Over at Law.com, Valerie Fontaine and Roberta Kass just wrapped up a 13-part series on interview tips and advice. While the advice is generally geared towards private-sector interviews, some of the tips are pretty universal. This last entry (on thank you notes) has links at the bottom to the previous 12 entries as well.

Law Students: Save the date!  On Wednesday, April 14^th at 3:00pm EDT, NALP and the National Legal Aid & Defender Association (NLADA) are presenting “Top Ten Tips for a Successful Summer Internship in a Public Interest Office…and What to Avoid.”  This free webinar will help law students make the most of their summer experiences in civil legal services organizations and public defenders’ offices by offering concrete tips from both public interest attorneys with extensive experience in supervising law students and law school public interest advisors who counsel students on maximizing professional development opportunities.  The webinar will be led by Jennifer Thomas, Director of Legal Recruiting for the D.C. Public Defender Service, and Phyllis Holmen, Executive Director of the Georgia Legal Services Program.   

The webinar will be offered live on April 14th and archived for later viewing.  All students and law school career professionals who are interested in participating on April 14th should e-mail Kevin Mills, Director of Membership at NLADA at membership@nlada.org, and provide your full name, e-mail address, and a phone number.  Please type “Student Webinar” in the email’s subject line.

The end of the semester is approaching, but we know that many law students are in the thick of the job search – for both summer and postgraduate positions.  Needless to say, strong interviewing is a key to landing a job.  We figured now is a good time to remind our readers about two resources which offer concrete public-interest interviewing tips:

1. PSLawNet’s “Interviewing Tips for Postgraduate Public Interest Jobs” offers a list of 9 concise tips to ensure that you become the best job candidate that you can be at the all-important time when you meet a prospective employer face to face.  We can not emphasize enough the value of doing mock interviews, which your career services office should be able to arrange.  Even for those of you who consider yourselves to be strong interviewers, there is simply no downside to doing mock interviews.  You work out the kinks, and you’re likely to be asked a question in a mock interview that will come up again in a real interview.  Having to think that question through in the mock interview will allow you to hit a home run when it actually matters.
2. Harvard Law School’s Office of Public Interest Advising offers some terrific advice on interviewing on this web page, including suggestions about questions for you to ask interviewers.  This is much more important than you may think.  Most interviewers want to have a conversation, not to conduct an interrogation.  And conversations, of course, are two-way streets.  So you have to be prepared to engage.

Tom Fox of the Partnership for Public Service has partnered with the Washington Post to launch a new blog titled “The Federal Coach.” The blog’s focus is leadership development in federal employment, but it’s also a great resource if you want to learn more about different kinds of federal jobs, as Fox conducts interviews with people from a variety of agencies. Best of all, on Fridays Fox will respond to reader questions, so get over there and take advantage of this great new resource!

last month, Seattle University School of Law, University of Washington School of Law, and Gonzaga University School of Law co-hosted a symposium on civil legal representation and access to justice issues. If you couldn’t make it to Seattle for the symposium, never fear – the materials are now available online, and provide some great information.  Additionally, we’ve blogged here about the rise of Access to Justice commissions as well as the “civil Gideon” movement. And if you still want more reading material, check out the National Coalition for the Civil Right to Counsel – they have a resource page with links to articles, state statutes, research, news, and more.

Heather at Equal Justice Works blogged today about the importance of double-checking your IBR payment amounts. By law, those payments should be determined by your Adjusted Gross Income, but some lenders have been using gross wages instead, leading to higher payments. She provides links to several IBR calculators you can use to make sure your payments are correct.

If you don’t have a job with benefits lined up after graduation, you may be worried about your health insurance status, particularly if you have insurance through your school (or another situation that requires you to be a full-time student). Many schools are extending their insurance benefits for six months to a year after graduation to help tide students over while they find a job – you should check with your student health office. Another option is purchase health insurance through the ABA Law Student Division (which does have a $25 annual membership fee), which offers an extension of that coverage for a year past your law school graduation date. If you’re graduating this May, be aware that the deadline for enrollment to ensure continuous coverage is May 1, 2010.

Update: In order to extend coverage under the ABA student policy, you must attend 31 days of classes after you purchase the insurance – so if you’re planning on doing this make sure you will have at least a month of  classes left before finals! The relevant language from the policy, under “Eligibility,” is this: “Students must actively attend classes for at least the first 31 days after the date for which coverage is purchased.”

For our final poll of the week (if you missed Part 1 or Part 2, go back to them now!), we’d like to know how often you use our primary site and service, PSLawNet. Just as a reminder, if you are a student or alumni of one of our subscriber schools, you are entitled to free use of the site, and other law students or lawyers can email us to inquire about an individual subscription.

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PSLawNet is in the business of helping public-service minded law students and lawyers to achieve their career goals.  Federal government career pathways have always been popular among both newly minted and experienced attorneys, but never more so than during the recession, when Uncle Sam was seen as maintaining one of the legal industry’s (relatively) safe employment harbors.  

Traditionally, one of the most confusing obstacles on the federal career path has been the highly bureaucratic application process.  In particular, many applicants find the the Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities (KSA) statement that is required for many federal positions to be loathsome.  Well, for all of those interested in making a career in federal service, here’s some exciting news from the Office of Personnel Management’s (OPM) director, as reported by the Government Executive:

The much-maligned essays on federal job applications known as knowledge, skills and abilities statements could be eliminated from the hiring process by April, Office of Personnel Management Director John Berry said on Tuesday.

Berry said he expects to send President Obama a plan next week outlining immediate hiring reforms, including shifting from KSAs on government applications to a résumé-based system. Obama could sign an executive order implementing the changes as early as April, the OPM chief said during the Federal Managers Association’s annual convention in Arlington, Va.

“We’ll get the federal system off of its island of KSAs, and onto the résumé base that the rest of the country is on,” Berry said. Federal job applicants long have complained that KSAs are cumbersome and inflexible.

Berry also outlined a series of proposed changes to management processes.  A note of caution on the KSAs: They refuse to die easily.  This is not the first time that there’s been talk of doing away with them.  Long-time public interest career advisors at law schools have told us that speculation about the KSAs’ demise seems to circulate every few years.  Nevertheless, support at the highest levels of federal personnel management for vanquishing them once and for all bodes well. 

KSAs or no KSAs, be sure to take advantage of PSLawNet’s extensive federal career resources.   

The National Jurist reports that, largely on account of expanding faculty sizes, tuition at both private and public law schools has risen sharply. 

Tuition increased by 74 percent at private schools and a 102 percent at public institutions from 1998 to 2008.

A Cause: according to the story, U.S. News and World Report rankings are a big driver.  Schools bolster their faculty ranks in order to promote scholarship and lower student-to-professor ratios.

An Effect: the PSLawNet Blog has posted before about how rapidly rising tuitions lead to more borrowing by students, making lower-paying public interest careers less viable options.  Those students who are committed to pursuing public service career paths and who are paying their own way must be knowledgeable, savvy and prudent in managing their borrowing and plugging into loan repayment options.

• Here’s a post where we examine the problem of debt loads weighing upon public interest attorneys, and offer some solutions.
• Here’s a post about the College Cost Reduction & Access Act’s Income Based Repayment (IBR) program, and tax consequences for married couples.