Legal Activists of Color: Public Advocates Seeks Spring 2007 and Summer 2007 Law Clerks

Legal Internships Spring 2007 and Summer 2007

The Firm and The Legal Internship Program:
Public Advocates challenges the systemic causes of poverty and discrimination by promoting civil rights through advocacy, litigation, and partnership with low-income communities, people of color, and immigrants. Public Advocates is best known for high impact class action litigation and increasingly for policy and legislative advocacy and coalition efforts. Our present work focuses on education equity, affordable housing, transportation equity, insurance redlining, and community economic development.

Our Legal Internship Program exposes students to the diverse strategies of our impact work in an environment geared to their development as future lawyers committed to the public interest. Interns are assigned to a supervising attorney who will have primary responsibility for giving constructive and meaningful feedback on interns' work in a positive learning environment. Public Advocates will work to ensure that interns have assignments that address a variety of skills, substantive areas and training goals. We also seek to engage students in the full range of our work to promote equity and systemic change including assisting attorneys in existing major civil rights impact litigation from development through trial and appeal, legislative, administrative, and policy advocacy, project development, and coalition building with grassroots organizations. For example, legal interns may assist in the drafting of a brief, participate in litigation meetings, attend administrative hearings, meet with policy makers, organize a public meeting or training, or build relationships in one of our coalitions.

Qualifications:
We seek law students of all levels of experience and value students who have a demonstrated commitment to working with low-income communities, communities of color, and immigrant communities. Summer interns are ordinarily expected to work 37.5 hours a week for 10 weeks, while semester interns are expected to work at least 14-16 hours a week, at least 2 days a week. The legal interns for the summer of 2006 were Carmen Aviles (USF), Cecilia Chen (Boston College), Josh Daniels (Boalt), Kevin Hsu (Georgetown), Tivonna D. Jones (Boalt), Heather Littlejohn (UCLA), Chioma Nwachukwu (University of Michigan), and Kimberly Shannon (Trinity College).

Timeline And Funding:
Applicants should provide a one- to two-page cover letter explaining (1) interests and qualifications; (2) experiences and commitment to working with low-income communities and communities of color; (3) reasons for applying to Public Advocates; and (4) whether they are volunteering or seeking academic credit or funding. In addition, include a resume, writing sample, and names of references. Send your materials to: Michelle N. Rodriguez, Director of the Legal Internship Program, at mrodriguez@publicadvocates.org (cc: Rebecca Durlin at rdurlin@publicadvocates.org). We expect to fill our summer positions by mid-February. Applicants for summer positions are considered as early as October. We prefer to fill our semester positions before the semester begins. We strongly encourage early applications. More details are available at www.publicadvocates.org, where you will also learn about fellowship opportunities.

References:
We will gladly provide former interns' names as references. We are confident our legal interns' rewarding and enriching experiences at Public Advocates will encourage other talented and committed law students to join us.