Earlier this week, Todd Belcore, a 3L at Northwestern who will begin an Equal Justice Works Fellowship later this year, posted the final of three installments in our series on the importance of public-interest minded law students developing leadership skills.  The series also featured posts from Emily Benfer, who is teaching a class on public interest leadership at the Georgetown University Law Center, and Ericka Hines, a program manager at Equal Justice Works.

The idea for this series came about when I was speaking with a legal services organization about best practices in composing public-interest fellowship grant proposals with graduating law students.  One of the themes that recurred in our conversation is that the goal of fellowship programs like Skadden and Equal Justice Works is to cultivate the next generation of public interest leaders, not just the next generation of public interest lawyers.  But leadership development opportunities are not important just for the small cadre of grads who are awarded fellowship grants.  All law students on public interest career paths should cultivate a broad array of advocacy skills – knowing how to engage client communities, working with the media, and building advocacy coalitions, among others – in order to make themselves most marketable to employers and to succeed as lawyers. 

Here’s an article I contributed to the current NALP Bulletin magazine (the audience of which is primarily legal career professionals), which expands on this topic and links to a handful of resources that I hope may be helpful to those students and junior attorneys who are interested in developing leadership skills.   (The resources include tips on developing relationships with reporters, “messaging” through the media, and delivering effective legislative testimony.)

– Steve Grumm       

[Editor’s Note: this is the final installment in our three-part series on the importance of public-interest minded law students and junior attorneys developing leadership skills.  In parts one and two, we heard from public interest attorneys who work on a daily basis to help the next generation of advocates cultivate those skills.   Today, we hear from Todd Belcore,  a third-year law student at Northwestern who has worked tirelessly to become a well-rounded public interest advocate and who has already emerged as a humble and dedicated leader among his peers.] 

Todd Belcore is a third-year law student at the Northwestern University School of Law.  He is the president of the Student Bar Association, and was awarded the 2009 PSLawNet Pro Bono Publico Award in recognition of his outstanding commitment to promoting public service in his law school community.  After graduation, Todd will serve as an Equal Justice Works Fellow with the Sargent Shriver National Center on Poverty Law.   

Six Tips for Developing Leadership Skills in Law School  

1. Listen.  Leaders help others to solve problems.  As a leader you must be able to discern the needs and interest of your audience – whether it’s clients, coworkers, or others – as quickly as possible. The good news is that people usually tell you what their needs and interests are. The bad news is that we advocates are sometimes too busy to really hear them. Listening is a perennially underrated skill that informs or implicates nearly all others. In law school, just like any other setting, you have the opportunity to learn more about interests, personalities, opinions and perspectives of others. Listening does three invaluable things: 1) it will broaden your perspective; 2) make you communicate in a more responsive and responsible manner; and 3) help inform how to approach an issue in a way that addresses others’ needs rather than simply your perception of their needs.
2. Make ideas come to life.  Everyone has ideas. Fewer can turn ideas into real programs, events, classes or policies.  Leaders get those results. This phenomenon is actually a developable skill. If there is something your law school doesn’t offer, a program that hasn’t been implemented, an event that hasn’t been made available, an organization that hasn’t been formed, don’t be afraid to come up with some ideas and mobilize around changing that. This process alone will require you to plan, gather resources, build a base of contacts, and determine the audience you must convince to make that idea come to fruition. This process will essentially be mimicked no matter the level of the project you take on so the more experience you get with it, the better.
3. Make yourself uncomfortable.  A leader has to be in touch with his or her limitations. However, in order to learn precisely what those are, you must challenge any assumptions you have of yourself. What are you uncomfortable doing? Do you perceive that to be a weakness? Can it change? There is no better opportunity to answer those questions than in law school where there are a plethora of curricular and extracurricular opportunities. I have friends who came to school “knowing” they would never be oral advocates who are now on the trial team because they challenged their assumptions.
4. Don’t be afraid to make mistakes.  Leaders know they may have done something well, but they can always do better. Don’t be afraid to admit and learn from mistakes. There is often no better way to grow and learn than to make a mistake and ask for constructive criticism. Fortunately, law school is typically a good place to receive feedback but in the event you are not getting any or enough feedback, seek it out. You can’t fix areas that could use improvement unless you know about them, so ask for feedback.
5. Learn to manage personalities.  All leaders need help, and good leaders know how to get it. As society becomes more diverse and complex, it becomes more vital than ever to be able to work with – and influence – people with varying personality types, backgrounds and power. (Even amongst people with similar backgrounds and personality types, differences in work style will emerge; you should learn to notice those and learn how to work with all people based on their individual characteristics.) Law school provides you with an opportunity to recognize personality traits and work styles of your peers and coworkers, and to learn how to work efficiently with them.  Take advantage of this opportunity as frequently as possible.
6. Find your voice.  Leaders are true to themselves. Law school is the ultimate place to not just learn about case law, but to learn more about yourself. However, it is also a place where you can lose yourself amidst the briefs, reading and argument. Therefore, it is critical to think about who you are, who you want to become and how law school will help you get there. Don’t just engage the law, but consider the law in light of your personal history and experiences. Don’t just take a side, but let that side be informed by loved ones and people you have met along the way. Finding your voice is not only personally fulfilling; it makes everything easier to communicate. It also reflects a level of comfort with oneself that makes a favorable impression on those around you. Every law school experience is a chance for you to find your voice, and to use it.

Secretary of Education Arne Duncan gave a speech today in Selma, Alabama to announce and clarify the Department’s increased focus on civil rights efforts. The New York Times has a good summary both of some of the planned efforts as well as a variety of statistics Duncan planned to include in the speech highlighting the need for increased enforcement. The Office for Civil Rights will be focusing on cases implicating race, gender, and disability, as well as other important civil rights issues, in K-12 school systems, colleges, and universities across the country.

To help support these efforts, the Office for Civil Rights is currently hiring attorneys in field offices across the country – be sure to check PSLawNet postings as well as the EdHires link through USAJobs.

Have you considered a clerkship in a tribal court? The National Tribal Court Law Clerk Program [Ed. Note – the link is currently not working, we’ll update it just as soon as we can] was just launched by University of Colorado Law School, the National Native American Law Students Association, and the National American Indian Court Judges Association. The site is trying to facilitate the summer internship process for tribal courts, and the number of internships should continue to grow.

[Ed. Note: last week we posted the first of three parts in our series on leadership-skills development for public-interest minded law students and junior attorneys.  Today’s post, from former Equal Justice Works Fellow Emily Benfer, is the second.  It builds off of the propositions that the most successful public interest leaders are driven by fundamental commitments to the ends they seek to achieve, and draw from more arrows in their quivers than trial advocacy and other traditional lawyering skills which are emphasized in law school.]

Emily A. Benfer is a public interest attorney in Washington, D.C., where she is currently co-teaching a course on  Advocacy Tools for the 21^st Century Public Interest Lawyer at Georgetown Law Center.  She first employed advocacy strategies as an Equal Justice Works Fellow at the Washington Legal Clinic for the Homeless, and next year she will become the Director of a new Medical-Legal Partnership Clinic at Loyola University Chicago School of Law.

The world of public interest law values creativity, collaboration and scrappiness – the courage to take calculated risks and engage in the kind of “out-of-the-box” thinking needed to reshape our communities.  Public interest lawyers learn early on in their legal careers that legal prowess is only one of the many skills necessary to becoming an effective advocate for clients and causes. Our success is equally dependent on whether we access a full range of advocacy strategies that are critical to meeting client needs and creating measurable social change. The only problem is that most of us don’t learn these strategies in law school. It is my hope that these five tips will provide you with the framework to get started. Read Emily’s five tips after the jump…

Law students who are moving out of town for the summer and looking for housing and/or looking to sublet their places should check out NALP’s free, online apartment exchange.

Ed. Note: this guest post from Ericka Hines, a program manager at Equal Justice Works who specializes in working with law students and junior attorneys on building leadership skills, is the first in a series of three posts that will focus on the importance of cultivating those skills.

No Matter Where Your Career Takes You, the Chance to Lead Will Always Be There…

The idea for this post came from a colleague who was going to a law school to speak on the subject of leadership.  She asked me for my thoughts on these questions and I decided that I would share my answers not just with students at one law school but as many who wanted to know.  Enjoy!

Read Ericka’s leadership advice after the jump

In many respects the legal “public interest community” (amorphous as it may be) is set apart from the law firm world.  Recruiting and hiring are done quite differently, for instance, among nonprofits and government offices compared to large law firms.  But there is some overall cohesion in the industry at large.  The Great Recession has shown us that no law office has been immune from its effects.  Indeed, the closely-knit relationship between “Biglaw” and the public interest community on pro bono issues became evident as firms adjusted pro bono programs to assist nonprofits with changing client needs, and also in the phenomenon of deferred law firm associates taking public service placements in public interest offices.  Also, those large firms that kept up their financial backing of the public interest community have been absolutely vital pillars of support as other traditional public-interest revenue streams tapered to a trickle.

What does this mean for aspiring and current public interest advocates?  It means that there are a lot of good reasons to keep your finger on the pulse of the larger legal industry.  In some contexts there is a close relationship, even a symbiosis, between law firms and their public interest partners.  So your practice could be directly impacted, as could the financial fortunes of your employer.

Here’s some good news about keeping up with the news: NALP makes it easy for you to check in on happenings in the industry at large.  Every Friday, the esteemed Jim Leipold, NALP’s executive director (and your author’s boss), circulates the NALP Industry News Weekly Digest, which is freely available NALP’s website.  We’ll also begin posting a link to it in our weekly PSLawNet Public Interest News Bulletin.

If you’re a law student looking at the possibility of an unpaid internship this summer, don’t despair. In addition to many school-based programs that provide a small living stipend, there are a surprising number of other funding opportunities out there. Check out PSLawNet’s Summer Funding page to find an extensive though not exhaustive list of resources, and talk with your career services office to find out about school-specific or local options. Also, if you’re still searching for that perfect summer internship, don’t forget to check PSLawNet’s job database which currently has over 350 internships posted.

The following analysis is provided by William C. Penn, Public Interest Law Coordinator at Lewis & Clark Law School.  Thanks, Bill!

The U.S. Department of Education recently produced a Q&A guide pertaining to the College Cost Reduction & Access Act’s Income Based Repayment (IBR) program.  The Q&A mentions that starting in July 2010, married borrowers who file a joint tax return will be able to consider the income AND the debt of both spouses when calculating IBR payments and eligibility.  I did not see a clear description of how the changes will alter the amount that married borrowers have to pay, so I read through the Federal Register for Thursday October 29, 2009.

What follows is my rundown of the changes:

1. Graduates will be able to pick the greater of the amount of their loans when they began repayment or the amount of their loans when they request Income Based Repayment to use in the equations that determine
   eligibility for using Income-Based Repayment.  In the real world, this means that some graduates who might not have qualified for IBR at graduation may be able to qualify later if their loans have grown due
   to circumstances like deferment.
2. The calculation method for determining Income-Based Repayment amounts for single graduates remains the same.
3. The calculation method for determining Income-Based Repayment amounts for married graduates filing separate tax returns remains the same (count only individual income and only their individual debt in
   the equations).
4. The calculation method for determining Income-Based Repayment amounts for married graduates filing joint tax returns is very different: 

•  
  • In determining qualification for IBR, both the joint income and the joint debt of the couple is considered.  This means, for qualification, a joint tax return filing married couple will be
    treated as a single unit for both income and debt.  The qualification question is:  does the IBR equation produce a smaller payment amount when calculated using the joint income than a standard 10-year payment plan based on the joint debt.  If one spouse qualifies, the other does
    as well.  Fewer graduates will fail to qualify because their joint income is too high.
  • For calculating the amount that each spouse must pay toward their student loans under IBR, the joint IBR equation [ (15% of (joint income minus 150% of the poverty guide)) divided by twelve]  is multiplied by the individual spouse’s share of the total student debt.  So, if one spouse has 30% of the student loans, they pay 30% of what the IBR equation produces using joint income.  The other spouse would pay 70%.  The result is that under the new equation married filing jointly couples will, together, pay HALF as much on their loans as
    they pay together under the old calculation method!

What Does It All Mean?

In the real world, this change means, starting in July 2010, married couples who use IBR and file joint tax returns will pay close to what two unmarried people in the same situation would pay.  Considering the loss of deductions when filing tax returns as married filing separately, married graduates will likely be better off filing taxes jointly if both spouses are attempting to use IBR.  (In scenarios that I have run calculations for, couples filing jointly and using the new equation should save at least few hundred dollars per year over filing
separately.)

An Example (using rough calculations)

• Take a couple, both partners making $40,000 per year and with $100,000 in debt each (plus a large number of plain-vanilla assumptions for estimating their taxes).
• As single people, together they pay about $6,400 under IBR toward their loans and about $8,800 in taxes – $15,200 in loans and taxes.
• As married-filing-separately, together they pay about 7,100 under IBR toward their loans and about $10,000 in taxes – $17,100 in loans and taxes.
• As married joint filers under the new rules, together they pay about $8,000 under IBR toward their loans and about $8,800 in taxes – $16,800 in loans and taxes.
• UNDER THE OLD RULES The married joint filers, together pay about $16,000 under IBR toward loans and about $8,800 in taxes – $24,000 in loans and taxes.
• WITH THE NEW RULES, the handling of married joint tax filers is what it should have been from the start.