By: Steve Grumm

The jobs picture  has not been rosy for law students who are pursuing careers in civil legal services.  Funding cuts have hurt many organizations.  Layoffs and hiring freezes have been implemented.  (Read this report from the Legal Services Corporation about layoffs even as more and more would-be clients need services.)

It’s important, then, for job seekers to keep abreast of funding developments.  Where there is new funding, there may be new jobs.  Attorneys general throughout the U.S. are channeling millions of dollars to the legal services community so that its lawyers can serve low-income clients with housing problems.  The source of funding is a multi-million dollar class-action settlement over fraudulent mortgage foreclosure practices.  Individual states, in most cases through their attorneys general, have been directing some of this settlement money to legal aid organizations.   See this recent news out of Illinois, Nevada, and Washington State.

We track these developments in our weekly news bulletin, which we release every Friday.   I know it can be disheartening to read a lot of bad news about public interest jobs – to say nothing of the effect that job cuts have on client communities.  But there are good funding developments out there, and we consistently post legal services jobs on PSJD.  So keep up with the latest news and don’t lose heart.

The National Association of Latino Elected & Appointed Officials (NALEO) seeks a Voting Rights Fellow to lead and coordinate a broad range of voter protection related activities on behalf of the National Latino Civic Engagement Table (NLCET), a consortium of organizations that includes the NALEO Educational Fund, Center for Community Change, the Hispanic Federation, the Labor Council for Latin America Advancement (LCLAA), the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), Mi Familia Vota, the National Council of La Raza (NCLR), Presente.org, and Voto Latino. Duties will include coordination with member organizations’ communications teams around earned media, and identifying strategic opportunities for opinion-shaping and community education on voting rights issues.

The Voting Rights Fellow will also work closely with members of the Table working on community-focused voter protection efforts, to ensure coordination and maximization of organizational resources, and provide updates on emerging relevant issues at the national, state, and local level. Lastly, the Voting Rights Fellow will serve as a liaison between the NLCET and the larger voter protection infrastructures in which the NALEO Educational Fund and its partners participate, including but not limited to the Election Protection Coalition and Voting Rights Taskforce. Regular tasks will require project visioning, management, and execution; composition and editing of external documents; coordination and leading of group meetings and presentations; and management of external relationships with a diverse array of partners and stakeholders.

View the full listing here (login required).

by: Ashley Matthews

1. Research Debt Management Tools and Create a Budget.

Student loan debt is perhaps the biggest reason many law graduates don’t enter the public interest sector. Before you jump headfirst into public interest law, research the basics of managing student loan debt. Find out if your law school participates in a Loan Repayment Assistance Program (LRAP). It’s also very important that you get to know the College Cost Reduction & Access Act of 2007, which created the Income Based Repayment Plan and the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program for qualified borrowers. For more information, check out PSJD’s Guide to Financing a Public Interest Career. Be honest with yourself about what is economically feasible for you, and enter your public interest career with eyes wide open to all available opportunities to lower your debt.

2. Find and Define Your Passion.

As soon as possible, you should begin narrowing down what type of public interest law you are interested in practicing. If you are interested in family or juvenile law, keep track of all your experiences working with children. If you spent a lot of time volunteering at a community clinic, maybe you would enjoy practicing health law. These types of community service activities are a great way to not only show your dedication to prospective employers, but to prove it as well. Even if you don’t have a demonstrated commitment to one particular area, now would be a good time to start narrowing it down. Search PSJD.org to create a list of non-profits or other organizations that work in the field you are passionate about, and contact them about available volunteer opportunities.

3. Plug into your school’s public interest community.

A supportive environment can make a big difference in whether or not you choose to actually pursue public interest law. Have you learned about your school’s public interest advising and career counseling resources? Do any of your school’s professors have backgrounds and interests related to public interest law? Does your school require or encourage law students to commit a certain number of hours to pro bono work? Are there grants available to fund public interest work done by law students? These are some of the basic questions you should be asking – which brings us to #4.

4. Schedule an appointment with your law school’s career services office.

Schedule an appointment with your career services advisor. If your school has a specific office set up just for public interest-minded students, even better! Let them know you are interested in pursuing public interest, and don’t be afraid to let your passion shine through. Highlight some of the organizations you would like to work or volunteer with – your advisors may already have existing connections to them. Also, ask your advisor if there are any upcoming public interest events in your legal community, such as networking receptions or benefits, that you could possibly attend. Last but not least, ask for any information on funding summer public interest work.

5. Join relevant student organizations.

This is a great way to meet like-minded students and demonstrate your commitment in another way besides work experience. In addition to any narrowly focused organizations (such as a criminal law or environmental rights student groups), try to join your law school’s student-run general public interest organization. Do your best to take on any leadership role that is best suited to your unique talents, and meet as many people in the legal community as possible! Be creative in coming up with ways your law school’s public interest groups can engage not only fellow law students and lawyers, but the outside community as well – specifically low-income or marginalized populations.

6. Apply for a clinic suited to your public interest passion.

All the passion, planning, and extracurricular activities in the world cannot make up for hands-on experience. Your law school’s clinical opportunities present a terrific way to get experience on your resume. Clinics allow participants to grow as student attorneys under the watchful eye of supervising lawyers and fellows, and also discuss substantive issues safely in a classroom environment.

7. Volunteer at a local organization.

Apply on your own to volunteer at a local organization while in law school. You can use PSJD to search for local non-profit organizations, government offices, legal services organizations, and private public interest firms that may have available opportunities. Public interest lawyers use a wide variety of methods to help provide access to justice for their clients – including, but not limited to, individual representation, community organizing, impact litigation, education or policy reform. Research each opportunity to figure out which type of representation fits best with your interests.

8. Create a list of all upcoming public interest career fairs.

Career fairs are a great way to have face-to-face conversations with potential employers. Your law school’s career services office more than likely has a variety of resources with career fair dates, and PSJD continuously updates our Public Interest Career Fair Calendar. Even if you are not currently looking for full-time or summer employment, you may meet someone at a career fair that could be of great benefit to your job hunt in the future.

9. Make yourself stand out in your cover letter.

The reality is that all students applying for public interest jobs should (and more than likely will) have: passion; a demonstrated commitment; clinical, internship and extracurricular experience; and strong networking skills. If these are the basics on every resume that a potential employer reads, how will you stand out? Think about any creative and unique skill sets you may have that can match an unmet need of the organization you are trying to work for. Play up these characteristics or attributes in your cover letter! PSJD’s Resource Center has great tools to help create your best cover letter and resume.

10. Use PSJD.org!

PSJD is specifically catered to public interest law students and lawyers, so take advantage of all the resources and information available on the site. Keep track of your “dream jobs” by adding them as favorites. Set up customized email alerts to get the most recent public interest job postings right in your inbox. Browse PSJD’s Resource Center for information on fellowships, interview tips, and more. And keep following this blog – along with PSJD’s Facebook and Twitter pages – to stay up to date on public interest news and career resources.

Here’s a terrific international human rights opportunity: Based in the Open Society Foundations’  New York office, the Legal Officer for Pretrial Justice, National Criminal Justice Reform (NCJR), will engage in litigation, oversee the development of pilot projects, direct research and supervise consultants and staff as part of the Global Campaign for Pretrial Justice. The Global Campaign seeks to promote rights-based pretrial detention and legal aid reform as an issue of priority on the agendas of relevant governments, private and state donors, and inter-governmental organizations. The Global Campaign aspires to create sustainable mechanisms of funding and project implementation on these two important inter-related issues. The objective is to foster greater investment and attention to the problem of excessive pretrial detention and the challenge of providing adequate legal representation to the indigent by creating a more active “market” for ideas, research and programing in these two areas.

View the full job listing here on PSJD (login required)!

EarthJustice, an independent non-profit law firm dedicated to serving the environmental movement, is looking for law students with strong academic credentials and a demonstrated commitment to protecting the environment and wildlife to work as summer law clerks in its Rocky Mountain office.

The following is a sample of their current docket:

* Defense of Public Lands: Our office is involved in challenging the Bureau of Land Management’s attempt to eliminate protection for wilderness-quality lands throughout the West; efforts to stop the damage caused by off-road vehicles in Utah’s canyon country and Colorado’s mountain forests; and many other efforts to protect our western public lands.

* Responsible Energy: We are involved in numerous cases, both national and regional in scope, that challenge irresponsible and illegal energy development on public and private lands, including sensitive Wyoming sage grouse habitat, Utah canyon country, and wilderness-quality lands in Colorado.

* Ecosystem Protection: We work to protect the rich riparian corridors and forests throughout the West that are home to abundant native wildlife and many federally listed species. Earthjustice represents citizen groups in efforts to obtain protection for these important areas using the Endangered Species Act, the National Forest Management Act, and other federal statutes.

To check out the full listing, visit PSLawNet.org (log-in required)!

By: Steve Grumm (with an assist from John Kapoor)

Happy Friday, ladies and gents.  An important housekeeping item: the PSLawnet Blog is becoming the PSJD Blog.  We are relaunching our PSLawNet public interest jobs database as PSJD, effective 8/27.  The blog will move from http://pslawnet.wordpress.com to https://blog.psjd.org (link not active yet).  Those of you who receive from me a weekly email message about this bulletin will continue doing so.  Launching PSJD, which will offer an even better jobs database and career center for the public interest community, represents an exciting transition.  We look forward to all that’s new, but just as much look forward to our continued daily blogging.

Some nonprofit news before the public interest news.  This Nonprofit Quarterly post came to my attention this week.  Entitled “A Too-sad Truth about the Nonprofit Sector,” the post laments the culture of martyrdom which many nonprofits take on.  This can manifest itself in unreasonably low salaries and a shortage of office resources to work efficiently.  Many of the best nonprofit law offices, in my experience, tend to emphasize “law office” over “nonprofit” in terms of how they operate and present themselves to the world.  Of course the recession has made funding scarce, and many organizations are struggling just to keep afloat now.  Nevertheless, some executive directors argue that they will only go so far in keeping staff salaries down and skimping on infrastructure expenses because they will not sacrifice quality of service.  It’s a very difficult balance to strike for nonprofits.  And this debate is always worth having because it brings out some terrific ideas and solutions from organizations with starkly different cultures.

On a lighter note, the annual “Mindset List” for this year’s incoming college class is out.  The list looks at how an 18 year-old would view the world in light of what has, and hasn’t, happened during her lifetime. The list, while a little weak this year compared to its predecessors, succeeds at making me feel old if nothing else.  Funny to think that an incoming college freshman might see Bill Clinton only as a grandfatherly, elder statesman as opposed to, well, any of the many other things Bill Clinton’s been.

Okay, the week’s access-to-justice and public interest news, in very brief:

• Legal Services Corporation board chair on the community’s funding woes and the latest LSC newsletter;
• law school clinic at Santa Clara U. is sued by law firm for, well, operating;
• legal services providers in Nevada receive $1.2m from mortgage foreclosure class-action settlement funds;
• when fiscal woes plague nonprofits in the justice system, local communities suffer;
• prosecutors moonlight to 1) supplement income and 2) perpetuate Irish-American stereotypes;
• maybe prosecution work is for the dogs;
• North Dakota’s economic boom is straining the both the civil and criminal legal-aid camps;
• Think Progress thinks about LSC cuts;
• DOJ petitioned to think about how its crime-fighting spending affects all players in justice system;
• would narrowing the definition of “pro bono” lead to lawyers handling more poverty law cases?
• the rise of, and importance in, pro bono from Chicago-area in-house counsel;
• more needed from pro bono lawyers and the justice system is strained by increased numbers of low-income litigants;
• a Texas County signs on for multi-county capital defense cost-sharing program;
• Michigan goes online to help pro se litigants;
• 10 tips for getting hired into a public defender’s office;
• a NY State county wants to go from paid staff defenders to an assigned-counsel system to save $;
• Deferred Action participants should be wary of those offering legal services.
• Music!

The summaries:

• 8.23.12 – LSC board chair John Levi writes about the legal services funding shortages in Michigan and throughout the U.S.: In Michigan, LSC funds six programs with 29 offices across the state. These offices, both in Michigan and nationwide, are increasingly overwhelmed with requests for help. Nearly one in five Americans — 63 million people — now qualify for LSC-funded civil legal assistance because they live at or below 125% of the federal poverty guideline. That is an all-time high. As demand has been rising, the combined funding for LSC programs from federal, state, local and all other sources has dropped from $960 million in 2010 to $878 million in 2012.  As a result, legal service programs are turning away more and more people who seek help — 50% or more according to recent studies.  More than 21% of the state’s population now qualifies for LSC-funded civil legal assistance. Resources from LSC and other funders, however, have dropped dramatically. Projected overall funding for the six LSC grantees in Michigan for 2012 is $19.6 million — a decrease of nearly 24% from 2010 funding levels.”  (Op-ed in the Detroit Free Press.)
  • On a related note, LSC’s 8/21 edition of “LSC Upates” covers likely job cuts at grantee organizations, a recent board meeting, promoting access to justice through technology, LSC’s receipt of grant funding to improve data collection(!), and other odds/ends

• 8.23.12 – “A Los Angeles law firm claims in court that Santa Clara University’s pro bono law center is practicing law for poor people illegally.  The Brachfeld Law Group sued Santa Clara University and Scott Maurer, supervising attorney for the university’s Katharine and George Alexander Community Law Center, in Superior Court.  Brachfeld claims that the Community Law Center improperly uses Maurer’s law license to collect attorneys’ fees, which Maurer shares with the university.  (Story from the Courthouse News Service.)

• 8.23.12 – some of Nevada’s share of national mortgage foreclosure class-action settlement funds will go to legal services.  Legislators approved a one-year, $11 million plan.  (There is more for appropriation in future budget cycles.) Of this $11 million, “…nearly $1.2 million will go to Nevada Legal Services and the Legal Aid Center of Southern Nevada to provide assistance to homeowners.” (Article from the Nevada News Bureau.)

• 8.22.12 – when fiscal woes plague nonprofits like Jacksonville Area Legal Aid and the Jacksonville Justice Coalition, which offers support services to crime victims, the entire Jacksonville community suffers.  (Story from the Florida Times Union.)

• 8.21.12 – having grown up in northeast Philadelphia, I can say with certainty that there’s nothing unusual about a guy named Colin working behind a local bar. What is unusual is when he’s an assistant district attorney.  The Philadelphia Inquirer looks at the ends local prosecutors go to when they struggle financially on civil-servant salaries.
  • It’s noteworthy that their public defender counterparts have it worse.  From an Inquirer story in June: “An experienced assistant [DA] in Philadelphia, one with seven years on the job, can make $65,000 yearly.  A public defender with exactly the same experience makes a lot less: $51,500.”

• 8.21.12 – I’m a sucker for a story about a pooch in a law office.  “A new four legged volunteer is working at the Santa Barbara County District Attorney’s office. It’s part of an innovative pilot program, to provide emotional support to crime victims and witnesses.
  Malvern is a two-year-old, highly trained service dog.  District Attorney, Joyce Dudley, has been working to get a dog…into her office as…to provide a calming presence and create a more compassionate environment for victims and witnesses of crimes within Santa Barbara.  Over the next few months he will work in the D.A.’s office.”   (Story from KEYT.)
• 8.21.12 – unforeseen consequences. North Dakota’s economic boom is straining both the civil and criminal legal aid camps. On the civil side, stakeholders are dealing with “an increase in demand for Legal Services lawyers— …requests for help have shot up at least 50 percent in the last year—that coincides with a series of budget cuts. Federal funding, which accounts for about 60 percent of the organization’s annual spending plan, shrank by 5 percent in 2011 and 14 percent in 2012, leaving the agency with a budget of about $1.6 million this year.”  On the criminal side, a state bar task force’s “final report, which the bar association’s board of governors adopted on August 16, draws the bleak conclusion that the widening gap between the indigent defense commission’s resources and the demand for its services has put the agency on the verge of a ‘constitutional crisis’.”   (Story from the American Lawyer.  Ho-hum; the PSJD Blog noted this back in July.)

• 8.20.12 – a short post on the Think Progress blog highlights the financial straits of LSC grantee organizations.

• 8.20.12 – Two national defense attorney groups are asking the Department of Justice to better analyze how proposed criminal laws and crime-fighting strategies might add additional costs to the rest of the justice system [including indigent defense].  The Nat’l. Assoc. of Criminal Defense Lawyers joined the…National Legal Aid and Defender Association in passing a resolution this month that calls for the DOJ to conduct “justice system impact statements” statements on future policy changes. The resolution suggests the DOJ could fund the studies through its criminal justice grant programs.  The American Bar Association adopted a similar resolution more than 20 years ago, but the NACDL and NLADA resolution also asks DOJ for impact statements for the grants it distributes to local police and prosecutors.”  (Story from the Blog of the Legal Times.)

• 8.20.12 – would narrowing the definition of “pro bono” lead to more volunteer lawyers handling poverty law cases and providing direct representation to low-income clients?  The Pro Bono Institute’s Esther Lardent doesn’t think so: “The reality is that choosing pro bono work is often a matter of blending personal interest with client need. Restricting personal choices will not increase poverty law pro bono. It is, rather, far more likely to reduce the total amount of pro bono and the percentage of lawyers who undertake it.  Our goal should be to educate lawyers about the unparalleled need for legal services to the poor. We should put, as our Pro Bono Challenge and American Bar Association Model Rule 6.1 do, a special emphasis on poverty law pro bono (which led to 58 percent of total Challenge law firm hours devoted to pro bono focused on poverty), and review and revamp the processes for referring, accepting and handling pro bono matters for the poor to make them more appealing and more efficiently undertaken.”  (Full piece in the National Law Journal.)

• 8.20.12 – the rise in, and importance of, in-house pro bono in Chicago: “As more people have turned to them for help, Cabrini Green, like an increasing number of Chicago nonprofits offering legal services to low-income people, has sought help from new allies. Though legal nonprofits traditionally have recruited volunteers from the hallways of Chicago’s big law firms, they have begun courting lawyers who work in the legal departments of the region’s corporate giants, including McDonald’s Corp., Exelon Corp., Abbott Laboratories, Caterpillar Inc. and Allstate Corp.”  (Full story from Crain’s Chicago Business.)
• 8.19.12 – with the number and needs of pro se litigants rising, and with the civil legal services community weathering a severe funding storm, much is needed of pro bono advocates throughout the U.S.  (Full story from Associated Press.)

• 8.19.12 – in Texas, Angelina County is set to participate in the Regional Capital Defender Program.  Participation in the “shared-cost, multi-county” program is expected to save money on providing indigent defense services to those facing capital chartges.  (Story from the Lufkin Daily News.)

• 8.19.12 – as many other jurisdictions have done, Michigan goes online to help pro se litigants: “A new legal  Website, www.michiganlegalhelp.0rg offers information and many resources for Michigan residents who need to represent themselves in simple civil legal matters.”  (Story from the Ionia Sentinel-Standard.)
  •  Friend of the PSLawNet Blog Richard Zorza offers thoughts on the site’s look and functionality in this short blog post.

• 8.17.12 – for the aspiring public defenders, here’s a UVA law student’s 10 tips on PD hiring, which she learned while attending the Public Defender Advocacy, Training, and Hiring (PATH) conference run by the Public Defender Service here in DC.  I moderated a PATHY program on PD hiring, and I agree with the blog author that applicants must convey their passion for indigent defense work in their application materials and interviewing.  Public defenders want to know that their employees have a deeply-rooted commitment to defending the constitutional rights of all of their clients, who are not all angels, and who are not all innocent.  Also, applicants must be prepared for hypotheticals during interviews.

• 8.17.12 – Warren County is seeking to request permission from the New York State Mandate Relief Council to contract with lawyers to perform legal services for the indigent rather than having the work handled by its own county office in which the attorneys are county employees. The county estimates this change, if authorized, will save $200,000 annually.  (Story from the Post Star.)

• 8.16.12 – After implementation of the Obama Administration’s “Deferred Action” program for unauthorized immigrants who arrived in this country as youth, Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus R. Vance, Jr., is renewing warnings to those immigrants to guard themselves against scam artists posing as immigration attorneys. He suggests asking questions about the attorney’s background and qualifications and calling the New York State Unified Court System’s Attorney Registration Unit to see if the individual is accredited before hiring them to ensure that they are in fact qualified to perform that kind of work. Many scam artists will take thousands of dollars from immigrants while offering little if anything in return.  (Here’s Mr. Vance’s press release.)

Music!  That Beloit Mindset List has me thinking about the college years.  So let’s travel to the 1990s for Boulder, CO’s own Big Head Todd and the Monsters.  (The man does in fact have a physically big head.  Not sure about his ego.)  “In the Morning” is one of my favorite songs -and it’s a pretty love song, tempo notwithstanding – from the under-appreciated album Stratagem.

I know, I know – this position isn’t technically a job. However, it’s an amazing opportunity for law students and recent graduates interested in international human rights to get their foot in the door. And you’ll get to put “prosecuting war criminals” on your resume:

The Legal & Policy Office of Human Rights Watch (“HRW”) is seeking a volunteer to join the team on the case against Hissène Habré. HRW has been working for 13 years with the victims of Chad’s exiled former President, to bring him to trial. Habré, who lives in exile in Senegal, is accused of responsibility for thousands of political killings and systematic torture when he ruled Chad from 1982 to 1990. At the request of the African Union (AU), Senegal agreed to prosecute Habré in July 2006. Senegal stalled on efforts to try Habré for years, but the new government under President Macky Sall appears to be moving quickly to bring Habré to trial.

On July 24, Senegal and the AU announced a landmark agreement to create “Extraordinary African Chambers” with African judges in the Senegalese justice system to begin pre-trial investigations in October. Just days earlier, on July 20, the International Court of Justice ruled that Senegal had violated its legal obligations under the Torture Convention and ordered Senegal to bring Habré to justice “without further delay,” either by prosecuting him in Senegal or extraditing him. Please visit www.hrw.org/en/habre-case (English) or www.hrw.org/fr/habre-case (French) for more information.

The volunteer project includes conducting legal research on international and Senegalese criminal law issues, liaising with the victims’ legal team and HRW’s partners in Senegal and Chad, and supporting advocacy efforts with the Senegalese government and international donors. The volunteer will be supervised by HRW’s Counsel.

This position will be located in Dakar, Senegal. Ideally, it will last for 6 months starting in September or October of 2012. Human Rights Watch is unable to offer relocation assistance, but don’t let that stop you from applying – PSLawNet.org has a whole page of resources for students interested in international law, including how to obtain funding for unpaid opportunities.

For more information, check out the full listing at PSLawNet.org (log-in required).

The ACLU’s Center for Justice is looking for a staff attorney to work in either Washington D.C. or New York City on juvenile justice reform.

The ACLU’s Center for Justice seeks to transform the U.S. criminal justice system into one that views incarceration as an option of last – not first – resort. The Center works to ensure that our criminal justice system is effective, fair, and free of racial bias; that conditions of confinement are humane and constitutional; and that the death penalty is rejected as a legitimate form of punishment. The Center comprises the Criminal Law Reform Project, the National Prison Project and the Capital Punishment Project, as well as affiliated staff from our Washington Legislative Office and Advocacy and Communications Departments.

The Center for Justice seeks a Staff Counsel to work closely with other parts of the Center and organization to shape and advance its juvenile justice reform work as part of our Initiative to End Overincarceration. Priority areas of work will include reform of local and state policies that will lead to a reduction of youth incarceration rates in the juvenile justice system; minimizing and making more constructive the contact youth have with the adult criminal justice system; and eliminating the disproportionate contact youth of color have with the juvenile justice system. The Staff Counsel will be part of an integrated team that includes litigators, policy counsel and strategists, federal lobbyists, and communications specialists, and will work closely with ACLU affiliates across the country.

Responsibilities include, but are not limited to, creating strategic work plans and serving as a public spokesperson for the advancement of juvenile justice reform. Sounds perfect for you? Check out the full job post at PSLawNet.org (log-in required).

By: Ashley Matthews

Recently, the University of Virginia School of Law blogged a few invaluable tips from this year’s Public Defender Advocacy, Hiring and Training Conference (PATH), sponsored by the Public Defender Service of D.C. In a nutshell, passion pays off – you have to be able to show and explain just how ready you are to enter the field of indigent defense.

In a larger nutshell, here are the offered tips:

1. Know your personal motivation for being a public defender, because this will sustain your career.

2. Be realistic, but passionate, about why you want to be a public defender.

3. Convey that you are a “true believer” in your cover letter.

4. Since candidates start looking the same on paper, your passion and motivation should stand out.

5. If you’ve worked in prosecution or domestic violence, don’t be scared to address it.

6. Speak Spanish! If you don’t speak Spanish, learn Spanish! This increases your chances of employment.

7. Bring out the fact that you are client-centered in your interview.

8. Look at hypothetical questions from multiple angles.

9. When asked a hypothetical question, remember that public defender offices are paying attention to your instincts.

10. When role-playing, listen to your “client” and be mindful of your body language.

Click here to read the whole blog post!

By: Ashley Matthews

Congratulations, law school grads – you did it! After 3 years of casebooks, study groups, outlines, and hornbooks, it’s finally over.

But now, it’s the moment we’ve all been dreading/ignoring: student loan repayment. As the end of the grace period creeps onto our calendars, now is the best time to prepare. It’s no secret that student loan debt can hurt your economic status in a major way. And on a public interest salary, repaying student loans can be downright crippling. (Just ask a few of the lawyers recently profiled by the Philadelphia Inquirer – one of whom was forced by debt to move back home with parents at the tender age of 49.)

The good news is that you are not alone. Student loan expert Heather Jarvis, a former public interest attorney, is committed to reducing the financial barriers to practicing our favorite kind of law here at PSLawNet.  So before you have a severe panic attack at the thought of being shackled to your loans forever, take a look at these pointers from a recent blog post Jarvis wrote about taking the first baby steps to deal with our giant loans:

1. “Figure out which loans you have.” Sounds simple, right? Maybe for some, but many law students have multiple loans from different lenders. Some loans may even come from private lenders.

2. “Decide which consolidation works for you.” Loan consolidation is key to Public Interest Loan Forgiveness. If you have a FFEL loan, things may get a bit tricky.

3. “Choose a repayment plan.” This sounds simple too, right? Once again, it may be for some people – but for others, crafting the right plan involves weighing multiple options.

For more important information and links, check out the full blog post at Jarvis’ website, www.askheatherjarvis.com. This site is a wealth of information about student loans, so it would be smart to educate yourself well before you walk across the stage at law school graduation. The better prepared we are to handle student loan debt, the more we are able to commit ourselves to what matters most: using our law degree to help others in need.