Opportunities After Graduation Upon completion of law school, graduates have even more opportunities to pursue public interest work. Additionally, graduates are able to play a larger role in the public interest field once they have passed the Bar. The public interest work available to graduates includes fellowships, public interest rotations, full-time public interest, and social entrepreneurship. Sections:
Fellowships
Fellowship Sponsors Staff and Project Fellowships Teaching/Research Fellowships Miscellaneous Fellowships Public Interest Rotations Full-time Public Interest Employment Loan Repayment Assistance Plans Types of Public Interest Employers Social Entrepreneurship Jump to page: 26 27 28 29 30 31 Back to Table of Contents |
Fellowships Fellowships provide an opportunity for recent law graduates to engage in public interest legal work for one or two years after graduation. A fellowship is a “specified sum, awarded after law school graduation for a fixed time period (usually one or two years), to fulfill a fairly specific purpose.”1 Fellowships are also sometimes called grants, awards, scholarships, or even internships. The three main types of fellowships are project fellowships, staff fellowships and teaching fellowships. Fellowships can be found in all areas of the law and are often defined by the creativity and interest of the law student. Although salaries and benefits provided vary greatly depending on the fellowship, salaries can range from $20,000 to $75,000, with the average fellowship paying a salary in the mid-$30,000 range. These salaries are comparable to many judicial clerkship salaries, and although lower than most firms, can be considered an investment in the future because of the experience and work the student will be able to complete in a fellowship. Appendix 1 of this handbook contains lists of Fellowship Sponsors, Staff and Project Fellowships, Teaching/Research Fellowships, and Miscellaneous Fellowships. The information has been adapted from The Comprehensive Fellowship Guide-The Ultimate Resource for Law Students & Lawyers published by PSLawNet. For more information regarding any of those fellowships, consult the full text guide in the Career Services Office. Fellowship Sponsors Fellowship sponsors are organizations that host fellows to do a specific project for one or two years. The fellows receive funding from a grant organization to perform the project. Sponsors require interested applicants to develop or collaborate on the development of an original project for the application for funding. Many sponsors set their application deadlines significantly ahead of those set by the grant organizations to allow for thorough project development. Grant organizations require that fellows design an original project to perform at a non-profit organization for one to two years. The grant organizations commonly have particular limitations on the projects they will fund or have particular issues or types of projects they prefer. Staff and Project Fellowships Applying for staff fellowships is much like applying for any other job; however, the position is designed to last for only one to two years. Organizations that provide these fellowships provide funding for fellows to work on a specific project within that organization for the duration of the fellowship. These fellowships often provide the fellow with invaluable experience working as a public interest lawyer. 25
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| Some staff
fellowships provide
funding to allow fellows to work with
any non-profit public interest law organization. These are to help
fellows pursue public interest law positions they could not otherwise
afford due to student debt. Project fellowships provide interested applicants with the funding to work on a specific project with a host non-profit public interest organization. Students interested in project fellowships should develop a project idea, either alone or in coordination with a public interest organization before or during the summer after the second year of law school. All of these fellowships are highly competitive. Though many have application deadlines near the end of the calendar year, many keep their application deadlines open until later in the academic year. Teaching/Research Fellowships Many teaching or research fellowships are like staff fellowships; the only difference is that the fellow should earn an advanced degree by the end of the fellowship. Others provide funding to applicants who are either pursuing or near the end of earning an advanced degree. Much of the funding for these fellowships is devoted to providing scholars with the means to pursue advanced research or to complete a writing project. Many of these fellowships are law-related, but some of them are non-legal, as well. Applicants who are interested in pursuing additional degrees would do well to apply for these fellowships. Miscellaneous Fellowships The following fellowships vary between legal and non-legal, as well as other opportunities that do not fit the definition of staff or teaching/research fellowships. Some of the following opportunities are also project fellowships, but they do not have a specific legal goal as their purpose. Public Interest Rotations Some law firms allow new associates to work for a short term in a public interest organization or government office. These rotations are often for a period of six months. Students interested in these programs should conduct regular research to find firms that support these programs because new firms are continually implementing these programs. Below is a representative list of firms offering public interest rotations. |
Alston & Bird Arnold & Porter Bingham McCutchen Chadbourne & Parke Choate Hall & Stewart Clearly Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton Covington & Burling Dechert Dewey Ballantine Dorsey Whitney Foley Hoag & Elliott Fried Frank Harris Shriver & Jacobson Goodwin Procter Hall & Associates Heller Ehrman White & McAuliffe Kilpatrick Stockton Kramer Levin Naftalis& Frankel LeBoeuf Lamb Greene & MacRae Linklaters Litt & Associates Lowenstein Sandler Milbank Tweed Hadley & McCloy Perkins Coie Ropes & Gray Shearman & Sterling Shute Mihaly & Weinberger Sidley Austin Brown & Wood Skadden Arps Slate Meagher & Flom Steptoe & Johnson Thompson Hine & Flory Vinson & Elkins Weil Gotshal & Manges White & Case Willkie Farr & Gallagher Full-time Public Interest Employment Although there are many part-time and short-term opportunities for law students to work in public interest law, many students will be more interested in, and gain more satisfaction from, working in public interest law as a full-time career. This is a commendable decision and there are many opportunities and many resources to help students in this career path. Loan Repayment Assistance Programs Because of the nature of public interest work, full-time public interest lawyers do not take home the same salary as attorneys working in private practice. |
| Arizona, Florida,
Maine,
Maryland, Minnesota, New
Hampshire, New York, North Carolina, Texas, and Washington have all
instituted LRAPs. Other states, including Missouri and Montana,
are in the process of implementing similar programs. PILF and the
BYU Law School are currently researching the possibility of advocating
for a state LRAP in Utah. Because the requirements and benefits
differ from state to state, students should research the programs
before making any concrete plans. The ABA provides web addresses
and other contact information for these state programs at www.abanet.org/legalservices/lrap/state/stateprograms.html. For students interested in government public service employment, the federal government has implemented a similar program to help employees of federal agencies repay student loans. More information is available at www.opm.gov/oca/pay/studentloan/. Woolley Loan Interest Forgiveness Program In addition to LRAPs, students who work in public interest capacities are eligible to have the interest from BYU’s Woolley Law Student Loan forgiven. Types of Public Interest Employers As discussed in the first section of this handbook, public interest law can be quite varied. Graduates interested in pursuing full-time public interest work can base their job searches either on specific areas of interest or on geographical preference. The resources needed to conduct a public interest career search are discussed in the next section of this handbook. This section provides an overview and more detail on some of the types of work available. A few types of public interest employers are listed below as examples. For a more comprehensive consideration of the full-time public interest careers available, please see the first section and the other resources in this handbook. Public Defender's Offices Public defenders represent indigent clients in criminal cases. The offices may be part of a centralized system or may be localized. In larger jurisdictions, the public defender's office may be divided into units dealing with specialized practice areas, such as appellate or juvenile. Additionally, many jurisdictions provide for private attorneys to handle public defender cases on a contract basis. |
Legal Service
Organizations Each state has some sort of Legal Aid/Legal Services program. Legal service agencies are non-profit organizations that represent indigent clients in civil cases. Some agencies are limited to handling only certain types of cases, such as domestic violence or children's rights, while others engage in community advocacy or impact legislation. In some areas of the country, legal service support centers have been established to provide additional assistance to attorneys in the local legal services offices. Interns in these offices often research issues relevant to cases in a number of offices. Public Interest Policy and Advocacy Groups These organizations are primarily concerned with influencing governmental policy through regulatory comment, lobbying, and advocacy. While there is some overlap, most of these organizations engage in very little litigation. Generally, these organizations have an issue focus (e.g., gun control, hazardous waste, or women's rights), and they can be found on both the liberal and the conservative side of an issue. Interns in these settings often research the status of legislation, draft regulatory comments, and provide information to policy makers. Public Interest Litigation Groups These groups primarily seek to litigate or support litigation that impacts particular issues. Often these organizations separate their litigation branch from their policy branch (e.g., NOW Legal Defense Fund and NOW National Headquarters), though it is not uncommon for an organization to combine public policy and public interest litigation functions. Public Interest Environmental Organizations These organizations work to protect the environment or to implement programs benefitting the environment. They work in a diverse range of environmental areas, including land trusts, environmental policy organizations, environmental litigation, and preservation organizations. Social Entrepreneurship The information in this section was developed from notes taken during “Social Entrepreneurship: A Lawyer’s Alternate Career Path,” a panel discussion at the Equal Justice Works Conference in Washington, D.C. in October 2005. Lydia Watts (Greater Good Consulting, Inc.) was the moderator, and Layli Miller-Muro (Tahirih Justice Center), Penelope Spain (Mentoring ToDAY), and Whitney Loucheim (Mentoring ToDAY) were panelists. |
| What is Social
Entrepreneurship? A social entrepreneur is someone who sees a social need and creates an organization, often non-profit, to meet that need. A social entrepreneur recognizes a specific problem with society, and then works to solve the problem and thereby change society through entrepreneurial methods. Social entrepreneurship is an evolving area. A significant part of the effort lies in convincing others to get involved. Much of it is trailblazing. It requires passion, determination, vision, zeal, and dogged determination. The key to social entrepreneurship is finding your niche: finding out what others and the system are already doing, figuring out what is missing from the system, and reconceiving the way things are done. It allows you to do what needs done and to do what you love. Two examples of social entrepreneurship, one well-established and the other just getting started, are Tahirih Justice Center and Mentoring ToDAY.2 Tahirih was founded in 1997 by an attorney who had, as a law student, been involved in a successful and groundbreaking asylum case for a young woman who was fleeing forced polygamous marriage and female-specific mutilation. After law school, that attorney co-authored a book about the case with the asylum-seeker, and used the attorney’s portion of the proceeds from the book to create the Tahirih Justice Center. Tahirih provides direct legal services to immigrant women and girls seeking asylum or other protection from gender-based violence. Mentoring ToDAY, a recently formed non-profit organization, was created by two recent law graduates who worked with youth in Washington, D.C.’s juvenile justice system during and shortly after law school. Those attorneys were intensely troubled that all incarcerated youth in D.C. were minority males, and that recidivism rates were about 80 to 90% but the system did not provide effective services to prevent recidivism. Mentoring ToDAY responds to that problem by recruiting, training, and supporting mentors for youth in detention. Each mentor begins to meet with a youth while that youth is still detained. After the youth leaves detention, the mentor helps provide structure, helps the youth navigate the process of reentering society, and seeks to help raise the youth’s educational and employment level. Through this support and help, the goal is to significantly reduce the probability that each youth will re-offend. |
Getting Started First, probe and research to make sure 1) the social need you perceive is really there and 2) you can meet that need. Make sure that you are not just replicating services provided elsewhere; if you are replicating services, you will have a hard time getting started because you will be competing with other similar organizations for limited funding. Starting an organization requires so much work (e.g. obtaining tax-exempt status, writing articles of organization, managing employees) that is distinct from the social issue you are passionate about. For that reason, it makes much more sense to ally yourself with and improve upon an existing organization if there is a similar organization. Even if you do not start a new organization, you can still find work that you are passionate about. If you determine that the need is there and you can meet that need, the internet has a wealth of information about how to start your own non-profit. You can look at websites created by organizations such as Ashoka that focus on social entrepreneurship, or you can use internet search engines such as Google to look for more general information. There are also organizations like Greater Good Consulting that specialize in providing support and direction for non-profits. Be sure to seek out people that are likely to have knowledge or experience that would be helpful to you. For example, other people that have started their own organizations and your professors will often give you free legal advice. Ask law firms, professors, or former classmates to do small things (like negotiate a lease for you) on a pro bono basis. Be willing to seek advice everywhere, and take it seriously, but do not let it shake you from your mission; you will sometimes have to ignore advice you have been given to get the job done. Obtaining Funding Next, you need money. Funding for social entrepreneurs usually comes from private donors, foundations, and the government. It can be difficult to ask for money, but each time you ask it gets a bit easier. To be considered by most funding sources, you must already have 501(c)(3) status (recognition by the Internal Revenue Service that your organization is a non-profit). An alternative to waiting for 501(c)(3) status is to ask another non-profit to sponsor you while your status is pending. This allows you to get donations earlier, but the other organization will take a percentage of each donation, and you also need to be careful about the details of the agreement you enter into with the other organization. |