What does it mean to be a “legal fellow”? Career public interest lawyers, stuck in the pre-”3 to 5 years” experience range, often gain positions as fellows. But increasingly, the term also applies to volunteer attorneys who may only stick around until the economy rebounds.

The public interest sector appears to be failing to mentor young, PI attorneys and PI attorneys-to-be. It’s an arguable proposition, but jump with me to the more important question: why this failure? Are we just un-mentorable?

I realized I had absolutely no advice about job negotiations — I’ve never negotiated a position. Even this year, as for the first time I have been in a position of not-exactly-groveling, I find myself unable to ask my kindly employers for anything.

To be anything but awkward seemed presumptuous, sometimes. What makes me good enough to be a friend, what entitles me to something beyond a professional relationship? In Waston’s (questionable) parlance, why do I get to have my own liberation, just because I’m working with you on yours?

Your J.D. is no excuse to be waiting out the recession, volunteering your skills and hoping for the right kind of opportunity. You want a paid job? Stop being elitist and whiny and pick up a plumber’s wrench already.

In this hyper-impossible job market, is there ever a reason to leave a job? Or decline a job offer? The uncomfortable reality is that to walk away from a job or job offer means to seek another – to run to another, and five cover letters in, it starts to feel like any new job will do.

For those of you skipping lunch and dinner the same week you are diligently paying off student loans, these improvements couldn’t come about any faster.

South Asian-American women social justice lawyers are perched firmly on the cutting-edge, pursuing some of the most innovative litigation and advocacy on immigrants’ rights, counterterrorism abuses, and workers’ rights known to Man. How’d that happen?

Following up on last week’s post on the scary state of public interest law, TeamGG is happy to offer the viewpoint of a legal aid attorney currently looking for a new job. The funding stream supporting her salary is “evaporating.” She wishes to remain anonymous to avoid jeopardizing employment prospects in her current search.
As an [...]

When I see what’s happening in the world of public interest law, I feel like I’m living out the trailer to a horror film. First it was zombies, now it’s aliens, and here I am in blood-and-dirt-stained H&M biz-cas attire, running breathlessly toward an elusive exit, hoping I can defuse a student-loan bomb before [...]