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Pathways to the Profession: Adam Alperowicz L’17

July 06, 2015

Adam Alperowicz L'17 is currently putting his IP coursework to good use as a legal intern at the music streaming service Spotify.
Adam Alperowicz L'17 is currently putting his IP coursework to good use as a legal intern at the music streaming service Spotify.
Adam Alperowicz L’17 is spending his summer working on corporate, IP, and litigation issues for Spotify in New York.

Editor’s Note: Each summer Penn Law students hone their skills through a wide array of private and public sector internships across the country and around the world. Generous financial support and fellowships for international and public interest work enable students to pursue diverse assignments in the United States and abroad. This dispatch from Adam Alperowicz L’17 is one in a series of firsthand accounts by Law School students about how their summer employment opportunities are preparing them for their legal careers. Alperowicz is a “Bostonian by birth and a New Yorker by choice.” He hopes to pursue a career in entertainment or technology law. 

I am spending my summer as a legal intern at Spotify in New York. I’m thrilled to be working with a great staff in a fun, fast-paced, and creative office of a cutting-edge company. The legal team at Spotify is involved in almost every facet of the business. They have been very inclusive, welcoming me in to all their meetings, taking the time to explain how the company works and the issues they’re confronting, and getting my opinion on questions they’re grappling with. Thus far, my work has centered on user privacy, but I plan to get involved in a number of other projects throughout the summer — from corporate matters to IP, litigation, and more.

Spotify has 40 interns in the United States this summer, 14 of whom are graduate students; I am the only law student in the group. The office itself is incredible — with ping pong, a pool table, a rooftop terrace, and all the snacks you can imagine — and the staff has been extremely welcoming to our intern class. We’re lucky to be here at an exciting time for the company — Spotify just announced they’ve hit 20 million paid subscribers (up from 10 million a year ago) and has rolled out a slew of new features including video clips, podcasts, an adaptive running feature, and more.

My 1L curriculum already has proved invaluable to my work at Spotify. Of particular relevance are Professor Wagner’s Intro to IP and Professors Yoo and Steinfeld’s Privacy courses, which I took last semester. A number of issues we discussed in class and read about in cases have come up in day-to-day work and having that background to draw on has been tremendously beneficial. It’s exciting to see that the things we learn in class are real-life issues lawyers grapple with every day in practice.

In addition to my courses, my prior professional experience has been a major boon to my work here. Throughout college and for seven years after, I worked in the music industry — at a music magazine, a booking agency, and an artists’ management firm. My position at Spotify allows me to combine this work experience with my legal education and to apply those skills in a real-world setting while tackling thought-provoking challenges. Additionally, Spotify offers me a crash course in the tech industry — an area of great interest to me that I may not otherwise have been exposed to.

I hope to apply this new knowledge to my next two years of law school by further exploring the technology law and IP-focused curricular offerings at Penn Law. I also am excited to learn more about the general aspects of the business; I hope to gain hands-on training in corporate and transactional law, which will help my career in the years after law school, no matter where I wind up. I’m extremely happy to be spending this summer at Spotify, and I can’t wait to see what the rest of my time here will bring.

- Adam Alperowicz

 

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