A Look Into My Internship With the U.S. Department of Veterans’ Affairs Office of General Counsel
By Sadie Pruett
After previously interning with the Committee on Veterans’ Affairs in the U.S. House of Representatives and with the Department of Defense, I have actively sought internships involving advocacy for veterans since 2020. Four years later and in my 1L year at Wake Forest Law, I took advantage of the opportunity to intern in the Office of General Counsel for the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.
Coming from a family with a broad military history, I have always had immense respect for service men and women, though I have never been interested in enlisting myself. My grandfather was a Vietnam Veteran whose health was affected by exposure to Agent Orange. After five years of jumping through the required hoops, he finally received a 100% disability rating for health problems associated with his time serving. It is because of that rating, and benefits to which service men and women are entitled, that he received disability compensation, health care, prescription medications, burial benefits and more. It was only after I was old enough to understand the impact of VA benefits for my grandfather that I became interested in learning about careers related to veterans’ advocacy.
Now a law student, I have sought out opportunities to combine my history in veterans’ advocacy-related positions with my legal education. I was thrilled to find the position with VA’s Office of General Counsel in its Revenue Law Group posted in Symplicity. I admittedly was unfamiliar with the Revenue Law Group and its responsibilities in the organization. As I think is common for many people, I naively believed the VA is solely focused on providing medical care and related benefits for the nation’s veterans, as well as advocating for the passage of legislation to create statutory funding for such care. I quickly discovered that the VA was much larger and wore far more hats than I had first thought.
VA’s Office of General Counsel (OGC) alone has over ten different practice groups, with employees across the country. As I had expected, there are groups dedicated to work on Congressional hearings and veteran benefits packages. Yet, there are many more I did not expect to find. OGC has groups responsible for homelessness programs, the National Cemetery Association issues, health care research, copyright and trademarks, property acquisition, and torts – just to name a few. Moreover, the OGC works in conjunction with the Department of Justice at the U.S. Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims. Included alongside the many practice groups in the OGC is the Revenue Law Group (RLG).
RLG is responsible for the recovery of funds owed to the United States via various legal-collection remedies. For example, when a veteran is injured in a motor vehicle accident, by nursing home neglect, or other action by a tortious third party, they may choose to be treated at a VA medical center, at no cost to them. However, if the veteran chooses to pursue legal action against the tortious third party, or if the VA chooses to pursue legal action themselves, VA has a statutory right to recovery for the medical care provided to the veteran. Recovered funds are returned to VA medical centers for use in caring for veterans.
As a legal intern, I was able to support RLG attorneys in case reviews which consisted of reviewing veteran medical records to identify legally related treatment and care provided to the veteran in response to their injuries created by the third-party tortfeasor’s actions. I submitted written analyses for each case I reviewed and became familiar with the United States Code sections allowing for United States recovery. Other responsibilities included drafting correspondence to state workers’ compensation commissions, assessing settlement claim reduction requests, and offering compromise recommendations.
Unique to my experience, I developed RLG’s intern/extern program and its accompanying materials. I was privileged to be selected as one of three of the inaugural class of interns at RLG. I am proud of the foundation that I, along with my peers from Houston and Seattle, built for future legal interns and externs. I encourage Wake Forest law students and others in North Carolina to consider RLG as their next externship in the spring or as their internship next summer. A leader in RLG and the internship program is based locally in Winston-Salem. I valued her mentorship this summer and am grateful for her continued guidance as I continue to navigate veterans’ advocacy in government and private sectors. Because I have only ever had experience working for the federal and local governments, I am interested in exploring veterans’ advocacy in private practice to become a well-rounded and better attorney for my future veteran clients.
My earlier internships with the federal government were immensely rewarding. So much so that I very much expected my legal career to follow the same path. Reflecting on my summer, I am glad it did. However, choosing a summer internship in the government and public sectors as a law student is often less than appealing. More so than I expected prior to applying to law schools, there is a significant push, both intentional and unintentional, from peers to seek out internships with firms and not in the government or public sector. Sometimes, even professors or advisors are known to incidentally reveal their true preferences for private practice. These social pressures play a role and so do economic pressures when considering a paid internship as opposed to unpaid internships with a federal agency, a public defender’s office, or the numerous other public interest groups.
In the spirit of offering advice to fellow law students like me, I would encourage those who have an interest or the passion to work in the government sector to remain steadfast and ignore those social pressures. Additionally, if summer income is a concern, seek out scholarship opportunities such as the one offered by the NCBA Government & Public Sector Section. As a 2024 recipient of this scholarship, I was able to cover a chunk of my living expenses in Winston-Salem while happily interning with VA and growing my knowledge of and advocating for a group whose issues I am most passionate about. Moreover, with loan debt forgiveness opportunities for those employed by a government or not-for-profit organization, a career in public interest might even be more financially advantageous for some than a career in private practice.
Finally, I urge those who may have a unique or niche interest to consider working with a federal agency. A benefit of our American bureaucratic system is that the immense size of federal agencies requires their structure to consist of numerous offices, each acting as an umbrella for the many groups delegated within them. As I have described using VA as an example, federal agencies need attorneys to work on all types of law from employment to tort to property. There is no better way to combine other interests with a legal career than at a federal agency. Do you have an interest in art and museum curating? Consider the Smithsonian Institution. Are you interested in food and natural resources? Consider the Department of Agriculture. The opportunities are endless in the federal government to combine your passions with a meaningful career in the legal field.
Sadie Pruett is a second-year law student at Wake Forest University School of Law. This year, the NCBA’s Government & Public Sector Section partnered with the Zoning, Planning, & Land Use Section and the Criminal Justice Section to provide joint scholarships to law students who show demonstrated interest in public service and who work in an unpaid summer internship in a federal, state, or local government office in North Carolina. Pruett received a $1,200 scholarship to support her internship with the Office of General Counsel for the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs in summer 2024.