Today’s expert opinion is contributed by Susan J. Feathers, an Assistant Dean for Student Affairs at Albany Law School where she is also an Academic Support Professor, the Director of Pro Bono Programs and the Faculty Advisor to Moot Court.  She is the former Executive Director of Stanford Law School’s Levin Center for Public Service and served as an Assistant Dean for Public Service at the University of Pennsylvania Law School’s Public Service Program (ABA Pro Bono Publico Award 2000) for nine years.  She began her career in academia as a Senior Supervising Attorney for Hofstra Law School’s Constitutional Litigation and Criminal Defense Clinics.   She has also served as Senior Appellate Counsel for the Legal Aid Society of New York City, Criminal Appeals Bureau.

The following five steps are excerpted from Feather’s article, 5 STEPS TO LAUNCHING A PRO BONO PROGRAM:   Albany Law School Launches Service-Learning Program with statewide partners.

(1) Host a Pro Bono Fair for Community Partners Seeking Pro Bono Assistance:   One of the most effective and easiest ways to educate students about pro bono opportunities in your community is to invite attorneys seeking pro bono interns to your law school for an informal informational fair.  This provides a way for both your students and prospective partners to meet ‘face-to-face’ and get a sense of the broad range of opportunities.    Your fair can feature local as well as statewide programs.   Albany Law School’s Pro Bono Program collaborates with a vast array of local and national  partners including:  the ACLU of Mississippi;  Freedom Now; LawHelp.org/NY;  the Legal Aid Society of Northeastern New York;   the New York State Bar Association,  Prisoners Legal Services,   and the Rural law Center.

(2) Develop a Student Handbook:  In the student handbook you can detail the various components of your program; including your definition of pro bono, the time expectations and the procedure for signing up and giving feedback.   In the handbook it is critical to address the many professional responsibility issues that may arise in the context of pro bono placements including confidentiality, conflicts of interest and the potential for unauthorized practice of law.  Finally, it is important to have opportunities for students to provide feedback about their experience and how it may have contributed to their understanding of substantive law;  informed their career choices;   and impacted their overall experience at the law school.

Keep reading . . .

We continue PSLawNet’s participation in the 2010 National Celebration of Pro Bono with today’s expert opinion interview with Sylvia Novinsky, the Assistant Dean for Public Service Programs at UNC School of Law.  Novinsky has been with UNC School of Law since 1996, after practicing public interest law representing migrant farm workers and immigrant workers in Virginia and New York. She served as the school’s first public interest career counselor and, in 2000, became the Assistant Dean for Student Affairs.  Novinsky launched the Pro Bono Program at UNC in the fall of 1997 and since has been the driving force behind the development and expansion of the program.  The program has filled thousands of placements with attorneys in non-profit organizations, private practice, and legal services organization across the country – the Class of 2010 completed more than 10,000 hours of pro bono.

In our interview with Novinsky, she shares her insights regarding best practices and the challenges involved in developing and expanding pro bono programming at law schools.  Learn more about UNC School of Law’s program and their Celebration of Pro Bono events.

Why do you believe it important for students to incorporate pro bono into their law school experience?

I believe it is our ethical responsibility as lawyers because we have this special skill set to do pro bono service – and students should begin honoring this commitment to pro bono while still in school.  Additionally, pro bono is an important learning tool to assist students in building their skills outside the classroom.  It also allows students to experience different areas of law, which is helpful in planning their career path.

How did the Pro Bono Program at your school grow into what it is today?

Our program development was guided by student input, student needs, and the community’s needs.  It really is this sort of thing that if you build it they will come.  As students realize what pro bono service can offer they gravitate towards it, especially if the projects have already been organized and are right there in front of them.  If a formal structure is not in place, it takes a lot of time for students to set up their own pro bono opportunities and that can be deterrent for busy law school students.

I believe our program has also grown because we as a profession have become more aware of how lawyers can help – not just in a community service oriented way, but using our unique skills and training.  As a member of the legal profession, one of the great things about the last 10 years is that the group of students entering law schools arrives with a volunteer ethic – their belief in volunteering and giving back as lawyers is a natural outgrowth of their community service experiences as college and high school students.

Based upon your own experience at UNC School of Law, what do you believe are the greatest challenges law schools face in developing and expanding pro bono programs?

I think greatest challenge is figuring out what works for your school – what is the best programmatic structure and what is the mechanism for developing that structure?  Even though our program is now thirteen years old, it was not until the last three years that we achieved a workable system for tracking data.

What is your advice for figuring out what will work at a particular law school?

You really need to understand your community, both your law school and the surrounding legal community.  By legal community, I mean the needs of those low-income individuals seeking legal services and those providing the legal services.

You need to create relationships.  Lawyers in your community need to know that there is a point person at the law school that they can rely on to ensure all the logistics involved in student pro bono projects are being accomplished – that you are not going to let them down.

To some extent you have to take risks – some things are going to work and some things are really not going to work.

Keep reading . . .

Your summer job experience is complete and you are back in the classroom . . .  What steps can you take now to help you land your next summer position or post-graduate employment?

Today’s Expert Opinion column comes to us from Sharon Booth, Director of Public Interest Programs at Nova Southeastern University’s Shepard Broad Law Center in Ft. Lauderdale, FL.  Sharon is a former Legal Aid attorney who has been with NSU for approximately 10 years.  Her column addresses the key steps you should be taking now to ensure you are maximizing the potential of this summer’s experience to further explore your career path and find your next job.

1.) Continue to cultivate your relationship with your summer employer(s).

• Keep in touch with your summer employer(s) by periodically emailing or calling them after you return to school.  If your employer has an email distribution list for announcements ask to be added to the listserv.
• Be assertive in expressing your interest in a future position with their organization (if applicable).  If not, keep them apprised of your future plans and career goals.
• Participate in networking opportunities with your summer employer(s) by attending office events, community service activities or local bar association meetings during the academic year.
• Maintaining this relationship could lead to anything from a great recommendation to a full time job after graduation!

2.) Utilize your summer contacts to set up informational interviews.

• Create a list of the contacts you made over the summer, including geographic and practice areas.
• As you begin to plan for your second summer or post-graduate employment, set up informational interviews with several of these individuals.  Although you are not seeking employment directly from them, always take an updated copy of your resume in case they offer to pass it along.
• This type of research and preparation is an invaluable tool for learning more about the opportunities, personalities and legal culture in a particular city, practice area or organization.
• For more information on informational interviews, including sample letters and questions, you can check out this publication from Harvard Law School:  http://www.law.harvard.edu/current/careers/opia/landing-your-job/networking/index.html

Keep reading . . .

Every summer, PSLawNet hires law students as part-time summer interns, who are also working at unpaid public interest placements. This summer we asked one of our interns to write about her summer work at Project Vote, as well as her plans for the future. Lauren Forbes is a rising 3L at American University Washington College of Law in Washington, DC, and she hopes to work in civil rights and voting issues.

Read about Lauren’s summer after the break!

Michael Taub, a 2003 graduate of the Villanova University School of Law, has served as a staff attorney with the Homeless Advocacy Project (HAP) in Philly since 2005. The PSlawNet Blog came to know Michael at that time because our offices were right down the hall from each other. He’s a great lawyer with an unwavering commitment to helping his clients, many of whom are veterans who’ve run into difficulties since leaving military service. Michael’s also an all-around good fellow, so we don’t hold it against him that he’s originally from Jersey. Or that he prefers Wilco to Son Volt. He’s just too good a person for us to quibble with those things. We digress. We asked Michael…

How would you describe your position at HAP, and how did you arrive there?   I am a staff attorney and director of our Veterans Project.  The majority of my time is spent representing homeless veterans on their claims and appeals for VA benefits.  However, I also represent non-veterans on claims/appeals for SSI and welfare benefits.  Finally, I represent clients facing eviction in L&T court, as well as homeless parents seeking custody rights of their children.  I came to my job essentially from law school, although I did a short stint at a law firm after graduation.  At the firm, I quickly came to realize that my heart was in public interest, so I left as soon as I found another job.  My position at HAP was originally funded by a fellowship, and the attorney who established the position was relocating.  I was lucky.

Tell us about your clients generally.  Are the majority veterans of the Afghanistan and Iraq operations?  And how has the recession impacted your clients?   My clients are mostly veterans of the Vietnam era.  At the time vets were returning from the war in Vietnam, the VA did not provide comprehensive mental health services, so many vets came home with severe but untreated mental illness, mostly Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).  Those vets struggled to reintegrate into society, and many ended up homeless.  Unfortunately, many still are, and they make up the majority of my caseload, not to mention of the homeless veterans population in general.

Only a handful of my clients served in Iraq or Afghanistan.  It is expected that more of these veterans will end up homeless in the future, but that right now those on the brink of homelessness are still somehow afloat.  The VA has certainly stepped up its outreach and mental health services since Vietnam, so this too may contribute to the lower numbers. 

As for the recession, I am certainly seeing more clients who lost both their jobs and homes, and are now in shelter.  These clients often have job skills and a willingness to work, but with so few companies hiring, they eventually ended up in shelter or living in their cars.  With these clients, we may help them appeal denied unemployment claims or, since they are so unfamiliar with the world of public benefits, just help them apply for food stamps or medical assistance.

What are the three most challenging aspects of your job?  I really don’t look at my job as challenging.  That’s not to say it is easy, but I see it as more exciting than challenging.  When a client comes to me with a problem, my mind starts thinking of the many ways I can help.  That to me is invigorating, and I love the process.  I suppose if there is one aspect of my job that is unquestionably challenging it is dealing with bureaucracies.  In other words, once I’ve worked out the best course of action for my client, implementing that course is often trickier in practice than theory.

What aspect(s) of your job gives you the most joy?  Unquestionably my clients.  I love talking with them, meeting with them, and of course, helping them.  Despite their homelessness, they are overall a happy, funny, quirky, and intelligent group of people.  They make me cry and they make me laugh.  At end of a meeting with a client, I am always amazed at how much I have learned about MYSELF, even though they were the ones sharing their life stories. 

What advice would you offer law students who are pursuing careers in civil legal services?  The best job to have is one where your colleagues are also your friends.  I come to work every day knowing that I have the trust and support of my co-workers.  If I have a day filled with favorable outcomes, they are happy for me.  If I have a day filled with sad stories, they are always willing to help pick me up.  Much as I believe in my clients and the work I do for them, without my colleagues, I would not be able to do this work.  The environment you work in is as important as the work you do.  Always keep this in mind when interviewing for a job.

Today’s Expert Opinion column is full of great advice about how to approach your project-based fellowship applications this summer from David Steib, a 2008 Skadden Fellow. David joined the Legal Aid Society of DC in September 2008 as a Skadden Fellow in the housing unit. His project focuses on bringing legal services to the Spanish-speaking community through direct outreach in the Columbia Heights area and through work with the DC Language Access Coalition. During law school, David interned for several public interest organizations, including the Legal Aid Society of DC. In 2007, he was awarded the John J. Curtin, Jr. Fellowship by the ABA Commission on Homelessness and Poverty to intern for the Washington Legal Clinic for the Homeless. David also interned with Bread for the City and the Humane Society of the United States. He was a student of the Georgetown Domestic Violence Clinic. David received his B.A. from Yale University and his J.D. from Georgetown University Law Center.

Read David’s Fellowship advice after the jump!

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!

Today’s post on possible career routes into Inter-Governmental Organizations like the United Nations comes from Sara Rakita, Associate Director of the Public Interest Law Center at New York University School of Law.  Sara has worked extensively on human rights and the rule of law, primarily in Africa. Before joining PILC in 2006, she served as a long-term consultant to the Ford Foundation, where she was responsible for piloting and setting up TrustAfrica, a new African grant-making foundation that is now based in Senegal. Sara spent five years as an Africa Researcher at Human Rights Watch, including two years as the organization’s representative in Rwanda. Sara has also consulted for Amnesty International, Global Rights, USAID, and the Austrian development agency.  Sara holds a J.D. from NYU, an M.I.A. from Columbia University, and a B.A. in international studies from The American University. She is fluent in French and has a working knowledge of Spanish and Russian.

Lots of people would love to work for the United Nations or other Inter-Governmental Organizations (IGOs), but it’s not always apparent how to get there. Indeed, there is no single path.  In an effort to demystify a process that is not always transparent, this post will explain some of the main channels into IGOs. Get the scoop on IGOs after the break!

Kelly Tautges serves as the Chicago Bar Foundation’s Director of Pro Bono.  She had started her career in a large law firm, and after five years moved into the public interest arena, and away from practicing law.  These days, Kelly works on several fronts to encourage continued innovation in the delivery of pro bono services to low-income clients, and to promote partnerships between the private and public interest bars.  We recently asked Kelly about how the legal services and pro bono communities are set up in Chicago, how her career path has unfolded, and what advice she would offer to aspiring public interest lawyers.

Kelly, tell us generally about the Chicago civil legal services community, and comment on CBF’s role in it.

Chicago is home to a legal aid community that includes around 40 legal aid providers.  The providers range from organizations with one or two lawyers to organizations with almost 100 attorneys, and from those focusing on particular subject areas to generalists handling cases in many areas.

Even with this breadth of available legal aid providers in Chicago, the needs of those who cannot afford a lawyer substantially outweigh the available services. There are only about 300 legal aid attorneys in Chicago to serve the more than 1 million people who qualify for their services.  In addition, Chicago’s private bar has strong commitment to pro bono work and helps supplement the efforts of our dedicated legal aid attorneys. Despite the hard work happening in our pro bono and legal aid system in Chicago, the majority of low-income individuals are left to attempt to resolve their complex legal problems largely on their own.

The Chicago Bar Foundation (CBF) takes a system-wide approach to improve access to justice by bringing together all of the stakeholders—including legal aid organizations, the courts, law firms, and individual lawyers—to strengthen and improve Chicago’s pro bono and legal aid system.   Very generally, the CBF works to advance the work of our community’s pro bono and legal aid organizations, supports our legal aid attorneys and works to make the courts more user friendly.  We accomplish our work through grants, advocacy, pro bono and other partnerships.   The CBF is funded primarily though support from individual lawyers, law firms and corporations.

My role at the CBF is to focus on pro bono: helping people get involved with pro bono, working with organizations and other stakeholders to identify and set up new programs, supporting existing programs and creating collaborations and partnerships to efficiently and effectively involve pro bono volunteers to address client need.    I also work on a new initiative called the CBF Legal Aid Academy that provides training and professional development opportunities to legal aid attorneys through the pro bono contributions of legal consultants, lawyers, educators and firms.

How badly has the recession affected your funding of legal services, and other funding sources?

Like most communities, many major sources of funding for legal aid in Chicago, especially state support and IOLTA funding, are under severe stress.  At the same time, a lot of great things are happening here that demonstrate the legal community’s strong support of the pro bono and legal aid system.   For example, we just finished the CBF’s  4^th Annual Investing in Justice Campaign, which raised more than $1.1 million to support Chicago’s pro bono and legal aid organizations.  80 firms, corporate legal departments and other organizations participated this year, up from 54 firms and organizations last year.  More than 2,500 individual attorneys personally contributed to the campaign, up from about 2,000 individuals last year.  The Campaign is a great example of how Chicago’s legal community is coming together to support our pro bono and legal aid system even in these challenging economic circumstances.

You began your career at a law firm and subsequently transitioned to CBF.  Why, and how did the discernment process play out for you?

In many ways, I took the path of least resistance when I first graduated from law school and started my career at a large Chicago law firm.  I was lucky to graduate at a time when good jobs were plentiful, and I received an offer from the firm where I was a summer associate.  I took this law firm job because I was concerned about my debt, knew that I liked and respected the people in my department, and was confident that I would get great litigation experience.   Just over the five-year mark, though, I knew that it was time for me to leave my law firm practice.   Volunteerism and service have always been a big part of my identity, and while my pro bono work while in private practice was rewarding, it was not enough.  I wanted to work in the public interest full-time.   I decided to take the leap, and I left the firm.

After some time off, I began looking for a public interest position.  I knew it would be tough, and I was right.  Even though it took some time and rejection, though, I found a position that was a perfect fit for my background and skills.  The CBF had just announced the Director of Pro Bono position, which was new at the CBF.  I feel very fortunate that I was able to find and be offered such a wonderful position.

What advice do you offer law students who are on civil legal services career paths but who are scared about economic conditions?

My advice would be to stick with the commitment of working in legal aid, but to be flexible and open-minded about the route that may be necessary to get a legal aid job.  There are many different ways to make a difference and to help people in need, and lawyers may want or need to take positions outside traditional civil legal services as part of their process to ultimately get the job that they want in legal aid.  Also, be creative: finding fellowships and identifying areas and organizations that are likely to have new funding are great ways to get into legal services.  Finally, I would encourage those interested in legal aid to meet with members of their community’s legal aid network to learn about the legal aid landscape, to identify volunteer opportunities and to find leads for legal aid employment.