Thursday, October 9, 2008

Equal Justice Works

Someone at Equal Justice Works, the organization hosting the Career Fair I'm headed to this weekend, found my blog and asked if I would write a guest post for their blog, http://equaljusticeworks.wordpress.com, about why I came to law school and why I'm looking for a public interest job. He gave me permission to post what I wrote on my blog as well, so here it is:
Like many other law students, this weekend I will head to the Equal Justice Works Career Fair in Washington D.C., hoping to get a job offer from a fantastic organization. Although many of my friends' job searches are drawing to a close, as law firms make their offers to future summer associates, my quest to find public interest work is likely to last a while longer.

A second-year law student at William & Mary, I moved a thousand miles from Iowa to Virginia to study law because I was frustrated with our federal government and the effects of its ill-conceived actions (and inaction) on the people and places I know and love. Stories of secret CIA prisons in Europe, enemy combatants held without respect for habeas corpus and legal memos purporting to justify torture infuriated me. Rather than surrender to apathy, I decided to go tens of thousands of dollars in debt to get the intellectual tools I would need — a legal education — so that I could someday hope to improve our broken government.

Until a few weeks into my first year, it had not really occurred to me that other people come to law school to work for private law firms, where they can make more than $100,000 a year. Although I obviously see the upside of working for a firm, I had never considered that route. Though I briefly pondered applying at a few firms, prompting laughter from a trusted friend who knows my interest in public service well, I decided to stick with government and non-profit organizations. Some of my best friends at law school will work at firms, and many will undoubtedly do wonderful things to further the public good. Nevertheless, like many of the law students I expect to meet this weekend, the firm route is not for me.

When law school gets hard, which for me it often does, I have to think about why I came here — why I moved a thousand miles from my family, friends and home. It is the hope that someday I can make use of the good fortune I have had, of the many opportunities that have landed on my doorstep. I feel an enormous sense of gratitude, and with so many problems out there to solve, I want to do the best I can to help. Finding a job doing public interest legal work is the best way I know to accomplish that goal.

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