A. Introduction

A plan to revitalize public interest at Georgetown must necessarily look closely at the role played by the Office of Career Services (OCS) in cultivating and facilitating public interest placement. This section will examine the public interest support currently provided by OCS and will lay out a vision for a fully supportive placement office.

B. Background

In 1986, EJF requested that a position be created within the Career Planning and Placement Office (CPPO) to provide employment counseling in the human services and public interest. CPPO responded by hiring a half-time "Human Services/Public Interest Counselor." Her responsibilities include individual counseling, identifying potential employers, providing students with information about public interest opportunities, examining financial issues, and compiling public interest resources.

Currently, the twenty hours she works are barely enough time to counsel all of the students who make appointments with her. Consequently, little time remains for developing jobs, increasing public interest resources, organizing workshops and lecture series, and responding to students' other public interest needs. However, this shortcoming is part of a larger problem.

We believe the problem facing students is structural and cultural. Solving this problem requires a new approach to the public interest job search—a vision which defines a structure for public interest career planning and creates a standard process which students can follow. In order to succeed, revitalizing public interest requires the creation of a public interest alternative to the current On-Campus Interviewing program (OCI)—not a public interest version of OCI, but an equally supportive process which is presented as a viable alternative to OCI.

C. Making Public Interest a Viable Alternative

1. The Power of OCI

The current On-Campus Interviewing (OCI) program very effectively facilitates students' search for jobs in private practice. With its free tome of NALP forms, bubble preference sheets, complex deadlines and procedures, and monumental effort by OCS, the OCI program represents a huge institutional investment of resources.

Perhaps the greatest strength of the OCI program is that it creates a process—a process which gives structure to the frightening specter of a legal job search. The OCI program reduces job-searching to a series of pre-defined tasks which students must complete in order to capitalize on available resources.

The strength which OCI derives from its structure and its relative ease lead large numbers of students to participate in it. The sheer magnitude of the process makes it an integral part of the law school culture. Those who choose not to participate often feel as if they are rejecting, not just the process, but the entire culture. Consequently, the decision not to participate becomes a greater personal and professional risk.

Exacerbating the dilemma is the lack of a comparable alternative to OCI. Students are asked to choose between a structured process and a confusing jumble of information which is presented to students piecemeal. While service-minded students do not expect OCS to hold their hands through the entire job search, they do expect OCS to pave the road and give them a map, as they do for students interested in private practice.

2. Public Interest Career Counseling in the Shadow of OCI

As OCI has become bigger and better, Career Services has not abandoned public interest and other areas of practice. OCS continues to offer a variety of programs and services to assist students in searching for public interest jobs. However, the current efforts have been unsuccessful in either integrating public interest into the OCI job search process or creating an alternative process which ushers students through the public interest job search in a similarly supportive way.

Consequently, many students who are drawn to public interest work are pulled away by OCI's structure, simplicity, and popularity. They try on new career goals in interviews: financial stability, good training, challenging work, supportive atmosphere. During the process, they become accustomed to the idea of a high salary, thorough training, and being a part of the powerful professional mainstream. Students who slip this far into the funnel seldom turn back.

We believe that the lack of a comprehensive orchestration of public interest offerings causes students to fear a lack of direction. While public interest programs cover a wide range of topics, they do not appear as components of a plan which integrates all of the available public interest information.

This lack of integration is largely due to the fact that public interest job searching does not fit easily into a neat structure. The process is complicated by a number of factors:

1. Timing: There is no well-established time frame during which the hiring process is conducted. Instead, public interest employers hire when they get funding.
2. Diversity: Public interest organizations are incredibly diverse in every aspect, making generalizations about their work and hiring processes more difficult.
3. Lack of a Central Source of Information: Information regarding the many categories of public interest work is found in a wide variety of resources.
4. Separate Sources of Funding: Many public interest jobs require students to find their own funding by conducting a separate application process for fellowships.
5. Scarce Employer Resources: Unlike law firms, public interest employers cannot afford to spend time and money recruiting students.

These complicating factors increase the need for guidance from Career Services. In order to create a viable alternative to OCI, Career Services must develop a comprehensive strategy for guiding students through the public interest job search process.

3. Creating an Alternative Process

The OCI process illustrates the expertise of the Office of Career Services in collecting information, facilitating networking, and distilling information into a well-organized product which provides clear guidance. EJF recommends that this expertise be used to design a comprehensive method of guiding students through a public interest job search. We suggest that the following steps be taken:

1. Determine what information students should have;
2. Determine when they need to get that information;
3. Develop programs and resources to disseminate this information;
4. Schedule those programs at appropriate times on a public interest job search master calendar;
5. Determine what steps a successful job searcher would take;
6. Determine when those steps should be taken;
7. Create appropriate deadlines and place them on the master calendar.

4. Update the "Public Interest Handbook"

In 1988, the Career Planning & Placement Center published a "Public Interest Handbook," authored by Marilyn Tucker and Anjali Subramanya. In its seventy pages it defines public interest law, explores types of public interest jobs, shares a wealth of useful information regarding finding and funding public interest work, and offers inspirational words regarding the rewards and frustrations of public interest practice.

By collecting a great deal of useful information in one place, the Handbook provides a handy tool for initiating students into an integrated public interest career search process. However, the Handbook has not been updated in the five years since its publication, and its information is out of date and incomplete.

This publication should be updated and reprinted each year, and distributed to all Georgetown students, a symbol of Georgetown's continuing commitment to public interest law.

5. Transform Current Programs Into an Integrated Approach

Currently, the Office of Career Services sponsors a number of programs designed to assist students in conducting a public interest career search. Among them is a series of four basic programs, designed primarily to introduce first-year students to public interest. The first introduces students to public interest groups on campus. The second exposes them to a variety of types of public interest practice. The third suggests strategies for finding and funding summer jobs, and the fourth provides an opportunity to network with students about the public interest jobs they've held in previous summers.

EJF recommends that these programs serve as the seed from which a complete programming schedule will grow, preceded by a public interest orientation. Most importantly, each program should be planned in advance as part of a strategy for supporting public interest.

D. Bridging the Gap Between School and Jobs

Public interest jobs are more difficult to obtain than firm jobs, because public interest employers usually cannot afford to recruit or widely advertise open positions. In addition, few public interest jobs are available to graduating students, because funding is very tight. When organizations do have staffing needs, they often hire attorneys with experience, because they lack the resources or time to train new attorneys.

The High Cost of Contacting Employers

Since public interest employers cannot afford the cost of contacting students, students must contact them. Sending a cover letter and resume costs about a dollar. A follow-up phone call adds another several dollars. If a personal interview becomes necessary, the student will have to pay his or her own travel expenses. In contrast, students may sign up for on-campus interviews with hundreds of private law firms simply by filling in a number of bubbles indicating their employer preferences.

EJF recommends that OCS take the following steps to assist students in finding jobs:

1. Obtain a Comprehensive Collection of Resource Material — Comparison of the NAPIL Guide with OCS's library reveals more than fifty publications not yet in the collection. The minimal investment required to obtain them would yield a large return.
2. Develop Contacts With Employers — Each year, Georgetown should contact a large number of public interest employers by phone or by mail. Survey information should then be made available to students, preferably distributed as a guide which may be removed from the office.
3. Bring Public Interest Employers to Campus — This year's OCI program brought nearly 500 legal employers to campus. Of those, only 25 were public interest organizations: 11 federal government employers, 10 prosecutors, 2 public defenders, and 2 legal services providers. In contrast, 450 law firms participated in OCI. In 1993, 62.8% of Georgetown students went into private practice. Only 1.5% were placed in public interest.
4. Establish a Public Interest Resume Drop — Employers who decline to come to campus should be asked if they would like to receive resumes of Georgetown students.
5. Establish a Public Interest Long-Distance Phone Line — Make a long-distance telephone line available for calls and interviews regarding public interest employment.
6. Facilitate Fellowship Applications — Dozens of fellowships are awarded each year to graduating students pursuing careers in public interest. Students applying for prestigious fellowships should be provided with expert guidance in strategic proposal writing.

E. Utilizing Georgetown's Comparative Advantages

1. Tap Into DC's Thriving Public Interest Community

Georgetown's location in Washington, DC, gives us the advantage of proximity to hundreds of government agencies and public interest organizations. Most of them employ lawyers. Many employ law students as clerks or interns. As the most respected law school in the District, Georgetown has an opportunity to develop relationships with these organizations which will lead to higher rates of placement in government and public service.

OCS should place a high priority on creating connections between students and these organizations, working to make Georgetown the biggest feeder school for federal government and national public interest organizations.

2. Develop and Use Georgetown's Vast Alumni Network

Georgetown graduates more lawyers each year than any other law school. Consequently, we have an enormous and diverse pool of alumni working in a wide variety of legal fields all over the country. They are an invaluable asset to placement, as they constitute an enormous network of contacts for current and graduating students. The advantage of these contacts is multiplied in the public interest sector, which tends to cultivate a closely knit legal community.

EJF recommends that Georgetown alumni be surveyed on a regular basis about their jobs and whether they would be willing to talk to students. This information should then be made available to students through an alumni directory organized by geography and area of practice.

F. Career Services' Public Interest Staff Must Be Expanded

Currently, the Office of Career Services employs one counselor half-time to coordinate all aspects of its outreach and services to students wishing to do public interest work. It is unrealistic to believe that twenty hours per week is enough to meet all of these needs at the nation's largest law school.

Many of Georgetown's peer schools employ one or more full-time staff members who are dedicated entirely to public interest law. Harvard has two and one-half full positions, Fordham has three full-time staff members, and NYU boasts five full-time staffers.

We estimate that the tasks summarized in this section would require at least two full-time counselors whose time is completely devoted to public interest work. Alternatively, public interest responsibilities could be shared equally by all counselors.