Alumni

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Justin Knight

Be a Mentor

We encourage all alumni to serve as informal advisors to current students and other alumni through the Alumni Advising Network (AAN). The AAN allows alumni to describe their professional experience and to pick "advising" topics such as course selection, judicial clerkships, career development, job search strategies, work/family balance, switching practice areas, and changing geographical locations. We often find that HLS alums are a great source of career expertise and advice for each other and for current students. OPIA also uses the AAN to locate speakers for our many panels.

Services for Alumni

OPIA offers a wide range of services to alumni/ae making career moves into or within the public interest sector. Firm attorneys seeking to enter public service for the first time as well as public interest attorneys seeking a new position are invited to use these services to launch their searches. We also provide a brief overview of the job assessment, search, and transition process specifically tailored to the needs of alumni.
Alumna

OPIA publishes numerous guides to specialties within public interest, many of which are available for download. For those of you seeking to leave the private sector for public interest or government work, an especially helpful publication is OPIA's book, The Great Firm Escape: Harvard Law School's Guide to Breaking Out of Private Practice and Into Public Service.

Job Search Tools & Information

Landing Your Job

Alumni Job Search Overview

The following is a quick overview that provides some ideas to help you analyze what you are missing in your career and what you are looking for, identify your strengths and weaknesses, get a sense of what your options are, and find a job that is a good fit for you. A successful job search involves self-assessment, learning what the options are and trying out different kinds of practice settings/issues/types of work so that you can start to narrow what suits you and what does not.

Identify Your Unmet Needs – Knowing what makes you unhappy in your current position will help you avoid taking a job with the same potential sources of dissatisfaction. If excess hierarchy bothers you, for example, a large government agency may not be the best alternative. Similarly, if you find the stress of court-imposed deadlines in corporate litigation unbearable, taking a job as an assistant district attorney or public defender, where the pace is as fast as or faster than in a firm, might not prove your best choice. Try determining what is pushing you away from your present job. The lawyers we have counseled mention several reasons:

  • Nature of the Work – Large law firm practice, with its long hours of legal research, civil discovery, corporate closings, or years of work on a single case, may be boring or tedious.
  • Practice Specialization – You have started to practice in a certain branch of law, corporate transactions, for instance, without knowing much about it. Over time you have grown to dislike it, but you have developed expertise in this type of law and find it difficult, either from your own point of view or from that of your employer, to switch into another area of the law.
  • Type of Client – You decide that major corporations and wealthy individuals, the primary clients of a large firm, are not the groups you want to represent.
  • Time Commitment – After the initial excitement and enthusiasm wears off, you find that you no longer want to devote as much of your time and energy to the firm, especially if the firm's goals do not match your own.
  • Setting – The relatively formal and hierarchical nature of most corporate law firms is not a good fit for you.
    Lack of Ideological Fulfillment – You need to feel more personally committed to your work, and the type of work you do must match your ethical views.

Assess Your Values – In order to determine the type of public interest work that is right for you, begin with a candid personal assessment. Try to identify the key qualities you want in a job. We also have more extensive self-assessment materials available

  • What matters most to you in your professional work?
  • How can you best use your talents?
  • What do you love doing the most (as opposed to what you are good at doing)?
  • What skills has your current job demanded from you, and which do you most enjoy using?
  • To what type of work are you drawn?
  • At what do you feel most successful?
  • What kind of balance do you seek between work and family or personal time?

 

  • Find A Focus – You should also develop at least a provisional sense of what aspects of the law you find attractive. Listed below are a number of ways to help you do so.
  • Pro bono Work – Either by reflecting upon pro bono work you have done or by seeking out pro bono opportunities in areas in which you would like to work, you can obtain a clearer sense of the legal practice areas that interest you. 
  • Network with Public Interest Law Practitioners – Public interest attorneys are terrific sources of information on particular areas of public interest law. Hundreds of Harvard Law School graduates with public interest legal experience have offered to network with alumni/ae interested in their fields. Graduates of other law schools should try to contact fellow alumni/ae for similar advice
  • Get Up to Speed on Public Interest Practice – A variety of publications are available in which public interest and governmental practitioners describe the substance of their work. Each specialty guide OPIA produces includes narratives from practitioners in the field. Our publications Alumni/ae in Action and Outstanding Public Interest Lawyers in Action (.pdf) also provide views into the work of public interest lawyers.
  • Original Motivation for Attending Law School – Sometimes, the reasons that brought you to law school become forgotten or cast aside. Try to remember why you wanted to study law in the first place. What did you hope to achieve, and what kind of job will rekindle in you a passion for your work? If a particular cause or issue was exciting to you when you first entered law school, then it may still be a good clue to what might interest you now.
  • Summer, Clinical or Internship Experience – Defining what you enjoyed about past summer, clinical, and/or internship experiences can provide invaluable guidance in terms of what type of work you should pursue full-time.

Once you have a general idea of what type of public interest law you would like to do, the next step is to figure out how to obtain work in this area. Think about how you can channel your private sector background into credentials and skills that better qualify you for public interest work. Your job search will be somewhat less complicated if you have transferable skills, such as litigation experience. Otherwise, you need to take a long-term approach. Think about how to obtain the credentials you will need as quickly as possible. You may need to take a new position initially that does not meet all your long-term goals, but will serve as a springboard to your ideal job.

Update Your Resume – Take a critical look at your resume. Ensure that your resume reflects the aspects of your current activities about which you care the most. Emphasize any experience that is relevant to your public interest job search. Your resume should illustrate how, in school, in previous and current jobs, and in outside activities, you have shown commitment to whatever area of the law you are now pursuing.

Before launching your job search, you should identify a writing sample that does not breach client confidentiality. Also, consider carefully who is available as professional and personal references.

Contact Your Law School's Public Interest or Career Services Office – Almost all law schools have counseling resources available for alumni/ae. If you find yourself far away from HLS and are unable to access our resources, look into the possibility of using the office of a nearby law school. Career resource libraries often grant reciprocity to alumni/ae from other law schools, as long as you have a letter from HLS requesting use of the other school's facilities. Contact OPIA to obtain such letters. Note that some law schools do not honor reciprocity during the busy fall interviewing season, when their own students are frequently using the career resources.

Take Advantage of Published Career Resources and Job Listings – There are dozens of published resources on public interest jobs. These include general books on how to find public interest jobs, directories of public interest employers, and bimonthly or monthly publications that list openings. Ordering one or two bulletins and newsletters that match your interests, either geographically or by area of practice, will help you get up to date on current public interest openings. Many resources, including the most up-to-date job listings are also available online.

  • OPIA Resource Library (please email pia@law.harvard.edu for more information)
  • Public Interest Links
  • OPIA Publications

Consult Bar Associations – Consulting bar associations will prove especially helpful to those of you looking to move geographically. Many bar associations or referral programs publish a referral directory for their cities that includes not only names and addresses, but also caseload descriptions of various public interest groups.

Start Networking – The public interest legal community in any given city is often small and close-knit. Thus, the more people that you meet in your field of interest, the better your chances for employment. When you begin to network, start with friends and colleagues. But do not hesitate to branch out to friends of friends, former classmates, fellow members of professional or community organizations, and others who may be able to help you establish a link to the practice area you are targeting. While you must find a style of networking that is comfortable for you, the key lies in meeting people who work in areas that you want to learn more about or are interested in pursuing.

Another avenue you should pursue is to contact those people whom you do not know but who practice in areas of the law and settings that interest you. Using alumni/ae directories, legal periodicals, bar publications and general interest newspapers, look for attorneys active in your field of interest.

Once you have constructed a list of potential contacts, you should begin to set up informational interviews. In doing so, make it clear that you are not asking for a job interview, but are seeking advice about the field and suggestions for how you may find a position somewhere in it. Of course, if someone on the list is looking to hire, he or she might consider you. But that is not the primary purpose of these interviews. Rather, your objective is to gain both a better sense of the field and possible routes to a specific job opening. Make it known that you are looking to change jobs, and enlist others to help you.

How Do I Build Public Interest Experience? – Public interest employers are particularly interested in job applicants who have demonstrated some previous commitment to public interest work, and, ideally, have some experience in the particular area of law with which the organization is involved. Listed below are some helpful ways to begin developing experience in public interest practice:

  • Pursue pro bono Work – You can take on pro bono cases or matters related to the type of legal work that you would like to pursue.
  • Join Organizations – There are a wide range of membership organizations in areas where you might like to practice, ranging from environmental groups to civil rights organizations. These organizations need the help of experienced volunteers.
  • Write Articles – Write articles on an area of interest for publication in anything ranging from a law review to the op-ed page of a newspaper. Such articles can be included with a cover letter and resume when you apply for employment, especially when the subject matter of the article is relevant to a particular position.
  • Develop Language Skills – Certain types of public interest and government employers need attorneys who speak languages other than English. Brushing up old language skills or even tackling a new language will improve your ability to communicate with clients in certain types of practice and will demonstrate your interest in pursuing that field.
  • Self-Education – If you want to practice in a certain public interest field, read extensively, both in case law and more general sources, in that area. This self-education will provide you with the confidence and knowledge to do well in an interview. Of course, it is also important to remember that an interviewer is looking for someone to practice law, not to give academic lectures or theorize.

Give Yourself Time – Remember that people do not find jobs overnight, particularly in public interest law. Public interest hiring tends to be sporadic, usually occurring only when an attorney leaves or when funds exist to create a new position – a rarity in today's public sector market. Allow yourself at least three to six months to locate your next position and try not to be discouraged when early leads do not pan out or employers tell you that they are not hiring. Give yourself the time to make an informed and strategic decision rather than leaping at the first job opportunity that presents itself. By taking the time to think carefully about your next step, you can increase the likelihood of finding work that is fulfilling on both a personal and professional level. Take heart; you will find such work!

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