Timing of the Public Interest Job Search

For your first summer job, you should expect a long process. Some public interest employers will be willing to interview you over the winter break - especially if you are traveling for the holiday and the office in which you are interested is on the route of your travel. Public interest employers cannot pay for you to travel for interviews, so they tend to be very sensitive to keeping the costs down for you as much as possible. Other employers will still be considering second-year candidates at that time, and will not be ready to speak to first year candidates, often those employers will be willing to wait until spring break to interview first year students. Some students will still be seeking public interest employment until late May or early June. Don't give up, OCS receives job postings all the way into June!

The fall of the second year is typically when private practice employers recruit for the following summer. You are of course welcome to participate in fall recruiting and secure a private practice position for all or part of your second summer, even if public interest is your ultimate goal. Some public interest students use the income opportunity of the second summer as a way to keep their overall law school debt down. Others obtain a private job in case they have difficulty obtaining their choice public interest job. Summer jobs in public interest tend to be highly competitive due to their scarcity - even unpaid positions can be hard to get, because public interest employers are not equipped to handle an inflow of 50 to 100 summer associates in the way that large law firms can.

Generally, all offers from fall recruiting have to be accepted or rejected by a specified autumn date or by December 1st of the recruiting year. However, some firms will agree to keep an offer open longer if you are seeking public interest employment and are still in the interviewing process.

One major difference between public interest and private practice employers is that public interest employers do not generally make permanent offers of employment following the second year summer. This is driven by the timing of their hiring budgets. Some public interest employers can afford to hire summer clerks every year, but cannot add new full-time lawyers every year.

Third year students generally have to apply throughout their third year for public interest positions and it is not unusual for public interest seeking students to still be looking in the summer following graduation. Some third year students actively seek private sector employment but intend to foster small pro bono practices within their law firms; for this reason they choose firrms with demonstrated pro bono commitments and programs. However, for those third year students striving to enter the public sector immediately upon graduation, the search for a permanent public interest job generally happens in two waves. The first wave would be in the fall and consists of DOJ and other government honors program applications, applications for fellowships, and participation in the Equal Justice Works conference and career fair, and the Chicago Area Law Schools Consortium's Public Service Employers Reception. The second wave happens in the Winter and Spring Quarters, when many public interest organizations have their budgets in place for the upcoming fall. This process involves applying to job postings as they come in, networking with organizations that you have researched, and attending the Midwest Public Interest Law Career Conference.

To access current public interest job postings, please go to our web-based job posting system, Symplicity.com, as well as using PSLawNet and other available resources discussed above.