by Kristen Pavón

Career Builder featured a great article outlining 8 tips to battle job-search fatigue. I definitely could have used this list a year ago! Job searching is a ridiculously daunting task and I know it can be difficult to keep your eye on the prize.

I’m going to highlight a few of their tips and add a few public-interest law related ones of my own (mainly things I used to get through the job search period while keeping my sanity).

1. Consider your job search a full-time job.

Yes, yes and yes. If you’re unemployed, job searching cannot be something you do randomly when the urge arises. Like lots of things in life, you’ll get out of job searching what you put in. The more time and effort you dedicate to landing a job, the more likely you’ll actually get one.

2. Explore how social media, such as Facebook, Twitter, a personal blog and LinkedIn, can help your job search.

You can use these platforms as methods to either meet prospective employers or showcase skills or past accomplishments.

3. Craft a formal plan.

This tip is critical. I had a pretty good method, if I do say so myself. I set up a color-coded spreadsheet with job titles, organizations, application instructions, location, contact information, deadlines and the date I applied. Jobs I needed to apply to were highlighted in green, jobs I had already applied to were highlighted in red, and jobs that didn’t work out (read: rejected!) were in gloomy gray.

4. Set tangible (realistic) goals.

Write down the number of jobs you will apply for each day. Write down the number of jobs you will add to your queue each day.

5. Volunteer.

I know searching for and applying to jobs 8 hours a day can suck the life out of you and even leave you feeling low on the self-esteem meter. So, schedule a specific chunk of time to search for jobs and leave some time to volunteer for your favorite legal services organization in the area.

This will not only get you out of the house, but it will also be a great bullet on your résumé and more likely than not, you’ll meet some interesting people that may lead you to a job!

6. Go out and meet people.

Look up your local bar association and check out their events calendar. Make it to next networking event, bring a stack of business cards, and get to work!

Feeling awkward about it? Keep in mind lawyers know how to network, they expect it and they want to introduce you to other lawyers who may be able to help you out.

Still not feeling it? Well, I’m a success story. I went to a networking event in the D.C. area for public interest attorneys and law students, and I met two people. I had a great chat with one over coffee a few weeks later, which led me to meet another attorney who I set up a volunteering schedule with before landing a job. The other attorney I met at the event is now my colleague at work. Networking works.

7. Set up PSLawNet alerts!

Ok, yes. This tip is a bit self-serving but I actually used these during law school and during my job search. Through PSLawNet, you can get daily or weekly emails with job opportunities that fit your customized criteria. It’s too easy not to use. Check it out at PSLawNet.

I hope these tips help you. You can read all of Career Builder’s tips here.

Do you have any other tips to overcome job-search fatigue? What do you do to keep your head in the game? Post your own tips below!

by Kristen Pavón

The Institute for Justice President and Forbes contributor Chip Mellor wrote a great piece about public interest law’s beginnings and the changes it has gone through over the last century.

In his article, Mellor notes that with the filing of the NAACP’s first amicus brief in 1914, the era of public interest law began. He mentions that early public interest advocacy “arose around a particular conflict and not as part of a sustained, multifaceted litigation campaign,” but then says that that changed when the NAACP launched a campaign with the goal of ending racial segregation in the 1930s.

After that, public interest law was not just litigation. It was litigation-plus. It involved media relations and public mobilization for larger social and legal goals.

Very, very interesting article — I had no idea about the history of public interest law! It’s a quick read, check it out here.

by Kristen Pavón

In addition to our database of more than 13,000 public service employer profiles (yes, you read that right — 13,000!) and almost 1,000 legal opportunities, the PSLawNet website has some great resources about anything from interviewing tips for public interest jobs, guides on landing jobs with international organizations to how to get and save money while working in the public interest field.

Here are a few other useful links you can find on our website:

• Post-grad fellowships Q&A
• Info about working on Capitol Hill 
• Almost anything you ever wanted to know about becoming a Public Defender

If there’s something public service career-related you’re interested in finding out about — leave us a comment below and we’ll see if we can help you out!

We’re always looking to update our resources and add new information that you want to learn about — so, let us know.

Building Excellent Schools is looking for the most entrepreneurial and driven leaders to make a scholastic difference. Building Excellent Schools is a national organization with more than a decade of experience training leaders to found independently managed urban charter schools.  BES Fellows have founded more than 40 schools across the country.

Fellows complete a practice-based training built around the understanding of the best school practices in the highest performing urban charter schools.  Additional training consists of a residency in a high-performing urban charter school, school visits with the Fellowship cohort of like-minded leaders, and structured work in your home territory. The goal of the year-long fellowship is  to conclude with an approved charter application, inclusive of the best-practices in urban school design, and an exceptional founding board.

For the 2012-2013 Fellowship, BES is accepting applications from individuals who are driven to start charter schools in Colorado, Massachusetts, New York, and Tennessee. However, they will also consider other territories.

For more information about Building Excellent Schools, the fellowship or the application process, see the listing on PSLawNet!

by Kristen Pavón

An article in The Miami Herald reports that South Florida public school enrollment dropped this year due to a rise in charter school popularity.

Broward and Miami-Dade counties has experienced a loss of more than 4,000 students to the 109 charter schools in the area. Charter schools in Miami-Dade saw an increase of 6,341 students from last year, totaling 41,488 students this year.

With capacity and quality issues at the helm of the nation’s education policy debate, charter schools have an opportunity to fill necessary gaps in the education system. However, what does the proliferation of these privately run schools mean for the public school system?

Read the whole story here.

Will this charter school competition spur drastic changes in public schools? Will school boards attempt to work cooperatively with charter schools? Are there other areas experiencing the same situation? What do you think?

By Kristen Pavón

D.C. attorney Marie-Therese Connolly received a MacArthur Foundation fellowship for her exceptional work as Appleseed’s Life Long Justice Initiative founder and director.

The MacArthur Foundation, one of the nation’s largest independent foundations, supports national and international people and institutions committed to building a more just, verdant, and peaceful world.

Connolly’s Life Long Justice Initiative with Appleseed, a nonprofit network of public interest justice centers in the U.S. and Mexico, will focus on “creating an integrated national advocacy effort to prevent, detect, and intervene in the mistreatment of the elderly and secure reauthorization of key federal legislation.”

The MacArthur Foundation fellow has devoted her career to fighting elder abuse. She has served as the Department of Justice’s Elder Justice and Nursing Home Initiative director, where she developed legal theories and litigation strategies to prosecute elder abuse and neglect cases.

Connolly is a leading voice in the elder rights arena and with the MacArthur Foundation’s five-year award, she will be able to continue her meritorious efforts.

Learn more about Life Long Justice here.

By Andrea Nehorayoff

People are just sick over our foreclosure crisis. No really, foreclosures are literally making people sick. A study based on new research relating health problems to foreclosures states that the two are directly correlated.

According to two university researchers, “an increase of 100 foreclosures corresponded to a 7.2% rise in emergency room visits and hospitalizations for hypertension, and an 8.1% increase for diabetes, among people aged 20 to 49,” based on statistics since 2005 in Arizona, Florida, New Jersey, and California. These high-foreclosure areas are also faced with large populations of unemployed, underemployed and uninsured. People are driving themselves sick and they need help!

These numbers are flat-out scary. One solution to this problem is to help people find ways to avoid financial duress and keep their homes. Legal aid is a viable option for people facing foreclosure.

A Staten Island resident was able to receive a loan modification and stop her from losing her home altogether with the help of Staten Island Legal Services. Solutions like this one can help relieve the stress-related ailments—- respiratory problems, pneumonia, chest pain, shortness of breath and suicidal thoughts– associated with financial hardships, but by no means is a permanent one. We need to fix this problem. The research might only cover four states, but the statistics could be just as bad, or even worse, in other states.

What are your ideas about how attorneys can help alleviate the stress that foreclosures create?

Andrea, a newbie PSLawNet Blog contributor, is a Project Assistant at NALP. She is a senior at The George Washington University pursuing a degree in Political Science. Prior to joining NALP, Andrea’s political interests had her working for a variety of New York State political campaigns, including Governor Paterson’s reelection campaign, Kathleen Rice for NYS Attorney General, candidates for state senate, congressmen for reelection and the New York State Democratic Committee. She can be reached at anehorayoff@nalp.org.

Here’s an opportunity to represent the university that boasts 76 Nobel Prize winners and 35 National Medal of Science recipients! Counsel in the Office of the General Counsel (OGC) will advise and represent MIT on legal issues related to research, faculty, students, health and safety, and privacy issues. 

MIT’s counsel will also streamline the school’s contracting processes by creating systems, training, and procedures that empower varied units to responsibly draft, negotiate, and enter into a variety of contracts involving copyright, software, licensing, confidentiality, and data protection; and support units in their contracting activities and handle unusual, complex contracts; provide legal, tactical, and strategic advice on policies, best practices, and education.

To learn more about the position and apply, check out the listing at PSLawNet

By Kristen Pavón

Murrow Award-winning legal analyst and commentator Andrew Cohen wrote an interesting op-ed for The Atlantic that gets to the heart of the controversial death penalty topic and cautions that we are close to a turning point on capital punishment.

In the modern era of capital punishment — since the Supreme Court’s decision in Gregg v. Georgia — three main camps have emerged. First, there are those who are for the death penalty all the way; the ones who lament the time and money it takes from trial to execution. Then, there are those who are against capital punishment all the way; the ones who believe that the state should never be in the business of killing its own citizens. And between the two solitudes, there is a vast middle; those who believe that there is a place for the death penalty, but only if it can be administered fairly and accurately, free from the sort of arbitrary and capricious decision-making that pushed the justices to do away with it in the first place in 1972 in Furman v. Georgia.

Cohen also chronicles our push-pull-tug relationship with capital punishment over the last few decades and tackles questions like “How fair does his [Duane Edward Buck] legal treatment really need to be?”

Last week, when Duane Buck’s case was on America’s docket, the most-asked questions (of me, anyway) were (to paraphrase): Why should I care about the procedural technicalities of this guy’s sentencing case when his guilt is not in doubt? Since he’s guilty of murder, how fair does his legal treatment really need to be? People of all political stripes asked the same questions. For them, Buck’s guilt evidently vitiated any need for an honest evaluation of the manner in which he was sentenced to death. Texas in 2000 conceded that Buck’s trial was impermissibly unfair? The other men similarly situated got their new trials? Who cares. The guy did it. He is getting more justice than he gave to his victims.

That last part is true. Of course, defendants like Duane Buck get more justice than their victims. That’s the whole point of our criminal justice system — and of the rule of law. That’s why we outlaw lynching, why angry mobs can’t storm jailhouses, and why we have judges. It’s why we have a Constitution. In America, we aim to give the guilty more justice than they deserve. We do so because of how that reflects upon us, not upon how it reflects upon the guilty. And when we fail to do so it says more about us than it does about the condemned. Although Let’s look just at Texas, again, for a moment.

It’s definitely a must-read piece. Check it out here.

By Kristen Pavón

In the midst of an access-to-justice crisis (as a result of the country’s economic situation, funding cuts at every turn and sky-high poverty rates), it’s easy to forget about the needs of organizations trying to do good work in their communities when thousands of low-income individuals are in dire need of effective representation.

However, many new or small non-profits, especially in this climate, do not have the resources to obtain effective legal representation and advice. Florida Legal Services, Inc. (FLS) recognized this need and is coordinating a statewide initiative to bring non-profits and transactional attorneys together for pro bono legal clinics.

On Oct. 6 at Florida Coastal School of Law, representatives of local nonprofit organizations will have the opportunity to meet one-to-one with attorneys from the Florida Bar Business Law Section who can provide legal guidance and direction for their organizations.

With sound legal advice, non-profits will be able to continuing serving their communities and providing essential services.

If you’re a Florida non-profit organization and are interested in setting up an appointment with an attorney, contact FLS Pro Bono Director Sheila Meehan at sheila@floridalegal.org.

For more information about the program, click here.

What do you think about this project? Would you be interested in setting up a similar project?