Public Interest Legal Work on the Rise at New England

By Professor Engler, Clinic Director

When the New England faculty created the Center for Law and Social Responsibility in the Fall, 2000, one of its explicit goals was to "identify, support and increase Public Service work among New England faculty, students and alumni." Many students, and even some faculty members, wondered exactly what type of public interest and public service activities were being done by members of the New England community. While most people knew something about clinical programs, summer jobs, and volunteer legal work performed by students and faculty members, this information was not organized anywhere. A core purpose of the new Center was to create a more focused public interest community and to reaffirm our commitment to public interest work as an important part of law school and the practice of law.

Over the past year and a half, public interest legal work and public service activities have increased both inside and outside the curriculum. Inside the curriculum, the faculty recently expanded our rich public interest clinical offerings by unanimously approving the school's newest seminar and clinic: Public Interest Law Seminar & Clinic. The seminar and clinic will be offered as a package for the first time in the Fall, 2002 semester, allowing students to work in many of the placements offered through the Lawyering Process, including work at the school's Clinical Law Office on Church Street, while at the same time pairing the work with a seminar component dedicated to Public Interest Law. Elsewhere in the curriculum, faculty members such as Professors Manus, Siegel and Greenberg have integrated public service work into their seminar courses; a description of their approach was published last fall in The Law Teacher, a national publication, and is available on-line at www.law.gonzaga.edu/ILST/Newsletters/Fall01/engler.htm.

Outside the curriculum, many students have continued to turn to public interest jobs over the summer as an outstanding way to obtain valuable legal training and perform public service legal work at the same time. Evaluation forms on file at the Career Services Office reflect over and over again that students have found these jobs to be particularly rewarding by every measure. Many of the students are able to obtain funding through the Work-Study program, or various grants, including PILA (Public Interest Law Association) grants.

Activity among the public interest student groups is on the rise as well. Although many students were involved in extracurricular pro bono work in the mid-1990's, those numbers had dropped precipitously by the end of the decade. Recently, however, interest has increased in Shelter Legal Services, where students actually can represent clients as early as their first year of law school. PILA's activities are increasing as its annual auction nears, and a new chapter of the ACLU on campus is underway. It would be a tremendous boon to our efforts and to the school's reputation if increasing numbers of student groups identified particular pro bono legal projects for their organizations and their members.

Finally, students might be surprised and pleased to learn of the commitment of many NESL faculty members to public interest law and pro bono work. Almost a third of the faculty held public interest legal jobs at some point in their careers prior to joining the faculty. Professors Siegel and I are happy to mentor students interested in public interest law. And, many faculty members are involved, or have recently been involved in, pro bono and public interest legal work.

Information about NESL's Center for Law and Social Responsibility, as well as public service work generally at our school, is available at www.nesl.edu/clsr/. Students seeking more information about public interest law generally may contact either Professor Siegel (dsiegel@faculty.nesl.edu) or me (rengler@faculty.nesl.edu). Information about the clinical programs, student groups and the Career Services Office is available through the school's web page, www.nesl.edu.