The Chesapeake Bay Foundation seeks a Staff Attorney in its Philip Merrill Environmental Center headquarters office located in Annapolis, Maryland.

The Chesapeake Bay Foundation (CBF) is the largest regional non-profit conservation organization working solely to save the Bay. Established in 1967, CBF has a staff of approximately 185 employees working in offices in Annapolis and Salisbury, Maryland; Richmond and Norfolk, Virginia; Harrisburg, Pennsylvania; and Washington, D.C., and in 17 field education program locations.

CBF seeks to employ strategic litigation to reduce nutrient and toxic pollution to the Chesapeake Bay. The Staff Attorney will undertake legal and factual research to develop and support proposed and pending litigation designed to aid in Bay restoration.

The position requires an Attorney who is able to handle complex litigation from inception to trial, as well as be responsible for day to day case management. The staff attorney will report directly to the Litigation Vice President.

For more information about CBF and to apply, see the listing at PSLawNet.

The Georgia Law Center for the Homeless is looking for a staff attorney to join in providing legal services to Atlanta’s most vulnerable populations. GLC serves its clients in a holistic manner, helping them move toward self-sufficiency.

The staff attorney will represent clients in civil legal proceedings, primarily in family law, housing law and public benefits. Also, the attorney will conduct outreach to area shelters and homeless service providers.

If you’re a member of the Georgia bar, check out the complete listing at PSLawNet!

The Middle District of Florida (located in Jacksonville, Florida) is looking for a judicial law clerk to research issues of law, draft briefs and opinions, attends trials and other court proceedings, and act as an law advisor to the Honorable Timothy J. Corrigan, United States District Judge.

Judge Corrigan hears all kinds of cases, civil and criminal, often involving novel issues of law.

If you’re looking for warm winters and are interested in a legal career in the government, check out the listing at PSLawNet!

Consumers Union, the nonprofit publisher of Consumer Reports® and ConsumerReports.org®, is looking for a law school graduate or graduate-level policy analyst to work for two years as the Esther Peterson Fellow in its Washington D.C. Office.

The Esther Peterson Fellow will receive hands-on experience and training in advocacy on consumer issues at the federal legislative and executive branch level.

Responsibilities include legal research and writing, bill analysis, lobbying Congress and administrative agencies, and filing petitions at administrative agencies.

If you’re committed to social and economic justice, learn how to apply at PSLawNet!

The Innocence Project is a nonprofit pro bono legal clinic founded in 1992 by Prof. Barry Scheck and civil rights lawyer Peter Neufeld at the Cardozo School of Law/Yeshiva University. Innocence Project is a national litigation and public policy organization dedicated to exonerating wrongfully convicted people through DNA testing and reforming the criminal justice system to avoid future injustice.

The Innocence Project has established the position of Joseph Flom Special Counsel, a new senior-level staff position that will significantly increase the clinic’s capacity to address the leading causes of wrongful convictions through strategic litigation. This is a new capacity being developed at the Innocence Project. We are seeking candidates with established litigation and leadership skills, necessary for structuring and implementing our strategic litigation reform work.

The Joseph Flom Special Counsel will initially identify and litigate cases.  In the course of the first four years, the Special Counsel will develop and lead a small cadre of strategic litigators that will enable the Innocence Project to increase its ability to free the innocent and reform the criminal justice system.

In the first two years, the strategic litigation will focus on supporting the organization’s efforts to reform forensic sciences to make them more scientific.  Over time, the Special Counsel will evolve the organization’s capacity to shape strategic litigation efforts on the leading causes of wrongful conviction, including eyewitness misidentification, false confessions, and incentivized witness testimony.

The Innocence Project’s strategic litigation will serve three primary purposes:  1)  to support legislative and policy reform efforts; 2) to change the ways that courts consider evidence that has historically brought about wrongful convictions; and 3) to provide support to litigators across the country who litigate post-conviction claims of innocence in strategically chosen cases.

If you’re interested in working with the Innocence Project to advance reform in criminal justice policies, find out how to apply at PSLawNet!

By: Steve Grumm

I came across a good Washington Post piece about how email can exert unwarranted control over our workday (and our mindset) by distracting us and sidetracking our planned work tasks.  The author, Chris Anderson, writes about beginning his day by reading three emails, the subjects of which, while hardly spam, were also hardly on his radar screen when he logged in:

These e-mails have nothing in common — except for the fact that none of their issues had been on my agenda that morning. I don’t even know one of the senders. But although it took only a few minutes to read these notes, I suddenly feel pressure to develop coherent thoughts on complex questions regarding someone else’s business enterprise, office politics and world peace.

It’s barely 8 a.m., and I’m already drowning in e-mail. In the blink of an eye, my day’s priorities have been commandeered. And more missives keep pouring in, including tweets, Google Plus notifications, Facebook status updates and instant messages. It’s essentially a fire hose of information all day long….

This rings true to me.  And I have just enough of a pleaser living inside me that I can too easily drop a time-sensitive, involved project to think ten minutes about a completely random email inquiry from someone I haven’t spoken with in months.

Anderson’s solution: we should consider the principles of the Email Charter – 10 Rules to Reverse the Email Spiral.  Give it  a read…

by Kristen Pavón

It’s pretty common for hiring managers to conduct initial screening interviews via phone these days because it saves on time and money for both the interviewer and interviewee.

This is your first opportunity to make a good impression and to get one step closer to landing the job. Here are a few tips I’ve learned along the way.

1. Get serious.

Treat this interview as seriously as you would an in-person interview. You need to be just as prepared — research the organization, read some bios, do a google news search for the organization (more on this in a second).

2. Get dressed.

Sure, you’ll probably be in your house/apartment/room, but you’ll feel (and then act) the part if you get out of your PJs and into some business casual wear.

3. Find a Space.

Pick a place where you know your cell phone gets strong signal (unless you still have a landline phone) and create your space. Lay out your notepad, laptop, resume and anything else you might need for the interview. Also, make sure alarms are off, silence your phone once your interview has started, and the dogs are far, far away.

4. Get to Googling.

Don’t skip the Google search. Learn from my mistake. In an interview for a public service position, one of the interviewers asked me what news I had read about the agency recently. Although I had searched the website and read some press releases from the site, I did not google news search the agency!

5. Bring a Cheat Sheet.

Here’s one upside to having a phone interview — you can bring notes. Because a lot of employers like to ask questions based on your past experiences, I make notes on my resume about each of my previous positions. I note anyone I supervised, special projects that I handled that demonstrate leadership or any client work that was memorable. Also, I write the phonetic spelling of my interviewer — just in case.

How do you prepare for phone interviews?

Business and Professional People for the Public Interest (BPI), a Chicago-based public interest law and policy center that addresses compelling issues of social justice and quality of life in the Chicago region, is hiring interns for the summer of 2012.

BPI’s staff of lawyers and policy specialists works to increase the availability of affordable housing for working families, transform segregated public housing, improve Chicago’s public schools, and help restore open, honest, responsible, and accountable government in our state using a wide variety of approaches, including legal and policy research, advocacy, organizing, litigation and collaboration with non-profit, business, community and governmental organizations.
Interns work closely with our staff on important public interest projects in BPI’s program groups: affordable housing, public housing, public education, and political reform.

Interns receive excellent supervision and mentorship, the opportunity to contribute directly to solving pressing policy issues, and the chance to learn more about Chicago’s ever growing public interest community.

1Ls, 2Ls, and 3Ls are encouraged to apply. BPI is frequently able to offer summer funding assistance to legal interns through the Public Interest Law Initiative (PILI) program. PILI provides funding for law students to work at various public interest legal organizations in Chicago.

To apply or learn more about the position, see the listing at PSLawNet!

Founded in 1991, Pace Women’s Justice Center was the first academic legal center in the country devoted to training attorneys and others on domestic violence issues. The Center’s mission is to end abuse by providing innovative legal programs including direct legal representation for victims and survivors of domestic violence and elder abuse, training, community education and outreach, service coordination, and information and referrals.

Today, with a staff of 17 and over 6,700 hours contributed annually by pro-bono attorneys, volunteers, and law students, the Center provides direct legal services to over 2,800 victims and survivors of domestic violence and elder abuse each year.

PWJC is looking for a Pro Bono Coordinator who is committed to the Center’s mission and work. The Pro Bono Coordinator will work closely with the Executive Director, Deputy Director and the management team to coordinate the PWJC Pro Bono Project, including developing and overseeing both new and existing pro bono projects, building relationships and recruiting volunteers from law firms, in-house legal departments, and the community, as well as training, managing and supervising the volunteers and supervising substantive work.

If you’re interested in applying, check out the listing at PSLawNet!

by Kristen Pavón

Career Builder featured a great article outlining 8 tips to battle job-search fatigue. I definitely could have used this list a year ago! Job searching is a ridiculously daunting task and I know it can be difficult to keep your eye on the prize.

I’m going to highlight a few of their tips and add a few public-interest law related ones of my own (mainly things I used to get through the job search period while keeping my sanity).

1. Consider your job search a full-time job.

Yes, yes and yes. If you’re unemployed, job searching cannot be something you do randomly when the urge arises. Like lots of things in life, you’ll get out of job searching what you put in. The more time and effort you dedicate to landing a job, the more likely you’ll actually get one.

2. Explore how social media, such as Facebook, Twitter, a personal blog and LinkedIn, can help your job search.

You can use these platforms as methods to either meet prospective employers or showcase skills or past accomplishments.

3. Craft a formal plan.

This tip is critical. I had a pretty good method, if I do say so myself. I set up a color-coded spreadsheet with job titles, organizations, application instructions, location, contact information, deadlines and the date I applied. Jobs I needed to apply to were highlighted in green, jobs I had already applied to were highlighted in red, and jobs that didn’t work out (read: rejected!) were in gloomy gray.

4. Set tangible (realistic) goals.

Write down the number of jobs you will apply for each day. Write down the number of jobs you will add to your queue each day.

5. Volunteer.

I know searching for and applying to jobs 8 hours a day can suck the life out of you and even leave you feeling low on the self-esteem meter. So, schedule a specific chunk of time to search for jobs and leave some time to volunteer for your favorite legal services organization in the area.

This will not only get you out of the house, but it will also be a great bullet on your résumé and more likely than not, you’ll meet some interesting people that may lead you to a job!

6. Go out and meet people.

Look up your local bar association and check out their events calendar. Make it to next networking event, bring a stack of business cards, and get to work!

Feeling awkward about it? Keep in mind lawyers know how to network, they expect it and they want to introduce you to other lawyers who may be able to help you out.

Still not feeling it? Well, I’m a success story. I went to a networking event in the D.C. area for public interest attorneys and law students, and I met two people. I had a great chat with one over coffee a few weeks later, which led me to meet another attorney who I set up a volunteering schedule with before landing a job. The other attorney I met at the event is now my colleague at work. Networking works.

7. Set up PSLawNet alerts!

Ok, yes. This tip is a bit self-serving but I actually used these during law school and during my job search. Through PSLawNet, you can get daily or weekly emails with job opportunities that fit your customized criteria. It’s too easy not to use. Check it out at PSLawNet.

I hope these tips help you. You can read all of Career Builder’s tips here.

Do you have any other tips to overcome job-search fatigue? What do you do to keep your head in the game? Post your own tips below!