Business Law Fellow Opportunity for 2L & 3L Students – State Bar of Texas
The Business Law Section of SBOT is looking for 2nd & 3rd year law students to apply to be a Business Law Fellow to work with some of the most prominent business law practitioners in Texas on their projects. The application deadline is May 15. Applications can be found here: https://texasbusinesslaw.org/about/apply-to-be-a-business-law-fellow.
Each Fellow will be paired with an expert in the project subject to work on a defined, specific project over the course of one year. Here are some examples of projects they have tee’d up:
Digital Journal. Good business lawyers need advice from other practitioners about the practical problems they are trying to solve. Since 1983, the Business Law Section has been fielding articles with a practical bent written by practicing business lawyers. This project would have the Fellow sourcing and curating the best practical articles from the business law press and journals around the country; getting in touch with authors and asking their permission to publish articles on their website; and organizing online “symposia” webinars around common topics in the articles. A great way to thoroughly learn about a particular area of practice.
TX Business Courts. Part of making Texas a great place to do business is proactively monitoring case law and lending expertise to judges. This project would have the Fellow working with a mentor to monitor the Texas Supreme Court docket and the Texas Business Courts for cases with important business law issues; bringing them to Section leadership for decisions about whether to organize amici briefs; being a part of the decision-making process; and writing case notes on the cases chosen to be published on their website.
TX Business Cases. As a companion to the Business Courts monitoring project, they are putting together collections of “Pre-Business Court” Texas cases on a set of business law topics. The goal is to set a baseline about what Texas law says about these issues. This project would have the Fellow collect up to 25 cases that are important in development of the law on a topic at hand; work with a mentor to review and determine which are the most important and write case notes on the cases chosen to be published on their website.
Resource Centers. The Section has experts working on content for Section members in a number of substantive areas of the law, including Artificial Intelligence, Business Drafting, M&A Transactions, Legal Opinions, TX Business Courts and Securities Law. This project would have the Fellow working with those experts to determine what the fundamental knowledge base should include in the Resource Center for that area of law and help source that information; gain experience with the content vehicles that are most useful to attorneys, other professionals and business clients in today’s environment; and help design how members can interact with that content entirely online.
Legal Publishing and Professional Brand. How does any attorney new to the profession become known for expertise and build a practice that follows him or her wherever the attorney goes? In today’s very online world, that requires skill in content marketing and creation of a professional network both online and in person. This project would have the Fellow learn about web content management systems (“CMS”), how they affect (and sometimes limit) how an attorney’s content can be displayed and how to post content within a CMS for a website; how social media platforms are used for content marketing purposes and practice in creating content marketing for the Section; how to maintain a legal content library online; and how to engage a professional network online.
Each Fellow will be invited to their in-person and online meetings, dinners and annual retreat. The leadership of the Section and committee chairs gather once a year to connect with each other and engage in long range planning for the Section at a resort, alternating between in-state and out of state destinations. Fellows will be invited to the retreat and reimbursed travel expenses. This is a great way to get to know some of the most prominent business lawyers in Texas. They are looking for up to 10 Fellows to work with them during the State Bar fiscal year from July 2025 to June 2026. If you are interested in applying for a Fellow position, please submit your application via email through their administrator, Lori Wilkins at Association Management Consultants (“AMC”) at lori@amc-texas.com with the subject line “Business Law Fellow” or call for more info at 713-375-2731. An application package is available for download on their website, https://texasbusinesslaw.org/resource-centers/practice-tipstools/apply-to-be-a-business-law-fellow. Fellows volunteer their time. Scheduling project effort will be sensitive to the needs of law students or junior attorneys. The suggested resume line for selected fellows is this: “Fellow in Development of Business Law, State Bar of Texas / Business Law Section” They are looking for people to become Fellows to start in July of 2025. The deadline for applications is May 15, 2025. Decisions will be made by June 15, 2025.