Trust, Wills, & Estate Planning Externship - Spring Only | Columbia Law School

Externship

This Extemship will consider: 1) the doctrines relating to the creation, modification and termination of trusts; 2) the administration of estates and trusts (including investment powers, duty of loyalty, allocation between income and principal, remedies for breach of fiduciary duty and spousal rights); and 3) lifetime and postmortem estate planning for moderate and substantial estates (including exemption trusts, disclaimers, the marital deduction, gifts to minors, life insurance trusts, charitable remainder trusts and grantor retained trusts).

Fieldwork

There will also be a Field component to this Extemship which will consist of interviewing clients at a Senior Center on Manhattan's West Side and drafting Wills, Powers of Attorney, Living Wills and Health Care Proxies for these clients. During the semester, there will be meetings with clients at the Senior Center and class and individual meetings at the Law School to discuss the estate planning situations and to review drafts of documents prepared by the students. Work will be done in teams of two and each team will interview two clients and will prepare the documents and participate in the execution of the documents.

To Apply

This externship is only offered in the Spring. The online application will be released in Fall 2018. Any additional questions can be sent to Marcia Levy at ml4139@columbia.edu.