NALP aims to be the premier resource for information on legal employment and recruiting in the United States and Canada. We produce a variety of research reports, including Jobs & JDs, our Associate Salary Survey, and our Public Service Attorney Salary Report. NALP produces the Public Service Attorney Salary Report, the piece of NALP research most relevant to PSJD’s audience, every four years. We released our most recent version of the Salary Report in 2018, when we also integrated that report into PSJD as a series of interactive visualizations and made it free to access for all PSJD jobseekers. (Actually, the 2014 report data is also free to access via PSJD as well, so that users can make comparisons and see how salaries have changed over time; the whole report is well worth a look if you haven’t already taken the time to check it out.)
But although the Salary Report is available to jobseekers on PSJD via the site’s Resource Center, the PSJD Fellow and I speak regularly with jobseekers who ask us whether NALP has any information we can share about public service salaries. So we took some time and asked ourselves whether we could do anything to make this information easier to find and easier to use. I’m writing this blog post because, as it turns out, there was!
Beginning today, all of PSJD’s users who have access to the Public Service Attorney Salary Report (school administrators, jobseekers, and employers who have purchased access to the report or who have complimentary access because they contributed to our dataset when we conducted the Salary Survey back in 2018) should begin seeing relevant data excerpted from the report alongside job announcements as they browse PSJD. (Employers cannot browse PSJD job announcements generally, but if they have access to the salary report they will see salary graphs alongside their own job announcements.)
Here are a couple of examples of how this works. This is a job with a civil legal aid organization, located in Philadelphia PA. The relevant portion of the Public Service Attorney Salary Report is the section that discusses salaries with civil legal aid organizations in the Northeast US Census Region (the introduction of the report discusses how states are divided geographically). So in the sidebar, users will see a graph of median salaries in this region for attorneys at organizations of this type, drawn from the dataset for the 2018 Public Service Attorney Salary Report.
A screenshot from PSJD. The job is with a Civil Legal Aid organization in Philadelphia PA, and the sidebar displays median attorney salaries for Civil Legal Aid organizations in the Northeast, with a link to the full salary report.
If a job announcement describes a position available in multiple locations, the salary visualization may describe multiple regions. This job announcement discusses a position with a public interest nonprofit which is available in New York NY, Oakland CA, and Boston MA. Because the position is available in locations within both the Northeast US Census Region and the West US Census Region, users will see a graph including median salaries for attorneys with such organizations in both regions, drawn from the 2018 Public Service Attorney Salary Report.
A screenshot from PSJD. The job is with a Public Interest Nonprofit organization in New York NY, Boston MA, or Oakland CA, and the sidebar displays median attorney salaries for Public Interest Nonprofit organizations in the Northeast and West, with a link to the full salary report.
So that’s the basic idea. When we have relevant information about salaries that might help you as you browse PSJD’s jobs database, we’ll do our best to provide it to you–no need to go hunting to find out what we have. There are a few provisos worth keeping in mind:
Jobs that are classified as “unpaid” or “pro bono” have no relevant salary information and will not have salary graphs. This limitation is pretty straightforward. If a job expressly says it is unpaid, there’s no need to compare it against salary information.
Jobs with organizations that are not covered by the 2018 Public Service Attorney Salary Report’s categories will not have salary graphs. The 2018 Public Service Attorney Salary Report covers four organization types: (1) civil legal services organizations, (2) public defender offices, (3) local prosecuting attorney offices, and (4) public interest organizations with issue-specific missions.In the PSJD Jobs Database, these sections correspond to our organization types ‘Civil Legal Aid’, ‘Public Defender’s Office’, ‘Prosecutor’s Office’, and ‘Public Interest Nonprofit’. Job announcements with these employer types will include these integrated salary graphs.
We hope that all makes sense, but if you have any questions about the new feature please feel free to reach out. We’d be happy to talk about it with you.
The Singer Connecticut Public Service Fellowship Program was established for the purpose of offering opportunities to recent law school graduates to gain practical experience working for Connecticut civil legal aid providers. The program is administered by the Connecticut Bar Foundation, whose mission is to further the rule of law and assist in efforts to improve the administration of justice in Connecticut.
The Position
The Fellowship Program offers recent law school graduates (or those who expect to graduate by July 1, 2019) the opportunity to engage in the practice of law with a 501(c)(3) civil legal aid organization having at least one office in Connecticut which provides legal services to the underserved population of Connecticut. Candidates are sought from a broad spectrum of backgrounds who reflect the diversity of residents of Connecticut’s cities, towns and rural communities served by the state’s legal aid providers. The work of the legal aid providers encompass a wide range of legal issues, including but not limited to family, domestic violence, landlord-tenant, housing, education, employment, immigration, government benefits, healthcare, and elder law. The aspirational goal of the Singer Connecticut Public Service Fellowship Program is to retain Fellows to practice public interest law in Connecticut upon completion of the Fellowship.
The Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law is a public interest law firm that protects and advances the civil rights of adults and children with mental disabilities. For nearly four decades, our lawyers and policy staff have brought impact litigation, participated in Supreme Court cases, lobbied Congress and federal agencies, and worked with state-based legal advocates to ensure the rights of people with mental mental disabilities to self-determination, employment, education, housing, and health care and mental health services. Our cases are primarily brought under the Americans with Disabilities Act, the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, the Medicaid Act. We are active in the Leadership Conference for Civil Rights and other D.C-based coalitions. The Bazelon Center envisions an America where people who have mental disabilities make their own life choices and are supported in participating fully in their communities.
The Position
The Bazelon Center regularly seeks applicants for Skadden, Equal Justice Works, and other applicable fellowships. Candidates interested in a fellowship project in any of our core areas of advocacy, including criminal justice systems reform or children’s mental health and education systems reform, are encouraged to submit a preliminary proposal for consideration. Please review our website to learn more about our current advocacy efforts.
Qualifications: Applicants should be rising third-year law students or recent law school graduates with excellent academic credentials and strong research and writing skills. Related experience and/or judicial clerkship experience is a plus.
Do you have a passion for helping others? See the full-post on PSJD.
Planned Parenthood Federation of America (PPFA) is the nation’s leading women’s health care provider, educator, and advocate, serving women, men, teens and families. For over 100 years, PPFA has done more than any other organization in the United States to improve women’s health and safety, prevent unintended pregnancies, and advance the right and ability of individuals and families to make informed and responsible health care decisions.
The Position
The Public Policy Litigation and Law Department of Planned Parenthood Federation of America (PPFA) seeks second (2L) and third year (3L) law student interns for its New York and Washington, D.C. offices for full-time or part-time internships for academic credit during the Fall Semester of 2018.
Interns can expect to work closely with PPFA attorneys on a wide variety of litigation responsibilities, including, legal research and analysis; drafting memoranda, pleadings, affidavits and briefs; factual development for ongoing or developing litigation; and communicating with clients.
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Kansas is a non-profit and non-partisan organization dedicated to preserving and advancing the civil rights and legal freedoms guaranteed by the United States Constitution and the Bill of Rights. The ACLU of Kansas works in the state legislature, the courts, and local communities to protect the rights of all people living in Kansas. The organization’s work includes efforts to strengthen and defend First Amendment rights, voting rights, reproductive rights, racial justice, LGBT rights, immigrants’ rights, stopping government surveillance, and reforming the criminal justice system. The ACLU of Kansas often works in broad-based coalitions made up of individuals and organizations from across the political, partisan, and ideological spectrum. The ACLU of Kansas is an affiliate of the national American Civil Liberties Union, has an annual budget of approximately $1 million, and has more than 30,000 supporters across the state. The headquarters of the ACLU of Kansas is in Overland Park, Kansas, with a field office located in Wichita, Kansas.
The Position
The ACLU of Kansas seeks a dynamic, creative, self-motivated team player to serve as its Policy Director. The Policy Director will oversee the organization’s broad-based policy program at the state and local levels with a focus on building organizational capacity around our racial justice work, including voting rights, immigrants’ rights, and smart justice reform. Reporting directly to the Executive Director, the position is based in Overland Park. During the Kansas legislative session, this staff person will be expected to be in the state capitol in Topeka on a regular basis (usually Tuesday-Thursday).
The Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Lawis a leader in legal education, located in Manhattan’s Greenwich Village. The law school is renowned for its program in intellectual property, which includes the FAME Center for Fashion, Arts, Media and Entertainment Law. Cardozo Law has a long tradition of public advocacy and is the birthplace of the Innocence Project and the home of our Center for Rights and Justice. Cardozo offers a world-class faculty and encourages creative thinking and innovation in the legal profession. Cardozo provides students with a strong foundation in legal theory combined with practical hands-on experience in a variety of areas including criminal law, civil rights law, and business law. The school prides itself on creating a vibrant and warm community for faculty, staff and students.
The Position
The Fellow will work in the Benjamin B. Ferencz Human Rights and Atrocity Prevention Clinic and in the Cardozo Law Institute in Holocaust and Human Rights (CLIHHR). Reporting directly to the Clinic and Institute Director, responsibilities will include co-supervising clinical projects, developing seminar lesson plans, teaching in the clinic seminar, mentoring students, researching and writing, and planning and implementing Clinic and CLIHHR events. The position is ideal for a candidate with a strong interest in clinical teaching and in the substantive areas of international human rights law, international refugee law, and international criminal law.
The Benjamin B. Ferencz Human Rights and Atrocity Prevention Clinic is a semester-long clinic in which students represent individuals and institutional clients in international human rights cases and projects selected within a framework of atrocity prevention. The overall objective of the Clinic is to provide students with first-hand experience in the range of activities in which lawyers engage to promote respect for human rights and the diverse ways the law is utilized to prevent atrocity crimes and promote justice and accountability for mass atrocities. In order effectively to bridge theory and practice, the Clinic is divided into several pedagogical components: a weekly seminar, case and project work, and skills training. In the spring semester, the Advanced Human Rights and Atrocity Prevention Clinic continues the work of the fall Clinic with a select group of students.
Do you have a passion for human rights? See the full-post on PSJD.
The National Center for Lesbian Rights is a national legal organization committed to advancing the civil and human rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people and their families through litigation, public policy advocacy, and public education. NCLR litigates precedent-setting cases at the trial and appellate court levels; advocates for equitable public policies affecting the LGBT community; provides free legal assistance to LGBT people and their legal advocates; and conducts community education on LGBT legal issues.
NCLR’s projects and practice areas include family (including marriage equality, parenting, and other relationship protections), youth, immigration, elder, transgender, employment, and sports law.
The Position
The National Center for Lesbian Rights is seeking law clerks to assist with all aspects of its national impact litigation, public policy, and educational work. Much of the clerk’s time will be devoted to interacting with members of the community who contact NCLR’s legal information helpline and handling their questions from start to finish under the supervision and training of NCLR staff attorneys. Clerks also conduct case research, update publications, and draft memos on a wide range of issues affecting LGBT people and their families.
Positions are available in NCLR’s National Office in San Francisco, CA. Summer clerks work full time, and semester clerks may work full or part-time (minimum 12 hours per week).
NCLR hires law clerks for the summer as well as the fall and spring semesters.
University of the District of Columbia – David A. Clarke School of Law is the USA’s most clinically-oriented law school, one of the nation’s most diverse law schools, and is devoted to recruiting and training students who are committed to public service. Its legislatively mandated mission is to to recruit and train as lawyers students from racial, ethnic and other groups traditionally underrepresented in the legal profession and to do so, to the degree feasible, through the representation of low-income people and the public interest in a clinical setting.
The Position
The Associate Director is responsible for the day-to-day operations of the Law Library. The incumbent uses independent judgment and demonstrates expertise in the field by recommending policies, procedures, and systems reflecting professional criteria. The Associate Director is responsible for ensuring that the resources allocated to the unit will reflect an efficient level of service.
Essential Duties and Responsibilities
Oversees the day-to-day operations of the law library.
Plans, develops, coordinates, oversees, and participates in the delivery of the law library’s public services, including reference, research, instruction, and access services.
Supervises and evaluates all employees under his/her administrative supervision.
Provides vision, oversight, and leadership of public services in the law library, including regular assessment of policies, procedures, and workflows related to the effective delivery of library services and makes recommendations based on those assessments.
Manages the law library’s hiring, training, and oversight of student and other hourly workers in public services roles.
Teaches in the law school’s first-year legal research curriculum with the potential to also teach advanced legal research courses.
Assists in the development of the law library’s budget.
Participate on the law library’s collection development team and engage in regular evaluation of the law library’s collection priorities.
Develops performance standards for resource utilization and service based on established professional criteria.
Prepares reports of the law library’s public services.
Develops strategies for staff development and implements steps to accomplish them.
Reviews personnel matters and recommends actions in accordance with established policies.
Assists with identification of library funding needs and ideas for creative funding sources, including grants for which the law library may be eligible.
Assists with the planning of facilities to accommodate services and collections.
Performs reference duties as required, possibly including evening and weekend reference shifts.
Oversees faculty research support.
Promotes the services of the law library throughout the academic community and among cooperating institutions.
Engages in outreach with an eye toward possible partnerships within the larger university and the local legal community.
Serves on law school and university-wide committees and task forces as appointed.
Everytown for Gun Safety, the largest gun violence prevention advocacy group in the country, is seeking a passionate, dedicated professional for a full time position. The Associate Corporate Counsel will report to the Senior Corporate Counsel and work with Everytown’s CFO and finance and operations departments on a variety of legal and compliance matters, including lobbying and political work as well as nonprofit governance matters. The Operations team provides finance, legal, human resources, IT and other support to our rapidly growing organization. We’re looking for a flexible problem-solver with exceptional attention to detail to join us. This would be an ideal opportunity for someone who wants to pursue an in-house legal career in compliance, risk management, politics or nonprofit governance.
The Position
Everytown for Gun Safety’s Litigation Team is seeking applicants for a full-time Litigation Fellowship starting in fall 2018. This is a two-year paid fellowship program (including salary and benefits) and will involve the Fellow in the full range of Everytown’s affirmative and Second Amendment litigation work.
Everytown’s Litigation and Enforcement team is the largest team of litigators in the country dedicated full-time to advocating in the courts and through the criminal and civil justice systems to advance gun safety while respecting the Second Amendment. The Litigation Team focuses on two principal areas: (1) developing and implementing affirmative litigation strategies to take on dangerous gun laws that conflict with other constitutional and statutory rights, enforce gun violence prevention laws that are not being implemented, and challenge the gun industry’s dangerous business practices; and (2) defending life-saving gun safety laws against Second Amendment challenges, including working with and representing states and cities facing constitutional challenges to gun violence prevention laws.
We are looking for a Fellow who wants to use and grow their litigation skills and public-spirited ambitions to make a difference in the fight to save lives. Working out of the New York office, the Fellow will be responsible for working with the team to develop and implement Everytown’s national affirmative and Second Amendment federal and state court litigation practice, including constitutional and other legal research and analysis, strategy development, complaint drafting, trial court and appellate brief writing, participating in all other aspects of litigation, and working with pro bono counsel.
Is this your dream opportunity? See the full-post on PSJD.
Now known as NALP, The National Association for Law Placement® was founded in 1971, during a period of rapid change in both the legal profession and legal education, in response to a perceived need by many law schools and legal employers for a common forum to discuss issues involving placement and recruitment.
NALP is dedicated to facilitating legal career counseling and planning, recruitment and retention, and the professional development of law students and lawyers.
NALP administers the PSJD (formerly PSLawNet) website.
The Position
In brief, PSJD Project Assistants make PSJD what it is. Many of the job announcements that find their way onto PSJD.org are placed there by PSJD’s Project Assistant (PA) team. During the year, the team is composed of local undergraduate students, but over the summer we open our hiring process to law students in the DC area. This position is ideal for a law student looking for ways to finance an unpaid public service internship here in Washington, DC.
The PA team’s primary task is to update and maintain database content on PSJD.org–mostly its job announcements, but also PSJD’s employer directory and resource center. The team reports directly to NALP’s Director of Public Service Initiatives and the PSJD Fellow.
Project Assistants are expected to work around twelve hours per week. Hours are flexible within normal business hours, and can be arranged around an internship or other activity. Work must be performed in our offices; telecommuting is not possible for these positions.
This at-will opportunity requires a minimum commitment of 9 weeks, to begin in late May or early June, and conclude in early to mid-August.
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