Sample cover letter for Internship position at SBI

123 Highland Ave, Apartment 1 Somerville, MA 02143 January 22, 2011 [Contact Name Here] Senior Attorney Women’s Legal Centre 7th Floor Constitution House, 124 Adderley Street Cape Town, South Africa 8000 Dear Ms. Name: I am a first-year student at Harvard Law School and am writing to apply for a summer internship at the Women’s Legal Centre. The WLC immediately caught my eye on Harvard Law School’s public service database due to my interest in and experience working with women’s rights internationally. This summer, I am eager to build upon my understanding of women’s legal rights, and I believe that an internship with the WLC would provide an ideal setting for me do so through a combination of impact litigation and legal advocacy work. My interest in international women’s rights began as an undergraduate, when I studied abroad in both Morocco and Egypt. During this time, I was acutely aware of my position as an American woman, and this awareness sparked my interest in the status of women internationally. I explored this interest as an intern at Harvard’s Women and Public Policy Program, where I honed my research and writing skills through work with program fellows from Iran and Pakistan, and I further developed these skills by writing an honors thesis that explored Morocco’s family law. My thesis work drew my attention to the disparity that exists between law and access to justice; despite Morocco’s recently reformed family law, the status of women remains largely unchanged due to failures in education and implementation. I returned to Morocco as a Fulbright researcher to study this issue, focusing specifically on unwed mothers. During this time, I interned at Oum El Banine, a NGO that provides direct legal services for this group. Taking part in the organization’s work to educate women about their legal rights emphasized to me that law is a powerful and necessary tool for social justice and human rights. With this in mind, I decided to attend law school in order to further women’s rights through the law. I am drawn to the diversity and scope of the WLC’s work and am particularly interested in the WLC’s work with Muslim personal law and domestic violence. I encountered these issues frequently during my Fulbright research, and I am confident that my experience with these issues coupled with my substantial research and writing skills would make me an asset to the WLC. I am fully funded this summer, and will be available for ten weeks from June 1 to September 1. If you have any further questions or would like to schedule an interview, I can be reached at [email protected] or at (617) 495-3108. Thank you for your time and consideration. Sincerely, Julia Ference