OPIA Blog

During the summer of 2012, Stephanie Berger, current 3L, worked for ten weeks at the Disability Rights Section of the DOJ Civil Rights Division. The primary job of the Disability Rights Section is to enforce the American with Disabilities Act (ADA) and use the ADA to expand civil rights.

As an intern, Stephanie was given a lot of independence and responsibility and was able to take on a wide variety of cases. She investigated employment discrimination cases and made recommendations to the DOJ. She also researched whether delays in supplying medication to prisoners with HIV was a violation of the ADA as well as investigated whether an entity was violating the ADA for refusing to provide options for a mandatory meal plan to someone with food allergies.

Beyond working on issues that interested her, Stephanie was able to hone important skills. Day to day, she considerable research and writing, greatly improving her memo writing. She was also able to develop her legal reasoning skills because she was faced with real questions of fact and not just ones manufactured in the classroom. Stephanie saw how cases were decided not just based on law, but also based on what the best outcome should be, both for the individual client and for people in the future facing that issue. She also received helpful constructive criticism and learned how to balance not just her personal responsibilities but also her responsibilities to her team.

Stephanie really enjoyed working for the DOJ and when asked, could not think of one negative thing to say about her experience. Even as a summer intern she felt like an integrated member of the team and was able to request particular issues she wanted to work on. The atmosphere was friendly, but fast-paced and she liked being involved in an agency doing cutting edge litigation in a wide variety of issues and capacities. The attorneys and interns she worked with were friendly and helpful, and she noted that attorneys seemed happy and were able to balance life and work well.

She had a phenomenal experience and highly recommends anyone to work there. Stephanie is now applying to a variety of positions for next year and hopes to work for the federal government.

Written by OPIA 1L Section Representative Nora Mahlberg

This year’s Kaufman Dinner, being held on April 12 at the Harvard Faculty Club, will feature a keynote speech by HLS alum Matthew Colangelo ’02, currently the Deputy Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights at the U.S. Department of Justice.

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Matthew Colangelo is Deputy Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights at the U.S. Department of Justice. In that capacity, Mr. Colangelo is responsible for oversight of the Division’s work in the areas of voting rights, immigration-related civil rights issues, and federal compliance with Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Before joining the Department of Justice, Mr. Colangelo was Director of the Economic Justice Group at the NAACP Legal Defense & Educational Fund. In that capacity, Mr. Colangelo managed LDF’s litigation and advocacy in the areas of employment discrimination, housing discrimination, and environmental justice. Among the matters he litigated at LDF are Lewis v. Chicago (an employment discrimination case on behalf of a class of 6,000 applicants to become Chicago firefighters); Greater New Orleans Fair Housing Action Center v. HUD (alleging discrimination in an $11 billion post-Katrina housing redevelopment program); and Holt v. City of Dickson (involving intentional race discrimination claims on behalf of an African American family whose well water was contaminated by an adjacent landfill). He originally joined LDF as a Skadden Fellow in 2003.

Mr. Colangelo graduated with honors from Harvard College and Harvard Law School, where he was Managing Editor of the Harvard Law Review and received the Gary Bellow Award for public service. He was a law clerk for the Honorable Sonia Sotomayor on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.

Before law school Matthew worked as a management consultant at Bain & Company in Boston, and as a legislative and human rights researcher at the Institute for Democracy in Cape Town, South Africa.

Nina Catalano, 3L, spent the summer of 2011 at the Center for Court Innovation (CCI), an organization that conducts research and development for the court system. The principle location is in midtown New York, although it does have smaller offices in Albany and London. CCI closely resembles the work of the Vera Institute, and the two of them often collaborate.

During the summer, Nina spent eight weeks with CCI and got to work on a variety projects. The type of work included research, programming, and serving as a consultant for judges. Nina was able to focus on the areas that interest her, so her projects involved looking into possible responses to child abuse and setting up a pilot project to do observations in juvenile delinquent hearings. Within her consultant position, Nina attended court regularly and was able to meet with several judges. Nina found her coworkers to be very open to students’ interests, but those who did not speak up about what experience they hoped to get often got stuck with the projects no one else claimed. This included two months’ of Lexis research, so Nina definitely feels that anyone who works there in the future should express his or her interests from the beginning.

Nina described CCI’s office culture as “awesome.” The staff was very observant of others’ successes and celebrations, and birthdays and weddings were frequent causes for office festivities. The office culture was very open and communal. The midtown office has about 50 people, so it is small enough to get to know most of the other employees; however, they have projects all over the city, so there are plenty of opportunities to get out and interact with others. CCI is open to 1L interns, and six out of the eight 2011 interns were 1Ls. The New York location made it very easy to get around, and CCI included a free subway pass for the months of the internship. Since the office is in New York, however, the cost of living is naturally very high.

CCI usually posts their positions for the next summer around December. Nina submitted a cover letter, resume, and writing sample, and she had a phone interview. She also stopped by in person to introduce herself when she was in New York. She spoke with a friend of a friend who had worked there the previous summer before applying, so she had a contact who had experience with the organization.

Written by OPIA 1L Section Representative Kimberly Newberry

Last summer Rachel Heron, 3L, interned with the U.S. Department of Justice, Environment and Natural Resources Division Appellate Section in Washington, D.C. The internship lived up to all her expectations and she would highly recommend the experience to anyone who is interested in appellate work and enjoys legal research and writing. Her supervisor assigned only substantive work, the attorneys she worked with offered constructive feedback, and she had the opportunity to write full appellate briefs on a range of environmental issues.

Rachel’s supervisor did an excellent job of controlling her work flow, checking in regularly, and ensuring that Rachel always had interesting projects to work on. In general the projects Rachel worked on took from several days to a week to complete. After completing a draft of a memo or brief, Rachel had the opportunity to discuss her work with the attorneys at DOJ. Instead of editing her work directly, the attorneys would talk with Rachel about how to improve her work and let her make any necessary changes. The experience helped her to strengthen her legal research and writing skills. Rachel also enjoyed working with the other intern at the Appellate Section. They were able to bounce ideas off one another and help each other to organize their thoughts despite the fact that they worked on separate projects.

One of the highlights of Rachel’s experience was getting to observe moots. Rachel is doing an oral argument for the Environmental Law and Policy Clinic this term and found her internship experience helpful in preparing for her current work with the clinic. She particularly enjoyed watching how the attorneys responded to questions and learning what arguments were most persuasive.

The attorneys at the office were mild mannered and flexible about her work hours. In general she worked from 9:30 AM to 6:00 PM each day and she only occasionally did work on the weekends. She was treated like new attorney at the office and given a great deal of responsibility right away. She would recommend taking Administrative Law, Environmental Law, or a course that covers the National Environmental Policy Act before pursuing the internship. In short, Rachel loved her experience and would recommend working at DOJ in general to anyone.

Written by OPIA 1L Section Representative Genevieve Parshalle

2L Hunter Landerholm spent the summer after his 1L year doing legal services work at Neighborhood Legal Services of Los Angeles County. While there, he worked for the housing and consumer unit and his work included evictions, Section 8 hearings, foreclosures, rent control work, habitability issues and Fair Housing Act cases, and his office was more than happy to let him pursue work in areas he was interested in.

Hunter found this work to be incredible and was happy to find that while his office was full of dedicated advocates, it was also a fun place to work. As with any legal services office, however, Hunter found the work to be challenging and emotionally draining at times. He acknowledged that it could be difficult to separate the anger or grief he felt over his clients’ problems from the professional perspective necessary for effective lawyering. While empathizing with his clients kept him passionate and his work interesting, these emotions did spill into other parts of his life.

Overall, Hunter had a great time last summer and he is hoping to pursue a career as a legal services lawyer. Along with these ambitions, Hunter’s summer experience strengthened his writing and research skills. Perhaps the best skill he honed over the summer was the art of negotiation, as he was able to convince a couple of landlords that generous settlements were in their interest.

For current 1Ls hoping to work in legal services this summer, Hunter also offers some insight into which of his 1L classes proved to be most useful. LRW helped with his writing and researching, but principles he learned in Contracts and Property also popped up. Leg Reg also helped a great deal, as did the Goldberg line of cases he covered in Civ Pro.

Written by OPIA 1L Section Representative Zack Hill

Leonard Weinglass, one of the most pre-eminent defense lawyers of his time, passed away in March. You can read his official obituary at the New York Times or the Los Angeles Times.

Legal aid organizations appear to be in the center of what the National Law Journal calls a “perfect storm” of funding and resource issues. It’s all hitting at once, according to the article.

At the root of the issues facing legal aid is IOLTA (Interest on Lawyers’ Trust Accounts) funding (a primer of what IOLTA is can be found by following this link to the ABA section on IOLTA). IOLTA is, in essence, a mechanism to provide funding to charitable organizations (such as legal aid) through interest earned on pooled trust funds that are set up by attorneys. The attorneys set up these funds because they might be obligated, for example, to hold short term funds that were provided to them in trust by their clients. Confusing? Check out the ABA sight (link above) for a more in depth perspective.

So, what’s happening to these funds? They’re seeing a significant decline across the board, according to the National Law Journal article. Interest rates are incredibly low and the pool is shrinking. Some statistics the article points out: “IOLTA generated $380 million nationally for legal aid groups in 2008, but that fell to $124 million in 2010″, AND “Interest rates were at 5.25% in September 2007 and have since fallen to 0.25% or even lower” according to Betty Balli Torres, director of the National Association of IOLTA Programs.

It’s not just that IOLTA funds are declining, however; legal aid is also seeing a sharp decline in state and local funding. The only band aid provided, albeit temporarily, was an uptick in federal funding to $420 million in 2010. This does cover the huge gap, however, in funding generated from state and local funding as well as the IOLTA program.

What do you think needs to happen? It’s unclear if states will increase funding over the next few years (in fact, many governors, strapped because of their own faltering budgets, won’t view this as an essential part of their states finances), and unless interest rates for these trust accounts go up significantly (it’s hard to see why the would until at least 2012), where is the funding going to come from?

In what appears to be early signs of an economic recovery for law firms, and perhaps the legal market overall, law schools are seeing signs of an unfreezing of law firm hiring. Although organizations such as NALP are cautious about projecting potential hiring, and it appears the numbers of summer associates being hired isn’t quite reaching the level of 3 or 4 years ago, the numbers do seem promising.

Could this also be positive signs for the public interest market as well? Might be hard to tell (the article doesn’t really focus on it), but it’s certainly promising to hear people being hired out of law school. This article provides some statistics on the market, but focuses largely on the New York market. Full article can be found on law.com: http://www.law.com/jsp/article.jsp?id=12….

Nell Minow, Dean Minow’s sister, offers a really interesting perspective on her career as a critic and former lawyer. Perhaps a good life lesson for everyone to follow? Check out her post here: http://views.washingtonpost.com/on-succe….

In a recent blog post on the Legal Times, the author highlights how law school career placement offices in Washington D.C. are shifting their focus from big firms to public interest work and small/medium-sized firms.

The post includes some notable statistics compiled by the National Association for Law Placement (NALP): “…the median number of offers by U.S. law firms for 2010 summer associate positions is seven, the lowest figure in the 17 years the organization has tracked the statistic. In 2007, the median number was 15. More than half of the law schools reporting saw a drop of 30% or more in the number of employers coming to their campuses in 2009.” It will be interesting to see if law schools nationwide will undertake the same shift, such as putting more funding towards public interest work, emphasizing other geographic locations for jobs, or expanding recruitment to small and medium firms, and move away from the big firm focus to thinking creatively and outside the box for the legal job market. Many law schools already have, but many more may have to follow.