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September 19, 2008
Did You Miss Public Interest Theme Week?
Get your recap right here! The week was filled with great advice and shared experiences from both students and attorneys working in the public interest.
The week started on Tuesday with the Attorney Panel. Attorneys from a variety of organizations came to share their advice about the benefits of a public interest career and how to find out if a career in public interest is right for you. The attorneys shared their favorite things about their jobs, which included the positive impact they make on their clients and their communities, the opportunity to get litigation experience right away, and the opportunity to begin working directly with clients from Day One. The Public Defender panelist perhaps summed up best why he’s passionate about public interest work: “I’m doing the civic work that we expect highly educated people in our society to be doing.” When asked to share their advice for how get started in public interest, the attorneys unanimously encouraged students to talk to their professors, attend programs focused on the public interest, join organizations of interest to them, and seek out volunteer opportunities.
Speaking of volunteer opportunities, the Legal Aid Society of Cleveland paid a visit on Wednesday to talk about their Brief Advice Clinics and the opportunities students have to serve as intake volunteers. As a volunteer, students conduct brief interviews with each client to gather general information about their legal problem and then briefs the volunteer attorney on the issues. The student then gets to sit in on the meeting between the client and volunteer attorney, which is a great way to learn interviewing skills, client relation skills, issue-spotting skills, and more. To learn more about the Brief Advice Clinics and to sign up as a volunteer, stop by the CSO and ask for the contact information.
Your fellow students were the panelists for Thursday’s Student Panel as they talked about their summer experiences – where they worked, what they did, how they found their jobs, what sort of funding they received, etc. The common theme among the student panelists was that they all felt they’d spent their summer not only getting fantastic experience In research, drafting, client intake, interviewing, and oral advocacy, but also getting the job satisfaction of getting to follow a case from start to finish, of helping someone that nobody else wanted to help, and of making a difference in their communities.
Public Interest Theme Week wrapped up today with a session about Equal Justice Works and the Equal Justice Works Conference taking place in Washington, D.C. on October 10-11, 2008. If you missed any of these sessions, please stop by the CSO to pick up copies of the handouts and speak to a CSO Counselor.
Posted by kcc17 at September 19, 2008 02:53 PM