specializes in impact litigation that seeks to reign in the unchecked power of protections such as section 230, which is what gives platforms immunity from 3rd party content hosted on their sites, and precedent set by cases like Roommates.com and Gonazalez which gives this protection very few exceptions. SMVLC tries to combat this by presenting novel legal theories against major tech giants and by trying to give voice to families who have suffered harm because social media companies refuse to police their sites and protect users. My internship at Social Media Victims Law Center has had a great impact on me this summer. I have been working on many impactful projects, and learned invaluable information about a niche yet impactful area of law, which I would one day be interested in pursuing a career in. While almost all of what I do is protected information and I am not at legal liberty to share most of it, I can give an overview of what I’ve generally been doing. I am one of two interns at the firm who hasn’t graduated or isn’t currently in law school, so most of what I’ve done is research for the lawyers to use. This research includes information about clients and also state specific law, for example various statutes of limitation which often differ from state to state.
My work is almost completely remote besides monthly meetings in person with the entire firm. While being able to work in pajamas and only needing to look presentable while in a meeting is nice, what has really defined my experience so far was the in person meeting I got to take part in. Because most of the firm’s activities don’t take part in any one state or location, the lawyers that work for SMVLC work all around the country. So for this meeting the entire firm flew out to Seattle, and I got to take part in a full day of legal strategizing, which was engrossing from 9 to 5. This experience has really made me want to be part of such a cohesive legal team one day because of the fluidity by which these lawyers could bounce ideas off each other.
All in all this internship thus far has really made me fall in love with law. For anyone who might be considering law school I would suggest getting into a position where you can get some semblance of what a law firm’s culture is like, because like this experience was for me, it might ignite your passion for law.”