Employment Opportunities

Historian (Africa)

OSI offers internships for both undergraduate and law students.

Undergraduate Positions

OSI seeks college students for internships every summer and during the academic year. Interns at OSI must work as volunteers, and no funding of any kind is available from OSI. Successful applicants are encouraged to seek academic credit and/or financial support through the career services centers of their individual campuses. Interns must be U.S. citizens and must be currently enrolled full-time students at a college or university. Unfortunately, even if they will enter a graduate program in the coming fall semester, graduating seniors are not eligible for internships that take place the summer after their college graduation. If offered a position, applicants will be asked to submit to background, credit-history, and fingerprint checks and may be drug-tested. OSI accepts summer interns for a term of no fewer than eight weeks each summer, and additional interns are accepted for semesters in the academic year.

In addition to assisting OSI staff by conducting new research and acquiring new documents, interns also analyze and organize materials already generated by the office’s earlier research activities. This work involves summarizing and cataloguing documents acquired by the office, including materials written in various foreign languages. Most of the documents used by OSI are in languages other than English, and for this reason, proficiency in a foreign language is a significant advantage for internship applicants.

Application process for undergraduate interns:

Interested applicants should send a résumé, an academic writing sample, and college transcripts as e-mail attachments or as a fax (or as a combination of e-mail and fax) to Dr. Jeffrey S. Richter at Jeffrey.Richter@usdoj.gov, fax number: (202) 616-2491, attn: Dr. Jeffrey Richter. In a cover letter or e-mail, applicants should suggest specific dates for beginning and ending their proposed internship (any eight weeks between early June and mid-August). Applications for summer internships are due March 2, 2009. Applications for fall semester 2009 academic-term internships are due June 1, 2009. Spring semester 2009 academic-term internships are due October 15, 2008. If you have any questions, please call (202) 616-2492 and ask to speak with Dr. Jeffrey Richter. The Department of Justice does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, sex, sexual orientation, religion, national origin, marital status, or disability.

The U.S. Department of Justice is an Equal Opportunity/Reasonable Accommodation Employer. Except where otherwise provided by law, there will be no discrimination based on sex, sexual orientation, color, race, religion, national origin, politics, marital status, disability, age, status as a parent, membership or nonmembership in an employee organization, or personal favoritism. The Department of Justice welcomes and encourages applications from persons with physical and mental disabilities. The Department is firmly committed to satisfying its affirmative obligations under the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 to ensure that persons with disabilities have every opportunity to be hired. This agency provides reasonable accommodation to applicants with disabilities where appropriate. If you need a reasonable accommodation for any part of the application and hiring process, please notify the agency. Determinations on requests for reasonable accommodation will be made on a case-by-case basis.

Legal Intern Positions

Opportunities are available in the Criminal Division's Office of Special Investigations for qualified candidates interested in summer legal internships or academic semester legal internships (sometimes called "externships"). Legal interns will work directly with attorneys on cutting edge legal issues relating to a wide range of human rights, immigration, international law and litigation issues. Typical intern projects have involved researching novel legal issues, drafting litigation documents for active cases, analyzing and digesting transcripts of witness statements, and writing legal memos.

Summer legal internships are full time and usually last between ten to twelve weeks. In past years, we have hired two to three summer legal interns who have completed either one or two years of law school. Semester-based legal internships are part-time and require a commitment of 15-20 hours per week. The legal intern positions are unpaid. Because of the sensitive nature of the work, applicants must pass a background check before a formal offer for an internship can be extended.

Application process for legal interns:

Applicants for law internship positions must be enrolled in law school and have: (1) a strong academic background; and (2) excellent research and writing skills. Applicants must submit via e-mail, a cover letter, a resume, a short or partial writing sample (not to exceed 10 pages), a list of three references and a law school transcript (official or unofficial) to: osiinterns@usdoj.gov. Please do not fax or mail paper applications.

Summer legal internships: Due to the unusually large number of applications received, we are no longer accepting applications for Summer 2009 legal internships.

The U.S. Department of Justice is an Equal Opportunity/Reasonable Accommodation Employer. Except where otherwise provided by law, there will be no discrimination based on sex, sexual orientation, color, race, religion, national origin, politics, marital status, disability, age, status as a parent, membership or nonmembership in an employee organization, or personal favoritism. The Department of Justice welcomes and encourages applications from persons with physical and mental disabilities. The Department is firmly committed to satisfying its affirmative obligations under the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 to ensure that persons with disabilities have every opportunity to be hired. This agency provides reasonable accommodation to applicants with disabilities where appropriate. If you need a reasonable accommodation for any part of the application and hiring process, please notify the agency. Determinations on requests for reasonable accommodation will be made on a case-by-case basis.