Hey, recent grads: did you graduate within the last 3 years with a proven commitment to public service in the area of environmental law? Are you interested in pursuing an academic career in the future? If this sounds like you, check out today’s Job o’ the Day:

The Turner Environmental Law Clinic at Emory University School of Law offers a one-year post-graduate fellowship to provide a recent law school graduate the opportunity to learn to be an effective environmental advocate while working with the Clinic to address some of the most difficult and cutting-edge environmental issues of the day, including: sustainable energy and climate change, urban agriculture and farming, water resource protection, conservation and land use, and citizen enforcement and participation in regulatory and judicial proceedings. The fellowship focuses on building the next generation of influential attorneys, judges, and academics specializing in public interest environmental law. The fellowship also provides intensive opportunities to develop clinical education skills. The next Turner Environmental Law Clinic Fellowship will begin mid-August 2013 and continue through August 2014.

The Turner Environmental Law Clinic fellow will work under the supervision of Clinic faculty on a variety of projects that will include, at a minimum, the following:

• Supervise students in the Turner Environmental Law Clinic and assist with teaching in the Clinic’s seminar class.
• Represent the Clinic’s clients in complex civil litigation and transactional matters, while working closely with co-counsel, expert witnesses, and municipal leaders.
• Collaborate with Clinic faculty on environmental law and research projects.

The fellow may also choose to research and write at least one article, policy paper, or other approved project of publishable quality on a topic relating to environmental law.

The application deadline is February 28, 2013. For more information, view the full job listing at PSJD.org (log-in required)!

With nine offices throughout the state, Legal Services Alabama (LSA) is a nonprofit organization dedicated to providing access to justice and free quality civil legal assistance to educate and empower Alabama’s low-income communities. LSA handles civil cases only, and issues span family law, public benefits, elder law, disaster relief, and more.

The Birmingham office currently has a vacancy available for a staff attorney to help provide legal representation to low-income citizens in judicial and administrative proceedings. Qualifications include admission to the Alabama State Bar, computer proficiency and experience working with low-income populations. Bilingual applicants are encouraged.

For more information on salary and application instructions, view the full job listing at PSJD.org (log-in required).

Feeling uninspired by your public interest job hunt? PSJD has a tip: try using social media to liven things up. Sure, social media is a great way to stay connected with friends, but it can also be a powerful career development tool!

Most people know the basics of using LinkedIn to advance their careers, but many may not know about using Twitter for professional purposes. Twitter provides a digital platform to expand your network, display a working knowledge relevant to a specific field, share news and developments, and cultivate your very own personal brand.

So you want to learn how? Start by checking out these “3 Bite-Size Tips for Using Twitter in a Job Search” from U.S. News & World Report (which we’ve “bitten” down even more):

Tip No. 1: Create a Twitter handle that articulates your value. This may simply mean using your name, particularly if your personal brand and unique value are highly connected to your name. So, @JaneDDoe may just be the perfect draw to brand you. However, if your brand is better exuded through a descriptive representation of what you do, whom you serve, how you serve, and so forth, then consider drawing a visual word picture. The challenge: Creating this handle to represent your brand in just a 15-character limit. But you can meet that challenge. It just takes thought and brainstorming.

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Tip No. 2: Follow a couple dozen people and begin sharing their content. This can start as simply as researching four or five of your favorite colleagues on Twitter and then following them. Tag along a few of the people they follow. Read through their tweets. Select a resonating tweet and share it using the “retweet” button. Or, better yet, create a personal introduction to the tweet and customize your share.

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Tip No. 3. Tweet your own content. Once you get the hang of tweeting, consider developing your own original tweets. If you author a blog or guest post on other blogs, then it would be natural to share that content. If this isn’t the case, then create 140-character tips that apply to your area of expertise. So, for example, if you are a sales professional, you may want to prepare a sales tip to help your followers sell better, or you could share one thing not to do when trying to close a deal. In other words, consider what’s in it for the follower before composing a tweet, then offer practical advice they can immediately implement.

Click here to read the full article. If you’re still looking for more info on using social media during the public interest job hunt, you can also check out our #PSJDChat on the same topic. Happy job hunting!

Headquartered in Portland, the Oregon Law Center provides free civil legal services to low-income individuals. Their mission is to achieve justice for low income communities of Oregon by providing a full range of the highest quality civil legal services.

Their office currently has a vacancy for a staff attorney. From the PSJD job listing:

Oregon Law Center (OLC) seeks a bilingual (Spanish/English) staff attorney for its Farmworker Program to focus on issues affecting employment and other priority issues for agricultural workers in Oregon including health and safety and unlawful discrimination.

OLC does not receive funding from the federal Legal Services Corporation.

The Farmworker Program of the OLC consists of attorneys and community educators whose focus is statewide and who specialize in representing farmworkers. The client-based priorities are employment, housing for farmworkers, individual rights and occupational health and safety. The majority of our clients speak Spanish or one of the indigenous languages native to the southern states of Mexico, such as Mixteco, Triqui or Zapoteco. They experience a wide variety of legal problems, including unpaid wages, poor working conditions including exposure to pesticides, unsafe housing, sexual harassment and other forms of discrimination, and retaliation for the exercise of their legal rights.

The attorney in this position is expected to engage in a combination of impact litigation and service cases, with a significant emphasis on impact work in state and federal courts. An important aspect of this position is to engage in intensive community outreach together with community educators involving educational presentations to groups of farmworkers and visits to migrant labor camps. The practice requires the ability to handle irregular hours, travel, and to work creatively and collaboratively both internally and with other community partners. The attorney in this position is expected to handle cases originating from all agricultural areas of the state.

Recent law graduates are welcome to apply. The application deadline is February 25, 2013. For more information, view the full job listing at PSJD.org (log-in required).

Want to talk to LGBT-friendly recruiters from law firms, government agencies and LGBT rights groups? Check out this information about the upcoming Lavendar Law Conference & Career Fair in San Francisco:

The National LGBT Bar Association’s annual Lavender Law® Career Fair is designed to achieve a sense of community and inclusion for LGBT candidates within the legal profession’s recruiting efforts. By participating in this career fair, candidates will talk directly to LGBT-friendly recruiters from law firms, government agencies, LGBT rights groups, and corporate legal departments.

• Candidates are encouraged to discuss their identity and their aspirations to become part of a bias-free work environment.
• Sponsors are encouraged to take this opportunity to showcase their diversity efforts to top level law students and lateral candidates from around the country.

Please note that the National LGBT Bar Association will be hosting two webchat sessions in advance of the Career Fair.  These live, interactive web-based discussions are designed to help law students efficiently and effectively navigate the Career Fair and Conference.  During the chats students can ask questions of experienced Lavender Law career advisors and LGBT Bar staff.

The Lavender Law® Career Fair kicks off with a panel of legal practitioners with experience working in government, non-profit, small and large firms. The panel will be guided by a law career services professional will discuss the tools, considerations and critical aspects to find, research and evaluate LGBT-friendly employers in each of these legal arenas.

Over 450 candidates and 160 recruiters representing law firms, government agencies and non-profit organizations interested in diversity were present at the 2012 career fair in Washington, DC.

Visit the Lavendar Law Career Fair website for more information on registration and recruitment, including tips on how to get the most out of your experience!

Philadelphia Legal Assistance (PLA) is the federally funded legal services provider for Philadelphia County. They provide a wide range of legal services to Philadelphia’s indigent community, including community education, advice, referral, pro se assistance, and representation at administrative hearings and at all levels of state and federal courts.

PLA is currently accepting applications for a Consumer Housing Unit Attorney. From the PSJD job listing:

PLA will consider applications from experienced attorneys who will be immediately available, as well as from recent or prospective graduates who will be available no later than September 2013.

PLA is a no profit legal services organization primarily funded by the federal Legal Services Corporation. PLA serves approximately 7,500 clients each year in the areas of family law, public benefits and consumer housing.

PLA is looking to add an attorney to a unit that presently consists of three attorneys and eight paralegals – six of whom are dedicated to the Save Your Home Philly Hotline, which PLA runs with funding from the City of Philadelphia Office of Housing and Community Development. The Unit primarily represents low income homeowners who are in danger of losing their homes to foreclosure. We are looking for an attorney who will help us expand our ability to bring affirmative litigation on behalf of such homeowners and to devise more efficient models for representation. Part of the attorney’s responsibility may include supervising a housing clinic sponsored by one of the area law schools.

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Recent and prospective law school graduates as well as experienced attorneys are encouraged to apply. The successful candidate will have an exemplary academic record and a commitment to excellence, as well as a demonstrated commitment to the legal services and to protecting and advancing the rights of the most vulnerable members of society. Excellent litigation skills, including trial skills, writing ability, oral advocacy and appellate advocacy, are essential. Creativity, tenacity, compassion, empathy, the ability to work long hours, learn quickly and work well with co-workers and with clients are qualities that will be highly regarded in the selection process. The ability to speak and write Spanish effectively is an advantage, though not essential.

A working knowledge of bankruptcy law, consumer protection law, contracts law, property law and the UCC will be helpful.

The application deadline is February 18, 2013. For more information, view the full job listing at PSJD.org (log-in required).

If you are a lawyer or law student interested in learning from world-renowned experts of mental health and law, this one’s for you!

For four years, the Mental Disability Advocacy Center (MDAC) in Budapest, Hungary in collaboration with Ortiz Law Firm has hosted the Mental Disability Law in Practice summer school, a two-week program organized to broaden knowledge on legal advocacy and connect an international network of disability-focused human rights leaders. Participants include attorneys, non-practicing lawyers, NGO staff and board members, legislators, activists, policy experts, PhD candidates and law students. Those with disabilities are especially encouraged to apply, with a focus on those with experience of intellectual or psycho-social disabilities.

The program will focus extensively on mental disability law in Central and Eastern Europe, Africa and India, and applicants from all over the world are welcome to apply. Participating faculty in human rights advocacy, teaching and programming specific to these regions.

Deadline to apply is February 15, 2013. Click here to visit the MDAC website for more information!

New York Lawyers for the Public Interest is a nonprofit civil rights law firm committed to advancing equality and civil rights through community lawyering and partnerships with the private bar. If you have an interest in coalition-building, organizing, environmental issues and legal, policy, and administrative advocacy, keep on reading:

New York Lawyers for the Public Interest (NYLPI) is seeking applications for a staff attorney in its Environmental Justice Program.

The Environmental Justice Program takes on issues ranging from the systemic overburdening of low income communities of color with polluting facilities, to the presence of dangerous toxins in public schools, to environmentally just community development. The attorney will take on existing campaigns, including advocacy related to the siting of schools on contaminated land. The attorney also will have ample opportunity to lead and collaborate on new campaigns.

NYLPI pioneered the practice of community lawyering in the five boroughs of New York City. With every case and every campaign, we continue to develop an ambitious, participatory, and dynamic approach to working with marginalized communities. Our work draws on a range of strengths: firm community partnerships; effective organizing; media savvy; effective legislative advocacy; and bold, creative approaches to litigation. The attorney will work both independently and in collaboration with other attorneys, community organizers, and media and lobbying consultants.

Successful applicants will have excellent strategic judgment and experience working with community members and community based organizations, along with a commitment to environmental justice or racial justice work. The application deadline is February 20, 2013. For more information, view the full job listing at PSJD.org (log-in required).

Staten Island Legal Services seeks an attorney for its newly formed Disaster Relief Unit.  The job involves advising and representing people who have been affected by the storm in the following types of cases: housing, FEMA appeals, Disaster Unemployment Assistance appeals, and a wide variety of other issues, including insurance problems and questions related to home repairs. The position will include community outreach. This is a one-year position subject to renewal depending on the availability of funding.

Qualifications

• Must be admitted to NY Bar and possess excellent analytical and writing skills

• Experience working with low-income clients

• Superb organizational and communication skills

View the full job announcement on PSJD (login required).

By: Steve Grumm

Happy Friday, folks, from a windy but otherwise beautiful Washington, DC.  I hope your week is wrapping up well.  Ever felt the solo-driver’s frustration at not being able to use the carpool lane?  Ever experienced Bay Area traffic?  Ever wondered for what purposes a corporation is a person?  Mix ’em all together and you get this: “Jonathan Frieman…failed to convince a Marin County Superior Court jurist Monday after he argued that he was not alone when a California Highway Patrol officer pulled him over…while driving in the carpool lane.  Instead, Frieman admitted that he had reached onto the passenger’s seat and handed the officer papers of incorporation connected to his family’s charity foundation.  By Frieman’s estimation, if corporations are indeed persons as was first established in the 1886 Supreme Court case Santa Clara County vs. Southern Pacific Railroad Co., and he offered evidence that a corporation was traveling inside his vehicle – riding shotgun, of course – then two people were in his car.”  Brilliant!

It’s perhaps fitting that Mr. Frieman bears a close resemblance to the highly eccentric Detective John Munch, a character from the old crime drama Homicide: Life on the Street.  For those of you too young to remember Homicide, it was a gritty, critically acclaimed show based on a book by David Simon, who went on to create HBO’s even grittier, even more acclaimed The Wire.  For those of you too young to remember The Wire, well you are indeed too young.

Moving ever closer to topical relevance, it’s noteworthy that officials in New York State are looking at the importance of law school’s third year.  From the National Law Journal:  “Legal educators and top New York state court officials will gather on January 18 to discuss whether to allow candidates to sit for the New York state bar examination after just two years in law school. The idea was floated by Samuel Estreicher, a professor at New York University School of Law, who believes skyrocketing law school tuition and diminishing job prospects for new lawyers have created a climate favorable to reform.”  Here’s a New York Times op-ed co-authored by Professor Estreicher, making the case for change.

One more preliminary: we hosted a webinar this week for law students, focused on drafting the best cover letters and resumes for the summer public interest job search.  The webinar’s archived here.  Critics rave: “The most riveting one-hour spectacle since The Wire!”  On Tuesday, 1/22, at Noon Eastern, our friends at Equal Justice Works are taking the reins to present a webinar on interviewing and networking.  Learn more and register here.

Okay, this week’s public interest and access to justice news in very brief:

• NYC’s Legal Aid Society returns to lower Manhattan office after extended Sandy displacement;
• the Last Resort Exoneration Project is up and running at Seton Hall Law;
• pro bono’s down Down Under;
• IOLTA FDIC insurance change explained;
• is law school pro bono’s future bright?;
• in Gideon’s 50th anniversary year, a criminal justice reform proposal;
• LSC’s TIG conference;
• Super Music Bonus!

The summaries:

• 1.16.13 -“The Legal Aid Society is finally home again.  Hundreds of staffers returned to their headquarters on Tuesday, 2-1/2 months after Superstorm Sandy damaged the building at 199 Water Street and forced them to seek other office space.  The group found refuge at Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom and at Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison, as well as at Legal Aid’s other satellite offices around the city.  The telephone lines remain out of service, but everything else is back to normal, said spokeswoman Pat Bath.  Legal Services NYC and the New York Legal Assistance Group also were displaced by Sandy but have already returned to their offices.  NYLAG’s staff members were housed at UJA-Federation of New York and at a host of law firms around the city before remanning their office at 7 Hanover Square last Thursday, said president Yisroel Schulman.  Legal Services was forced out of its downtown offices for about a week, with most of its lawyers moving to its Harlem office.”  (Story from Thomson-Reuters.)

• 1.16.13 – “In the last 15 years, eight people have been exonerated in New Jersey, the majority with DNA evidence….  In an effort to bring more of these cases to light, the Last Resort Exoneration Project at Seton Hall University School of Law was established to offer pro bono legal services. It is the first and only program dedicated exclusively to the convicted innocent in New Jersey.  The Last Resort Exoneration Project recently filed its first petition…”  (Story from PolitickerNJ.com.)

• 1.14.12 – “The Legal Services Expenditure Report 2011-2012 found that more than half of the top 30 Australasian firms reporting in both 2011 and 2012 registered a decline in pro bono work.  According to the web site Legal Business Online, the report also found that only 11 of the 46 firms that reported their 2012 figures hit the aspirational target of 38 hours of pro bono work per lawyer.”  (Story from the Global Legal Post.)

• 1.14.13 – “With Congress failing to take action to extend unlimited coverage, as of Jan.1, 2013, FDIC insurance available to IOLTA accounts is limited to the standard amount of $250,000 per owner of the funds (client), per financial institution, assuming that the account is properly designated as a trust account and proper accounting of each client’s funds is maintained.”  (This blog post from the Washington State Bar Association goes on to explain how insurance coverage for IOLTA funds has generally reverted back to the pre-Dodd Frank norm.)

• 1.11.13 – David Udell and Liz Tobin Tyler look toward the future of law student pro bono: “Law students have long been key players in important pro bono legal assistance efforts. They engage in a range of access to justice activities―working with mentoring attorneys on pro bono cases, staffing court pro se assistance programs, providing community legal education, and more. But the announcement last spring by the New York Court of Appeals of a 50 hour pro bono requirement for applicants to the New York Bar has brought the role of law student pro bono work into the foreground like never before. What is the role of law student pro bono in addressing the growing justice gap? In providing law students with practical legal skills? In instilling a professional responsibility for pro bono service in new attorneys? The effect of the New York rule―on the focus and structure of existing and developing law school pro bono programs, on law school accreditation standards, and on other state access to justice reform efforts―remains to be seen, but a significant impact seems likely. This article describes current law school pro bono program goals and structures, highlights key elements of the New York pro bono rule, and posits some of the potential implications of this first-of-its kind rule.”  (Full piece on the Bloomberg Law site.)

• 1.8.13 – “The ‘perpetual crisis in indigent defense’ could be lessened by moving minor infractions—including minor drug offenses—out of the criminal justice system, according to a new report by an ABA committee and a national group of criminal defense lawyers.  The report concludes that the criminal justice system is flooded with petty infractions that could be dealt with through two front-end reforms: reclassification and diversion. In reclassification, criminal statutes are changed so that minor illegal acts are changed from criminal offenses to civil infractions that carry a fine. In diversion programs, individuals charged with low-level criminal offenses can have the charges dismissed if they perform community service, enter substance abuse treatment or follow other requirements.  The report (PDF) was released in advance of the 50th anniversary of Gideon v. Wainwright, the March 1963 U.S. Supreme Court decision finding a Sixth Amendment right to counsel.”  (Story from the ABA Journal.)

• Finally it’s noteworthy that the Legal Services Corporation this week convened the 13th Technology Initiative Grants (TIG) Conference this in Jacksonville, FL.  LSC bills the event as “the nation’s largest convening of experts and persons interested in the use of technology to address the civil legal needs of low-income Americans.”  I haven’t seen news coverage, but conference attendees are, appropriately enough, creating a record using the Twitter hashtag #lsctig.  Check out the happenings.

Music!  Tennessee’s Lucero has long been one of my favorite rock bands.  Here’s “Tears Don’t Matter Much”, their homage to some fellow songwriters and to the way that a good song can stop you dead in your tracks.  Great chorus.