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Undergraduate Internship

Internship Site Purpose: 

Enlist students in BYU Law’s development of the emerging field of Law & Corpus Linguistics (LCL). 

 

Internship Description: 

The Law & Corpus Linguistics (LCL) Internship is a rare opportunity for students to contribute to a project that has been described as revolutionary to legal interpretation. Interns will share and develop skills and knowledge needed to support the foundation of a developing initiative in the law. An intern’s experience will consist of work in multiple areas: research, editing, and writing, development and annotation of source texts. Each internship is unique, but will likely include engagement with legal and academic research and rudimentary exposure corpus linguistics. 

This internship is a remote opportunity available to students from any major.

Internship Project Contributors:

 

Winter semester 2023

 
Joseph Pineda, Elijah Clark, Dani Harper, Amy Stutzman

 

Winter semester 2021

 
Briana Bratsman, Tanner Day, Parker Madsen, Rachel Reno, Russel Styler, Yu (Tom) Sun

 

Spring/Summer semester 2020

 

Hannah Cagle, Dallyn McCracken, Ryan Cheney, Kenna Matthews, Kemi Quinton, Amy Clayton, Jenica Barker, Tyler Soutas, Anna Bailey, Cassandra Christensen, Abby Pattee, Rebekah Leavitt, Bucky Schrader, Elyse Slaubaugh, Kate Crockett, Haylie June

 

 

Winter semester 2020

 

Calvin Howell, McKayla Lindman, Geomar Lo, Benjamin Macarthur, Anna Campbell, Paige Johnson, Trevor Matthews

 

 

Fall semester 2019

 

Calvin Howell, Jacob Rowe, Jack VonSosen, Anna Campbell, Elba Kaplani, Wyatt Allred, Jessica Dofelmire, Deb Chandler, Tyler Brian, Trevor Matthews, Kenna Matthews, Mckayla Lindman, Austin Amos, Sarah Fletcher

 

 

Spring/Summer semester 2019

 

Devon Christensen, Ashley Woodworth, Benjamin Barrow, Jacob Rowe, Jack VonSosen, Wyatt Allred, Denise Han, Deb Chandler, Tyler Brian, Trevor Matthews

 

 

 

Background:
In 2016, Sara White, Terri Zoller, Erin Maree, and Ben Lee were hired to help build the BYU Law corpora. Their tasks included metadata coding for COFEA, cleaning and separating text files for the Supreme Court Corpus, consulting on the corpus interface, etc. In 2017, Sara White was hired as a Law and Corpus Linguistics Research Fellow at BYU Law School, and Ben Lee oversaw the expansion of the internship to include BYU undergraduate and graduate students who received university credit for their participation. In addition to many of the same tasks as the original interns, these new interns also participated in a curriculum on law and corpus linguistics and began helping professors in legal research involving corpus linguistics. In 2018, Sara moved on to pursue a PhD in corpus linguistics, though she remains an important consultant and resource. Ben Lee was hired as the new Research Fellow, and two of the year’s previous interns, Garrett May and Rebecca Knowles, were hired as research assistants to help oversee and lead the internship program, with a new and improved curriculum and more opportunities than ever for interns to get involved in research. In 2019 Ben Lee left the team for law school, and Rebecca Knowles graduated. Garrett May took over leadership for the internship. Later that year the Research Fellow position was filled by Brett Hashimoto, an applied linguistics PhD candidate, and Tyler Brian, a former intern, was hired as a new research assistant.

Each year the number and quality of interns continues increased. From the original four, we now have an average of 40 new interns every year. The contribution of the interns has been invaluable. It would be impossible for our corpora, and COFEA in particular, to have all the necessary functionality without the countless hours of tedious and careful work done by the team of interns.