In the summer, a manager's mind turns to the traditional summertime thoughts: Is the air conditioning working? What are my team's vacation schedules? And most importantly, do we have our summer interns? Last summer, we looked in on the internship program in the FindLaw Customer Operations team. This year, FindLaw Technology is one more team that has a strong internship program giving students a chance to learn, and the group a chance to grow.

In 2009, FindLaw Technology partnered with Maverick Software Consulting and the University of Minnesota to begin the University of Minnesota Maverick Program. This program brings talented students from the University onto the FindLaw campus to gain real-world experience in software engineering projects like testing features, writing code and developing web enhancements. This opportunity has already led to three Maverick program students interning this summer at FindLaw. In addition, one former Maverick grad is now a full-time employee with the team.

There is one more way the FindLaw Technology team finds outstanding interns. Each year, Thomson Reuters awards two STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) scholarships per year. The STEM scholarship is aimed at strengthening Minnesota's future technology workforce by providing financial support to the undergraduate students pursuing careers in these fields. In addition to scholarship money, Thomson Reuters also awards internship opportunities.

The technology team is working to ensure the growth of area students and the team itself by asking a STEM scholarship recipient to join FindLaw as a summer intern. As with all FindLaw internships, this is a give and receive opportunity. Interns receive valuable hands on work experience, and the FindLaw team receives a resource of talented students who may be given an opportunity to join the company in the future.

This year, Thomson Reuters STEM scholarship intern Michelle Hromatka, a junior in computer science at the college of St. Ben's/St. Johns, joined the FindLaw Technology team for the summer. Known on campus as a very talented student with a 4.0 average in her Computer Science classes, Michelle is getting real life work experience she can carry with her to her planned grad school career. And of course in return, she is giving the FindLaw Technology team the benefit of her talent and enthusiasm.

-- Chee Wong, Director, Technology
with Tanya Roth, FindLaw Audience Team