Meet Alison Lintal
Director of Career Services and Externship Programs
Hometown: I grew up in southcentral Pennsylvania. I lived in Miami while attending the University of Miami School of Law and relocated to Chicago after earning my J.D. I now call Adams County home.
What do you enjoy most about your role at Dickinson Law? As director of career services and externships, I enjoy the opportunity to work with students in both a counseling and academic setting. I love to help students develop their professional identities and discover their core values as they transition from law student to intern to attorney practitioners.
A Dickinson Law favorite: Our professors are very engaged and receptive to meeting with students. They go the extra mile to help our students succeed academically and professionally.
Best piece of advice for students pursuing a career in law: Have a plan in place for how you want to pursue your career path and goals, but be open to possibilities you might not have considered.
Favorite resource for keeping up with employment law trends and news: The National Association for Law Placement
What do you feel is different about the legal employment market now compared to when you were seeking your first job as a new attorney? When I was in law school, I didn’t realize how many different possibilities there were for using a law degree. Recognizing that not all students share the same goals and interests, our first-year curriculum helps to introduce first-year students to different areas of practice, as well as contexts in which they can use their law degrees.
Is there an event hosted by the Law School that you look forward to every year? After attending the alumni speed networking event during Alumni Weekend and Convocation and Phi Alpha Delta Judges’ Night in the spring, I always leave feeling energized.
What do you enjoy in your spare time? I very much love the natural beauty that central Pennsylvania offers. I enjoy hiking, gardening and walking my dog.
Share an interesting fact about you. I am a Certified Iyengar Yoga instructor.
Life before Dickinson Law: I received my bachelor of arts degree in Spanish and International Affairs from Lafayette College. After living abroad in Buenos Aires, Argentina during college, I became interested in practicing in an international legal environment and decided to attend the University of Miami School of Law. While there, I became enamored with public interest legal work and spent two years working in the Health Rights Clinic where I helped clients apply for disability benefits, immigration adjustment of status, and became intimately familiar with how social determinants of health—like lack of access to housing—can create health-related legal concerns for clients. Upon graduation, I continued my public service work in Chicago as a Legal Honors Attorney for The Office of General Counsel for the United States Office of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). While at HUD, I focused on negotiating and closing multifamily and healthcare FHA-insured and low-income housing tax credit transactions.