NYCHA Law Department Internship Promotes Public Service

Brooklyn Law School student Leilani O’Sullivan was inspired to pursue a career in public service after growing up in Queens and learning of the challenges many New Yorkers face when it comes to housing stability. 

Sabrina Randhawa, who will be entering her third year at New York Law School, wanted to explore the impacts of the legal field on public housing.  

The two students each sought a pathway to support their legal career aspirations by enrolling in an internship this summer in NYCHA’s Law Department.  

The two-month internship, supervised by Senior Counsel Hannah Roth, allows participants to acquire a variety of career skills while gaining experience with traditional legal work. Interns also have the opportunity to take site visits to different NYCHA developments that are hosted by employees of various departments, helping to give the students a “real sense of the scope of work that NYCHA does,” Ms. Roth noted.  

“It’s a consolidated program to not only get the legal interns familiar with a particular division and/or area of law, but to also expose them to the vast range of work that the NYCHA Law Department does, from contracts to legislative research, to civil and housing litigation,” she said. “It also allows them to see NYCHA’s work broadly, beyond the walls of the Law Department.”  

A total of eight students from New York area law schools, as well as Villanova University School of Law, enrolled in the summer internship program. They will be entering either their second or third year of law school this fall, and they earned academic credit or stipends from their schools.  

“I think it gives them a chance to see how some of the academic concepts they’re learning in school are really practically applied,” Ms. Roth said of the internship opportunity.  

Summer 2021 interns were assigned to different divisions across the Law Department and engaged with each other through weekly roundtable meetings, where they could discuss the projects they were working on and learn more about the Authority’s mission from some of NYCHA’s leaders, including Chair Greg Russ.   

“One of our goals is to instill in the legal interns the value of public service and working for NYCHA or any other agency, to show them that they can have a really interesting career doing a lot of different kinds of legal work in service to New York City and the greater good,” Ms. Roth explained.  

Hoping to pursue legal work in real estate and public housing after graduation, Ms. Randhawa said the NYCHA internship was a “wonderful” experience that exposed her to a whole new set of topics.  

“One of the most valuable things I learned from this internship is the importance of public housing and how the work that I do makes an impact on someone else’s life,” she said.  

Thanks to the NYCHA internship program, Ms. O’Sullivan said she has become more interested in a career in government and has gained experience in many different areas of the law.  

“Throughout this program, I’ve had the opportunity to learn so much in terms of landlord-tenant law and relations, how to start planning a career, and the structure of local government,” said Ms. O’Sullivan, who is entering her second year at Brooklyn Law School. “I would love to use the skills I’ve learned here to improve the state of affordable housing in New York City, particularly as we can expect to see more complex housing issues surface as the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic play out.” 

Ms. Roth noted how the group of summer interns assisted in a range of areas within the Law Department, such as writing legal research memos, preparing documents involved in litigation, drafting motions, and reviewing depositions.  

“Oftentimes we as lawyers get entrenched in how we do things, so it’s really helpful to have fresh eyes looking at some of our old problems and thinking about them in new ways,” she said. “As they’re learning, we’re learning from them too.”  

To apply for future internship opportunities with NYCHA’s Law Department, email a resume, cover letter, and law school transcript to hannah.roth@nycha.nyc.gov and Audrey.Alexis@nycha.nyc.gov. 

Photo caption: Law Department interns have the opportunity to take site visits to different NYCHA developments that are hosted by employees of various departments.