Today’s Expert Opinion column, on five concrete ways to strengthen your professional network this summer, comes to us from Alisa Rosales. Alisa is the Associate Director of Public Service Law at DePaul University College of Law in Chicago, where she specializes in public interest career advising and program development. Nationally, she is a member of the NALP PSLawNet Advisory Board and serves as NALP Public Service Section Chair.  Locally, Alisa developed and served as inaugural Chair of the Public Interest Committee for the Chicago Area Law School Consortium. She is an alumna of the University of Nebraska.

Check out Alisa’s 5 Networking Tips after the jump!

This week’s Expert Opinion, on how to maximize your summer internship experience comes to us courtesy of Deb Ellis, Assistant Dean for Public Service at NYU School of Law, where she directs the Public Interest Law Center (PILC) and the Root-Tilden-Kern Scholarship Program and oversees the Judicial Clerkship Office. Prior to heading PILC, Deb had a varied public interest career, including serving as Legal Director of the NOW Legal Defense and Education Fund, where in 1992 she argued Bray v. Alexandria Women’s Health Clinic before the U.S. Supreme Court. She also served as Legal Director of the ACLU of New Jersey, and as a Staff Attorney at the ACLU Women’s Rights Project, and at the Southern Poverty Law Center. Deb graduated from Yale College and from NYU Law where she was a Root-Tilden-Kern Scholar. She clerked for the late Judge Frank M. Johnson, Jr., of the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals, in Montgomery, Alabama.

Exams are over and you’ve begun your public interest internship!  How can you be the kind of intern that employers will rave about and hopefully want to hire as an attorney someday?

From my perspective as both a public interest practitioner and now a law school counselor, I have developed eight tips based on what I look for when I hire:  individuals who take initiative — who can figure out what needs to be done on their cases and projects.  In short, I look for people who are proactive.

Sometimes students find that it takes a change of perspective to be proactive after a year spent in classrooms, where their role is more passive. But in the work world it is essential to take responsibility for your own learning.  If you make that effort  — to think through your priorities, contribute as much as you can to your employer, and be a team player – you will learn the most, and have the most fun, too.

Read Deb’s 8 Tips after the break!

Interested in a federal government career?  The Office of the General Counsel at DHS has asked us to circulate information about their:

1. 2011 Honors Program for immediate/recent law grads: Summary and Info Sheet
2. 2011 Summer Law Intern Program (SLIP) for next summer’s rising 2 and 3Ls: Summary and Info Sheet

For a wealth of resources on federal careers, remember to visit PSLawNet’s Federal Government Resources Page.

This is about the time of year that rising 3Ls start thinking seriously about crafting proposals for postgraduate, public-interest fellowships.  Project-based fellowships, like the ones offered by Equal Justice Works and the Skadden Fellowship Foundation, involve a law student submitting a proposal to the funding agency at the beginning of the Fall, 3L semester.  In the case of Equal Justice Works, year 2011 fellowship proposal applications will be available on July 5 and are due in on September 15, 2010.  As for Skadden, the applications are now available here and are due in on October 4, 2010.

Project-based fellowships are coveted, and competition for them is fierce.  Hundreds of public-interest minded law students vie for relatively few positions.  For instance, at Equal Justice Works, 43 Class-of-2010 graduates were awarded fellowships.  Skadden awarded 27 fellowships to Class-of-2010 grads, down from 36 in 2008.

This is all the more reason to craft the strongest proposal possible.  Take advantage of PSLawNet’s tip-sheet, Project-based Fellowship Applications: Take Cues from Those Who Know.  Among other advice offered in this handout:

• Create Your Own Fellowship Team: identify people who can help you with the application process, including career services/public interest advisors and faculty or alumni who received fellowships and/or served on fellowship selection committees.
• Build a Relationship with Your Would-be Host Organization: A relationship with your would-be host is a vital part of the successful fellowship application (and the successful fellowship). It’s best to apply with an organization that you have previously worked for. But if that is not possible, it is wise to still propose a project that relates to work you have done, so that you can demonstrate that you have the knowledge, skills, and passion to do the job.
• Focus on the Clients: It’s about the clients, not about you and your career goals. Make sure to emphasize how your project makes an impact and who the beneficiaries of your project are. Can you get client input for the proposal?
• Do Not Take Yourself out of the Proposal Driver’s Seat: A senior program manager at a funding organization notes, “Sometimes when I read an application…it reads like the host organization supervisor thought up a project and then found a fellow to fit the bill rather than a personal passion coming through in the project description.” Funders wish to support a specific project driven by a fellow, not a new staff attorney position for the host organization.
• Do Not Be Vague or Unrealistic: Avoid making the project proposal excessively grand, including too many ideas (i.e. the kitchen sink). While the goal is typically for the project to sustain itself after the fellowship term ends, the fellow should still specifically map out realistic objectives to be achieved during their term. (Note: The opposite can happen too when the application is too narrow and not capable of sustaining itself so that the reader cannot see it lasting two years and beyond.)

For additional tips and more general information, see PSLawNet’s Postgraduate Fellowships Information & Resources Page.

Please remember, too, that project-based fellowships are not the only game in town.  Organization-based fellowships, which don’t involve a third-party funder in the application process, are much more plentiful and can provide equal opportunities in terms of gaining experience and developing professionally. Again, use PSLawNet’s Postgraduate Fellowships Information & Resources Page and search the hundreds of fellowship (project- and organization-based) listings in PSLawNet’s opportunities database.  We are doing our annual update of fellowships listings now, so if you see one that’s out of date, just check back in a few weeks or get in touch with the employer/host organization directly.

Good luck!

The Equal Justice Works Conference and Career Fair will take place in the Washington, DC area on October 22 and 23.  Registration is now open for employers.  From their website:

The Equal Justice Works Career Fair is the only event where you will find more than 1,000 students from 200 national law schools in one room. Our career fair provides the opportunity to do onsite interviewing as well as informal “table talks” with the students.

We invite organizations and agencies that value public service to attend. Please join other government agencies, nonprofit organizations, legal services providers and law firms from across the country to fill your internship/externship and staffing needs.

 Go here for more details and for a link to the registration page.

We’re a little behind.  The May, 2010 edition of the ABA Law Student Division’s Student Lawyer magazine just wound its way to our desk.  Here’s the magazine’s electronic home (some content is password protected, accessible to Law Student Division members and other subscribers).

The lead featured article is focused on law student pro bono.  “Don’t Wait to Work Pro Bono,” written by Prof. Mark E. Wojcik of the John Marshall Law School in Chicago, explains how pro bono fits into the rubric of attorneys’ ethical obligations, reviews some of the motivations for doing pro bono (which run from the entirely altruistic to the altruistic-but-also-self-serving), and explores the benefits that pro bono service offers.  The piece also offers resources for law students who wish to engage in pro bono service while in school, and reviews how to avoid “unauthorized practice of law” problems in performing pro bono before becoming a licensed attorney.

Some noteworthy info about law school pro bono programs (from the article):

• 36 ABA-accredited schools have pro bono or public service graduation requirements;
• 111 ABA-accredited schools have an administratively supported pro bono program

On a related note, last week the PSLawNet Blog highlighted a highly successful pro bono collaboration between the University of Arizona James E. Rogers College of Law and Southern Arizona Legal Aid.

Due to the overwhelming response to Sara Rakita’s excellent blog post on how to get a job with the United Nations and other IGOs, we asked her to turn it into a hard-copy document which we can permanently host on the PSLawNet site. You can access it on our International Resources page, along with several other great resources on finding international jobs and internships.

Just a reminder to law school career services professionals, pro bono program administrators, and other interested parties that the Consortium for the Advancement of Public Service in Law Schools (CAPSILS) makes its Law School Public Service Resource Handbook freely available for downloading.  The Handbook is geared specifically as a resource for those who are new to public interest career counseling and pro bono administration.  It offers useful tips from more experienced professionals and points newer professionals to the many resources that are available to them through the ABA, AALS, Equal Justice Works, NALP, PSLawNet, and elsewhere.

CAPSILS’ members are:

• The American Bar Association Standing Committee on Pro Bono and Public Service and the ABA Center for Pro Bono
• The Pro Bono and Public Service Opportunities Section of the Association of American Law Schools (AALS)
• Equal Justice Works, and
• NALP (National Association for Law Placement) and NALP’s PSLawNet website.

CAPSILS has been formed to foster dialogue and collaboration among national participants in the law school pro bono and public interest arenas. Its members, individually and through joint undertakings, encourage law school-related pro bono policy and program development and provide services to law schools and students seeking pro bono and public interest opportunities, resources and support. We are dedicated to effectively promoting opportunities for public-interest minded law students and lawyers, and to efficiently supporting the work of law schools and public interest law organizations.  We hope you find the Handbook useful!

The PSLawNet Blog recently participated in a conference program exploring innovative pro bono models that involve collaboration between civil legal services providers and law students.  We were joined on the panel by Randi Burnett, the Southern Arizona Legal Aid (SALA) staff attorney who coordinates law student pro bono work via SALA’s Volunteer Lawyers Program (VLP).  Randi and her colleagues have had extraordinary success in partnering with the University of Arizona James E. Rogers College of Law to provide a variety of pro bono opportunities to law students on clinic projects ranging from bankruptcy to guardianship to domestic relations.  We asked Randi if she would provide some background on how the collaboration works, and she has kindly offered us a lot of detail which we’re happy to share with our readers.  Maybe this model – which provides experiential learning for law students and serves the increasing numbers of low-income clients in need – could take root elsewhere.  Here is our exchange with Randi:

Randi, tell us generally about how you engage law students with pro bono opportunities, and what specific options are available to them?

The VLP’s Student Advocate Program was designed to involve local law students in our community.  The use of law student volunteers allows the VLP to provide legal assistance to a greater number of residents in need of legal assistance.  In addition, one of the primary goals of the student program is to instill a deep commitment to pro bono work in the next generation of lawyers.  With this goal in mind, the VLP provides several unique volunteer opportunities to students through the Minor Guardianship Clinic, Bankruptcy Reaffirmation Clinic, Domestic Relations Clinic, and Service Center Clinic.  Each of these clinics offers face-to-face contact with clients, the chance to work closely with different attorneys, and provide a great deal of practical experience.  In addition, two of the clinics provide law student volunteers with the opportunity to obtain courtroom experience as described below.

• Minor Guardianship Clinic: under the supervision of an attorney, law students meet with unrepresented clients prior to the client’s guardianship appointment hearing.  The law student explains the proceedings and checks to ensure that the client has complied with legal notice requirements to the parents.  The law student then appears as a “friend of the Court” during the client’s appointment hearing.  This Clinic is the only collaborative court project of its kind in Arizona that provides actual courtroom experience to first year law students.
• Bankruptcy Reaffirmation Clinic: Volunteer attorneys and law students meet with unrepresented clients who are in the process of obtaining a Chapter 7 bankruptcy.  Our volunteers meet with the client before the client’s reaffirmation hearing and review the reaffirmation agreement presented to the client by their creditor.  The purpose is to make sure that the client understands the pros and cons of reaffirming any debt during the bankruptcy process.  Again, the law student has an opportunity to appear in court as a “friend of the Court.”
• Domestic Relations Clinic: This clinic provides law students with an opportunity to meet with self-represented litigants involved in a family law matter while supervised by an attorney.  Volunteers assist clients in completing basic divorce and paternity forms, help clients prepare to represent themselves at trial, explain disclosure and discovery rule compliance, and draft motions for clients.  Approximately 45% of the clients seen in this clinic are victims of domestic violence.
• Service Center Clinic:  This clinic takes place within the law library about the Pima County Superior Court and is very similar to our Domestic Relations Clinic.  Law students are supervised by attorneys and assist unrepresented litigants with their family law issues.  In addition to all the issues seen in the Domestic Relations Clinic, volunteers also assist with custody and parenting time modifications, relocation issues, child support issues, and grandparent visitation issues.  This program provides a wonderful, hands-on experience for law students and an opportunity to apply concepts learned in the classroom to a real world setting.

Click through to learn about how the program is administered, and about the benefits that law students receive from working directly with clients in need

A new loan repayment assistance program was just announced from the U.S. Department of Education for attorneys working in civil legal services. Equal Justice Works has all the info you need, but here’s a summary quote from them to get you started:

A new loan repayment assistance program for civil legal aid attorneys is going to become available soon. The Civil Legal Assistance Attorney Student Loan Repayment Program (CLAAP) will repay a portion of eligible federal student loan debt for civil legal assistance attorneys who are employed full-time. The attorneys will need to remain employed for three years or pay the assistance back. An attorney may be awarded up to $6,000 in repayment assistance in 2010 (actually received in 2011), and may be prioritized to receive assistance in future years if Congress continues to fund the program. An attorney may receive a lifetime maximum of $40,000 in assistance.