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.

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.

The 6th annual IMPACT Career Fair for law students and attorneys with disabilities is taking place at the Sheraton Crystal City, in Arlington, VA, on Friday, August 13th.  Learn more about the career fair and link to registration info here.

Stanford Law School’s Levin Center for Public Service and Public Interest Law is currently inviting nominations for the Stanford Law School National Public Service Award! This is a perfect opportunity to honor that special public interest lawyer in your life – someone who has inspired you and others with their work. This isn’t just for attorneys with a lifetime of achievement either! They are explicitly welcoming nominations of “younger attorneys who have significantly advanced social justice in the past year.” So nominate away!

From our friends at the Partnership for Public Service:

The Partnership for Public Service will host its eighth annual Public Service Career and Internship Fair on July 14 from 3:00-7:00 p.m. at the National Building Museum. Last year’s event connected 78 federal agencies with more than 6,000 well-qualified and diverse candidates.

 

This fair is dedicated to providing summer interns in Washington, DC, students–both graduate and undergraduate, and recent graduates with access to agency representatives, and information about their agencies’ missions and available positions. By facilitating conversations between federal workers and promising young people, we hope to encourage entry-level talent to bring their skills and experiences to the government as dynamic federal employees.

 

Agency registration for this event is now open. Agencies that register before May 31 will receive a discount on the cost of their registration packages. The last day to sign up for the event is July 1. Visit ourpublicservice.org/careerfair to learn more and register! 

 

Registration for students and recent graduates will open on June 1. Please email careerfair@ourpublicservice.org if you would like to be added to our outreach list. 

Equal Justice Works has announced its incoming class of fellows.  We extend our congratulations to all 43 of them!  Now more than ever, energetic, creative minds are needed to fight for those who live on society’s margins.   A press release from Equal Justice Works notes that the 43 fellows will be placed with 41 public interest orgnizations in 17 states and in DC.  Here’s a little more from the press release:

The Equal Justice Works Fellowship program is the largest postgraduate legal fellowship program in the country.  Equal Justice Works Fellows design projects with nonprofit organizations providing legal services in low income and underserved communities in a range of issue areas including homelessness prevention, immigration, criminal defense and Native American rights.

At the East Bay Community Law Center in Berkeley, CA, Brendan Darrow will represent Spanish-speaking renters who have been thrust into the housing crisis by their landlords’ default.  Unaccompanied immigrant children facing deportation in the Greater Boston area will be able to receive legal assistance from Erin Cox, who will be working with Lutheran Social Services in Wellesley.  And at the Appalachian Center for the Economy and the Environment, Mike Becher’s project will address surface coal production’s effects on human health and safety and the perpetuation of poverty in the coalfields of Appalachia

“The 2010 Equal Justice Works Fellows are entering the field when legal aid has been devastated, leaving more people desperately needing affordable legal services,” said Cait Clarke, Director of Public Interest Law Opportunities at Equal Justice Works. “These attorneys have demonstrated an extraordinary commitment to public interest law and helping to address the legal needs of the most vulnerable among us.  We are proud to welcome them to the legal services community.”

Here’s a link to a list of all of the fellows and their host organizations.

We strive to make PSLawNet the best public interest law career site out there, with constant updates and changes to improve things for you, our users. We are thus very excited to announce a brand new resource on the site: State and Local Government Resources! This new page includes links to hundreds of state and local government agencies that hire attorneys and/or law students. It is searchable by state via an interactive map, and includes listings for many major city employers as well. Please check it out, and feel free to share feedback with us here or by email.

If you have a PSLawNet account (and if you don’t, you probably should), then hopefully you know about our useful email alert system – you can set a search to run daily or weekly and you receive emails with new matching jobs. Well, our system was doing such a good job that it was starting to overwhelm our servers, so we’ve made some minor changes. We have changed our email alert system so each created alert will last for six months, then expire. The alert will not be deleted, so you can continue to receive updates by logging in and clicking “Renew” next to the expired or soon-to-be-expired alert. For current alerts that were created more than six months ago, you will receive an email explaining the upcoming expiration and providing a link to renew the alert if desired. If you have any questions, please email us.

We hope this change allows us to continue to provide excellent, uninterrupted service.

It’s not too late to apply for the Equal Justice Works Summer Corps program, but the deadline is this Friday! EJW had a great post on their blog yesterday about how Summer Corps alumni have used their EJW experiences to jumpstart their legal careers – go check it out!

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.   

To Register: All students and law school career professionals who are interested in participating should e-mail Kevin Mills, Director of Membership at NLADA at membership@nlada.org, BY NOON ON TUESDAY, APRIL 13th, providing your full name, e-mail address, and a phone number.  Please type “Student Webinar” in the email’s subject line.