Guest blogger Leocadie Welling is currently a 2L at HLS.
During my nearly two years at HLS, I have been involved in public interest through a few different avenues. One of my favorite experiences in public service, and in law school overall, was my 1L summer job with the City of New York. I worked in the Environmental Division of the City’s Law Department and I had a truly great experience. I worked on a variety of projects, ranging from short-term projects intended to answer a discrete litigation-related question question to a long-term research memo that allowed me to be more self-directed.
Working for New York City was particularly exciting for me because I grew up in the New York area, went to New York University as an undergraduate and lived in Manhattan for two years between college and law school. I love New York and it was really fun to work on projects that have great significance for the City, such as litigation over the City’s effort to encourage the use of hybrid taxicabs.
The New York City Law Department is quite large and is divided up into many divisions, which handle legal matters in specified areas of law (such as the Tort, Pensions, etc.). My division, the Environmental Division, is on the smaller side in terms of the number of attorneys who work within it. The attorneys were great both at supervising me and the other summer intern in my division and at being considerate about making us feel like part of the team. Substantively, I was able to gain invaluable environmental law experience by working on projects that fell within several of the major environmental statutes, including the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act and the Endangered Species Act. I worked primarily on litigation matters, but also had the opportunity to observe negotiations. And my litigation work was not confined exclusively to desk work — I also observed oral arguments and pre-trial hearings.
In addition to the very fulfilling work that I did, the Law Department ensured that its interns had an exceptionally fun summer. Every week, the Law Department hosted a seminar for the interns featuring an impressive speaker. The speakers included attorneys from within the Law Department, who gave overviews of current important work they were doing, and outside speakers, such as a state court judge and the head of the New York City Department of Transportation. We not only had interesting speakers come to us, we also left the office to sample some amazing New York City experiences. I visited an NYPD training facility, toured City Hall, attended social events with interns and attorneys from other divisions, went to a barbecue at Gracie Mansion where I had a photo taken with Mayor Bloomberg, and toured a wastewater treatment plant, which might not sound appealing to some people, but was fascinating for someone interested in the environment. All of those experiences were fantastic, but my favorite event was touring Grand Central Terminal. Grand Central is the most beautiful and impressive building in New York, in my opinion, and we got to see some of its many secrets.
Luckily, my work with the New York City Law Department did not have to end when I returned to HLS because I am a member of Professor Frug’s popular Green New York class. The class runs for an entire school year and includes a seminar component in the fall and a clinical in the spring. The seminar was led in part by attorneys from the Law Department, who taught classes about many of the environmental issues facing the City. Class members also became familiar with PlaNYC, which is New York City’s ambitious plan to become a greener city and address climate change. Currently, through the clinical component of the course, class members are working with attorneys in the Law Department. I am once again lucky in that I have been able to continue working on one of the projects I started last summer.
HLS resources have been very helpful throughout this experience: I learned about the Law Department from an HLS student and worked with an OPIA advisor during my job search last year. And the connection between public interest in New York City and HLS seems to be going strong: I have been contacted by several 1Ls this year who are interested in being Law Department interns.
– Lee
