Jobs › Options Clearing Corporation
Summer Intern - Legal Department
Posted Sep 17, 2026 · We last checked this listing on Oct 6, 2026
Apply at Options Clearing Corporation
Likely interview questions for this role
Written from this job description, not a generic list. Each one notes what the interviewer is really checking.
About your past
Why do you want to spend a summer in the legal department of a clearinghouse instead of a law firm?
What they are checking: Whether they understand in-house work at a regulated market utility and chose it on purpose rather than by default.
Tell me about a time you had to summarize a long, dense document for someone who didn't have time to read it.
What they are checking: Whether they can pull out what matters and say it briefly, the core of most intern legal assignments.
How do you handle confidential information, and can you give an example of when you had to keep something private?
What they are checking: Whether they already have habits around discretion, which matters a lot when handling regulatory and member matters.
Tell me about a time you got critical feedback on your writing. What did you change?
What they are checking: Whether they absorb edits without defensiveness, since a summer in legal is mostly learning from markups.
What area of financial regulation or corporate law have you followed recently, and what caught your interest?
What they are checking: Whether their interest in this field is real and specific enough to carry them through detailed, dry work.
What would you do
An attorney gives you a research question on Monday and you realize by Wednesday that the answer isn't clear-cut. What do you do?
What they are checking: Whether they flag uncertainty early and show their reasoning instead of forcing a clean answer that later proves wrong.
You're reviewing a contract and notice a clause that seems to conflict with a policy you read last week. How do you raise it?
What they are checking: Whether they speak up with specifics and humility, since interns often catch things but must raise them carefully.
You have two attorneys each asking for something due the same afternoon. How do you sort it out?
What they are checking: Whether they surface conflicts and let the right people set priority instead of silently missing one deadline.
About the work
In your own words, what does OCC do, and why does it matter that it's a systemically important financial market utility?
What they are checking: Whether they did enough homework to explain the business plainly, which is the base for any useful legal research here.
OCC answers to the SEC, the CFTC and the Federal Reserve. How would you go about researching a question when more than one regulator has a say?
What they are checking: Whether they can organize research across overlapping rulebooks instead of stopping at the first answer they find.
Walk me through how you'd cite and organize a short research memo so a busy lawyer can trust it.
What they are checking: Whether their written work product is checkable, with sources and a clear bottom line up front.
Practice this interview out loud.
Offer builds a real interview for this exact role at Options Clearing Corporation from your resume and this job description, asks the questions one at a time, and tells you what landed. The first one is free.
Practice this out loudThe full job description
As published by Options Clearing Corporation.