From Teen Vogue to Weil

NEW YORK – Within my first two weeks at Weil, I landed an assignment with the Technology and IP Transactions (TIPT) group where I was tasked with drafting licensing language of a new contract for a client. At first, the prospect of writing a passage containing the right type of language was daunting—contract legalese is far from intuitive—but the associate with whom I was working, sent me some examples of previous contracts and we talked over some of the main points together. She then sent me out the door and I was on my own, ready to write my first (fragment of a) contract.

Soon we had a meeting with the partner, where I had an active role in explaining how we had chosen to structure the cross-license and why we had included certain passages. After comments and some editing, I received an email addressed to our client containing said contract. I was surprised and delighted to find much of what I had written intact and included. I had a complete nerd-out moment as I realized that real people out in the world were soon going to sign on to, and be bound by, language that I had drafted. I was taken back to my time as an intern at Teen Vogue when my first article was published in the magazine and I thought about all the teens out in the world who were soon going to read my piece.

Sure, an article detailing an up and coming beauty blogger’s favorite shade of red lipstick doesn’t have the same binding nature as this contract was about to have but both pieces of writing have the ability to impact decisions and influence behavior. And while I won’t have a byline in glossy print attached to this contract, I can say with certainty that Weil summers have the chance to substantially contribute to the work being done here at the Firm.