Despite mild setbacks caused by the new coronavirus, the Association of Corporate Counsel Greater Philadelphia was able to continue its Diversity Corporate Summer Internship Program for the 13th year.

The internship is open to 1L and 2L students. Law students apply to the ACC GP and the organization selects and sets law students up with interviews with participating legal departments. Students who apply must submit a statement explaining their "substantial obstacles in the pursuit of a legal career" or that they are "a member of a group underrepresented in the legal profession."

Recognizing that diversity goes beyond race and religion, Sadeq Khan, who oversees the program in his role as co-chair of the diversity committee at ACC GP, said applicants are now allowed to make a case for why they are diverse and what their challenges have been.

"There are a lot of different people who can be diverse and bring that perspective to a legal department," Khan, who also serves as chief compliance officer and deputy general counsel at Vertical Screen Inc. in Warminster, Pennsylvania, said.

Companies that participate in the program must make a commitment to pay interns a stipend of $7,500. The ACC GP will allocate $2,500 of that from an endowment fund for companies that participate for the first time. Some companies told Khan after they made offers to students they would have to drop out of the program, and Khan feared some students would be without a summer experience. Khan said students who have a summer gap for one year may find it difficult to apply for jobs.

"This is a program that is meant to foster diversity within legal departments and to give these diverse students an opportunity to experience in-house practice. If we weren't going to be able to do that, my fear was the impact it was going to have on these students," Khan said.

To help alleviate the financial burden, Khan said, the ACC GP extended the $2,500 to all companies, regardless of whether or not they have participated in the past.

Companies involved in this year's internship program were Vertical Screen; American Water, ARI Fleet Management Co., Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, Cigna; Comcast Corp., Exelon Corp., Fanatics Inc., PJM Interconnection LLC, Power Home Remodeling, TE Connectivity, Teleflex Inc., Unisys Corp., Venerable Holdings Inc. and Wawa Inc.

"These companies really bent over backward to make sure they could keep these interns on and have the internship they were promised," Khan said.

He said one thing students missed out on this year is the face-to-face interaction that is critical for in-house counsel. Khan said at Vertical Screen, he and his boss, general counsel N. Alexander Erlam, manage the interns and usually introduce them to the business leaders in the company.

"Allowing our interns to meet people in other departments is unique for us," Khan said of working in a legal department. "There are people in sales and marketing and those are the folks that in-house counsel deal with on a daily basis."

Beyond not being able to meet face to face with leaders in departments outside of legal, much of the work for the interns have stayed the same.

"We had the benefit of the internship starting after most of these companies went remote. By the time the internship started most of these companies had been working from home for two months," Khan said.

He also said the program usually provides outside-of-work opportunities for the interns to meet with each other and network with in-house attorneys in the area. However, there have been Zoom meetings between the interns.