CATEGORY - PUBLIC INTEREST CAREER RESOURCES

March 2, 2010

Cornell Law Begins Post-Grad Fellowships for Study of Disadvantaged

By virtue of a multimillion dollar gift, Cornell University announced last week that it is creating three postgraduate fellowships, of which one or two, on a rotating basis, will be awarded to a Cornell Law School graduate interested in public interest law.

Operating on a two-year timetable, the Frank H.T. Rhodes Public Interest Law Fellowships will be administered by the school’s dean and will be awarded to graduates working for nonprofit and human rights organizations.  The $5 million funding for the fellowships comes from The Atlantic Philanthropies, a group focused on aiding “disadvantaged and vulnerable people.”  Rhodes was an Atlantic board member after serving as the university’s president for nearly two decades.

“This gift comes at a crucial time,” said Karen Comstack, the law school’s assistant dean for public service, “as the current recession has forced organizations to cut funding for legal services to those who can least afford to lose them.”  Comstack said fellowship recipients will gain experience while delivering legal services to “the poor, the elderly, the homeless and those deprived of their civil rights.”

The announcement follows our blog post Monday, in which Cornell Law was among four programs singled out by National Jurist for its multifaceted support of public interest law.

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# posted by admin @ 12:00 pm in Law School News, Public Interest Career Resources, School: Cornell

March 1, 2010

Article Lauds 4 Law Schools for Public Interest Programs

An article in the February issue of National Jurist magazine has singled out four law school programs — Boston University School of Law, Brooklyn Law School, Cornell University Law School, and the University of Maryland School of Law — for their “A+ public interest support.”

The programs are all briefly profiled in the article, and also are said to have certain unifying aspects: financial and emotional support from administration, faculty and staff; an office or administrator “solely devoted” to public interest law; a “large and vast array” of projects; some sort of social network for students exploring public interest law; and “orientation programs, welcome receptions and recognition awards.”

“If you present opportunities, students are very interested in public service.  It’s a case of, ‘If you build it, they will come,’” said Maura Kelly, BU School of Law’s assistant dean for career development and public service, to the Jurist.

In selecting the four law schools, the magazine used data from the non-profit organization, Equal Justice Works, while also indicating the extent to which broad-based support for public interest law is on the rise among law schools.  For example, the number of loan repayment assistance programs has nearly doubled since 2002, and the percent of employed law graduates who take public interest positions has risen from 3 percent in 2000 to 5.4 percent in 2008.

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# posted by admin @ 8:00 am in Law School News, Public Interest Career Resources, School: Boston University, School: Brooklyn, School: Cornell, School: Maryland

February 11, 2010

To Replace Suspended Program, Harvard Law Enacts Public Service Venture Fund

Harvard Law School announced Tuesday that it is launching the Public Service Venture Fund to aid graduates who wish to enter careers in public interest law.

The program, which begins with a $1 million annual budget, provides funding for graduating students who want to create their own non-profit ventures and salary support for those who want to work at existing non-profits or government agencies.  Interested students will have to submit detailed proposals to receive the grants.

Said Dean Martha Minow in a school statement: “It’s an investment that will pay dividends not only for our students but also for the countless number of people whose lives they will touch during their public service careers.”

The program takes the place of the Public Service Initiative, which was suspended amid much discussion in December.  The initiative was suspended so that its funding could be reallocated for financial aid, which was due to be decreased as a result of the university’s overall endowment losses in 2008.

At the time of its suspension, the Public Service Initiative had an annual budget of $3 million.  Though the venture fund is commencing with a smaller budget, Dean Minow said the law school will raise additional resources.

In addition to the two programs, other steps have been made by Harvard Law to address interest in public service careers.  The school has established 12 public service fellowships and expanded its Low Income Protection Plan.  According to the press release, the law school has increased public service financial support this year by $2.75 million.

The venture fund will be directed by a board of Harvard Law alumni who have prospered in public service careers.

“Through this new venture fund, Harvard Law is moving forward with an idea that I think is absolutely necessary to this nation’s future success,” said alum Alan Khazei, who launched Boston’s City Year, an organization he says was “born at Harvard.”

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# posted by admin @ 3:00 pm in Law School News, Public Interest Career Resources, School: Harvard

January 27, 2010

Northwestern Law Follows Trend in Enhancing Public Service Loan Forgiveness

Following in the footsteps of certain peers, Northwestern University School of Law has become the latest top-tier program to enhance its public service loan forgiveness alongside federal initiatives.

The move, outlined Tuesday in a school press release, follows Berkeley School of Law and Georgetown University Law Center, respectively, in offering full federal loan forgiveness for graduates who work in public interest law for ten years.  As with the other schools, Northwestern’s plan dovetails off of federal loan modifications outlined in 2007’s College Cost Reduction Act and is individually tailored in accordance with debt and salary levels.

Additionally, the law school’s forgiveness program offers assistance over the first five years after graduation, thereby ensuring that alumni can still chip away at outstanding loans should life circumstances push them out of public interest law.

This new loan forgiveness plan goes into immediate effect, and is also available retroactively for Northwestern Law’s last two graduating classes.

For more information, recall that we covered Berkeley’s loan forgiveness announcement in September and Georgetown’s in November.

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# posted by admin @ 12:00 pm in Law School News, Public Interest Career Resources, School: Northwestern

December 29, 2009

Trivia Tuesday: Harvard Law School’s Low Income Protection Plan (LIPP)

Welcome back to Trivia Tuesday, Clear Admit’s weekly exploration into a leading law school.  Today we’re considering the Low Income Protection Plan (LIPP), Harvard Law School’s financial aid incentive program offered to encourage students to pursue public interest employment after graduation.

Like many leading law schools, HLS has developed a loan-repayment assistance program for students who secure full-time post-graduate employment in the government, non-profit organizations or academia.  Harvard’s program allows participants to pay a much smaller percentage of salary toward annual law school loan payments than they would on their own, with LIPP covering the difference.  LIPP requires no up front commitment to the public sector, which makes it one of the most generous loan forgiveness schemes offered by any leading law school.  Another distinguishing feature is that unlike most of its peers, HLS does not restrict participation in LIPP just to graduates who take public sector jobs.  Instead, some private sector occupations, such as clerkships and active Ph.D. study, also allow graduates to qualify for LIPP assistance.

In the past several years, HLS has affirmed its commitment to helping graduates find work in the public sector by offering LIPP as well as other programs designed to alleviate the financial burden of student loans.  The most radical of these was the Public Service Initiative (PSI), which offered students the chance to have their 3L tuition paid in return for a commitment to taking a public service job after graduation.  As we reported on December 2, the program will be suspended in 2011 because demand for the program outstripped the resources HLS had allocated for it and HLS is currently in the process of making significant budget cuts to deal with massive losses suffered by Harvard University’s endowment during the recession.  Despite the loss of PSI, which was only initiated in 2008, HLS renewed its commitment to LIPP and its Summer Public Interest Funding program, extending loan-repayment assistance to graduates whose private law firm jobs had been deferred and prolonging the maximum number of weeks students can take advantage of summer funding.

For more information about LIPP and Harvard’s other financial aid programs, be sure to consult the Clear Admit Law School Guide for Harvard Law School!

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# posted by admin @ 8:00 am in Public Interest Career Resources, School: Harvard, Trivia Tuesday

November 18, 2009

Online Resource Compares Law Schools on Public Interest Components

With initiatives benefitting public interest law on the rise - as evident by our post yesterday on the news that Georgetown is enhancing loan repayment assistance - an updated online guide is appropriate for prospective law school applicants.

The Equal Justice Works’ Guide to Law Schools, a biennial resource for law school public service information, has released its newest edition this fall.  The current version features school-reported data from more than 150 American law schools.

Catalogued in an article by the ABA Journal, the guide’s profiles feature a school’s available public interest courses and clinics, applicable student groups, field placement, pro bono and fellowship opportunities, pertinent career data, and a program’s public interest staff information, among other topics.

Further, though the guide does not believe in ranking law schools, the online resource does offer the ability to compare various programs side-by-side based on certain metrics, including tuition, average debt and public interest engagement.

To visit the Equal Justice Works Guide, click here.  Applicants should remember, however, that the school-reported data stems from 2007 and that many programs have since altered their loan repayment assistance and curricula, as examples.

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# posted by admin @ 12:00 pm in Law School News, Public Interest Career Resources

November 17, 2009

Federal Law Allows Georgetown to Increase Loan Repayment Assistance for Public Interest Graduates

As outlined in a school press release last week, Georgetown University Law Center announced immediate reform of its Loan Assistance Repayment Program (LRAP) to ease the financial burden for graduates in public interest legal positions.

With tuition costs rising and economic conditions curtailing private law opportunities, Georgetown’s LRAP changes work in conjunction with the federal government’s newly-established Public Service Loan Forgiveness Program.

Specifically, for graduates employed by government agencies or non-profits, these two programs allow those working for ten years and for incomes of up to $75,000 to borrow the total cost of tuition and subsequently have those loans forgiven.  For public interest graduates with salaries above $75,000, Georgetown’s LRAP benefits exist on a diminishing basis.

“Our new loan forgiveness program, together with the federal plan, will enable [our graduates] to pursue long-term careers in these [public interest] fields without becoming burdened by student loan repayment,” said Dean T. Alexander Aleinikoff.

This is not the first story of its kind coming out of top-tier law schools: Earlier this admissions season in this space, we passed along a development from UC Berkeley Boalt Hall School of Law, as the administration there was similarly able to “piggyback” on federal loan modifications to offer enhanced loan repayment help to public interest graduates.  Boalt’s program now allows for up to ten years of unlimited assistance for alums making less than $65,000.

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# posted by admin @ 12:00 pm in Law School News, Public Interest Career Resources, School: Berkeley / Boalt, School: Georgetown

October 13, 2009

Trivia Tuesday: Columbia’s Center for Public Interest Law

Welcome to the second installment in our occasional series on public interest career resources offered by leading U.S. law schools. Today we take a look at Columbia University Law School’s Center for Public Interest Law (CPIL), which was created in 1993 from a joint partnership between the Office of Career Services and the school’s famous Social Justice Program. Given Columbia’s long history of commitment to public interest law, from its innovative clinical program to its support of the nearly two dozen public interest-related student organizations at CLS, CPIL was created to concentrate the school’s expanding efforts in the realm of public interest law under the jurisdiction of a single office. Students interested in public interest law are urged to avail themselves of the center’s comprehensive guidance throughout their time at CLS, from constructing a schedule containing public interest courses, pursuing extracurricular opportunities and exploring career options available to them.

CPIL defines public interest broadly, offering its services not only to students who seek to work for NGOs and non-profit organizations, but also to those interested in criminal prosecution and defense, judicial clerkships, law teaching and government agencies. CPIL provides a range of services for students who seek to secure public interest internships and jobs, including job and internship search help, and guaranteed summer funding to students who have secured an unpaid internship position. CPIL also helps students who are in the process of exploring career interests by organizing split summer opportunities, in which students spend part of the summer working for a private law firm and another part working for a public interest organization. CLS even has a long-standing exclusive split summer program with the multi-national private law firm Sidley Austin.

The most popular of CPIL’s offerings are its summer funding programs. Aimed mostly at 1Ls, though 2Ls who do not secure employment at a law firm are also free to take advantage of these programs, CPIL guarantees summer funding for 1Ls and 2Ls seeking to participate in a public interest or government organization. Among the most prestigious of these is the Human Rights Internship Program (HRIP). Started by former director-counsel of the NAACP Jack Greenberg, who is best known for being the lawyer who argued Brown v. Board of Education in front of the Supreme Court, HRIP provides forty students each year with full funding to intern with a human rights-related legal organization almost anywhere in the world. Past HRIP stipends have supported students who helped draft South Africa’s constitution, taken on management roles at legal aid organizations in war-torn countries and conduct research into the state of Sri Lankan prisons. Interested students apply during 1L and receive extensive training on human rights law and country-specific procedures prior to embarking on their HRIP trip.

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# posted by admin @ 8:59 am in Public Interest Career Resources, School: Columbia, Trivia Tuesday

September 7, 2009

Berkeley Improves Public Interest Loan Forgiveness Program

Buoyed by federal modifications, the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law announced Thursday that it will lessen the financial burden of alumni participating in the school’s Loan Repayment Assistance Program (LRAP).

After passage of the College Cost Reduction and Access Act in July, LRAP was able to “piggyback” its program onto the government bill to provide assistance to more graduates at a lower cost.

Beginning in 2010, the reformed LRAP will offer up to ten years of unlimited assistance for Boalt alumni making less than $65,000 a year at non-profit public interest or government positions.  This assistance applies to law school debt and some undergraduate debt.  Currently, LRAP is capped at $100,000 of assistance and applies to alumni making less than $58,000.

In a press release Thursday, the School of Law’s Dean, Christopher Edley Jr., spoke highly of LRAP’s expanded resources.

“This latest improvement further enables our public-minded graduates to pursue their career passions unburdened by debt,” said Edley.  ”It’s imperative that we give them the financial freedom to help the disadvantaged and to contribute to the advancement of the broader community.”

LRAP’s expansion also provides participants with up to six months of support for family leave.  In addition to graduates toward the bottom of the pay scale, alumni making between $65,000 and $100,000 will continue to be eligible for proportional repayment.

While LRAP can be applied to a wide swath of positions, including public defenders, legislative staff and multi-year clerkships, Berkeley also added one-year clerkships to the list of jobs that qualify for repayment, provided that graduates work in qualifying employment for three years afterward.

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# posted by admin @ 7:59 am in Law School News, Public Interest Career Resources, School: Berkeley / Boalt

August 14, 2009

Public Interest Law Career Support: Harvard

Though many students are initially drawn to law school out of a sincere desire to help underserved populations, high tuition costs and the pressure to secure a high-paying job after graduation to pay down loans frequently induce students to abandon their dreams of public service.  To encourage students to use their legal education to help others, many leading law schools have established advising centers providing a wealth of resources to students interested in a career in public interest law.  Through these centers, students can access career counseling, help in locating summer internships and post-graduation employment, as well as make use of loan forgiveness programs to make it possible for students to accept a job at a public interest organization.  In an effort to show applicants and current students some of the resources that exist to help them achieve their public interest career goals, we’re launching a series in which we’ll share information about the various avenues of support available to students at leading law schools who are interested in working for a non-profit or other public interest organization.  First up on our docket is Harvard’s Bernard Koteen Office of Public Interest Advising (OPIA).

The OPIA at HLS provides students with a host of resources to help them locate potential employers, hone relevant job skills and supports them throughout their job search.  OPIA hosts events throughout the year, such as interviewing workshops, panel discussions about various public sector careers and public interest job fairs, that are very well-attended.  Many students also choose to take advantage of OPIA Attorney Advisors, practicing attorneys who are available to meet throughout the year to give students advice about finding a job in the advisor’s field.  Current advisors have experience with organizations such as Manhattan’s Legal Aid Office, the National Institutes of Health and the American Red Cross, and can give students a glimpse into the day-to-day life of a public interest lawyer.  Students are also encouraged to meet with the Wasserstein Public Interest Fellows, who are also practicing attorneys working in public interest who visit HLS for a few days during the year to discuss their experiences and advise job-seeking students about finding a position in a non-profit organization or government agency.  Since 1990, Wasserstein Fellows have been guest teaching, giving speeches to classes, participating in panel discussions, sitting down with student groups and meeting with individual students to discuss public interest law careers.  The lawyers chosen to be Wasserstein Fellows are rising leaders in their field who come to HLS prepared to talk about every aspect of public interest work, from discussing the grand goals their organization hopes to accomplish to the minutiae of their workday.

OPIA also helps students who have secured public interest jobs apply for fellowship funding and loan forgiveness.  There are nine fellowships available exclusively to Harvard students who have been offered a non-paying summer internship or post-graduate employment in the public interest field.  For example, talented 3Ls who have demonstrated a passion for public interest law are eligible for the Maria, Gabriella & Robert A. Skirnick Public Interest Fellowships, which provide up to $40,000 in funding to work for one year in a non-profit organization or government agency.  HLS students who secure a public interest law position, judicial clerkship or pursue Ph.D. study are also eligible for the Low Income Protection Plan (LIPP), which covers a significant portion of their annual loan payment.

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# posted by admin @ 8:35 am in Public Interest Career Resources, School: Harvard