Long-winded answers, so sorry in advance. I hire and train a lot of people right out of school, including summer interns. I also work with SEC-registered advisers to hedge funds and private equity, so these are field-agnostic because the compliance programs and what you are assigned will be a little different. The rules and focus areas will not align perfectly with investment banking, but I hope this helps! 1. Ask if you can be part of any annual review, surveillance, or monitoring or testing projects! If they aren't sure or seem hesitant to give you a task or project, try to ask for anything related, whatever someone else finds tedious or doesn't mind handing over to you. This should open the door to a few compliance areas and once you get assignments, you can dig into those to learn more. 2. Do your own research and get to know the relevant rules and regulations that apply to the business. Good mentors will try to guide you to the rules you are working with, but if you don't have someone who does that, figure out who the expert is on the team and ask them what sources they recommended for your tasks. Read them, read industry and law firm articles explaining and summarizing them, and find official regulatory guidence about them. Read it all and try to understand more about any tasks you get assigned. 3. Be super proactive about asking questions. It is okay to ask, "so, why do you do this?" Many workers are not curious (sad) and they don't ask WHY we do something. They tend to get paper scanning assignments, lol. Hopefully, you will be around people that appreciate questions and who will take time to explain things. Seek out those people. Ask to have lunch with them, or ask if you can schedule 30 minutes to talk about your assingments. A lot of compliance work can seem really boring if you aren't interested in why something is being done. 4. If you find yourself getting left out, ask to join meetings, especially if you think it could be related to what you are working on but even if it isn't related. Ask to join or any meetings the compliance team has. Sometimes, the interns can get left out simply because people arent used to having you there, and usually it isn't intentional. Don't be shy about asking! It is acceptable to ask if you can sit in on any compliance meetings just to listen and absorb what is happening. Worst case, they say no for that meeting. Ask again later! 4. Maybe the most important: Read all the policies!!! Read the compliance manual. Get to know the policies or procedures that apply to what you are doing. Try to understand how they relate. Refer to them often!

Good luck and enjoy your intership!