The Public Interest and Public Service Law Center Vision Statement
Public Interest Center: Vision for the Future
One of the central missions of the George Washington University Law School is to equip students to shape solutions to the pressing challenges of our times. The Law School does this by supporting students’ academic, experiential, and professional development, which enables students to envision and plan for public interest careers. We define public interest to encompass work at non-profit organizations, for government agencies, and on pro bono matters with private law firms. At the apex of this effort is the Public Interest Center whose mission is to create the next generation of leaders committed to serving people and advancing the public good.
Leadership
The Center will advance its mission in a variety of ways under the direction of the Lerner Family Associate Dean for Public Interest and Public Service. This leader will be, first and foremost, a lawyer with a distinguished public interest career. The director will have a full-time program coordinator whose principal functions will be to interact with the students to provide them information about public interest work at GW and beyond, to assure that the Center is serving the students who are its constituents, and to administer the programs of the Center. The Center will be supported by the Dean’s Public Interest Advisory Council, an esteemed group of alumni and others committed to public service experience, who will support students, provide guidance to the Center, and help raise money to advance its mission. The sections below illustrate how the Center will seek to achieve its goals.
Inform/Educate
Students choose public interest careers when they learn how intellectually exciting and personally rewarding they are. Working closely with the Career Center, the Public Interest Center will increase that awareness through several specific programs.
Practitioners in Residence
Each semester one lawyer from the non-profit and governments sectors will be in residence at the law school to teach a course, meet with students individually or in small groups, engage students as research assistants, and give talks or engage in debates on issues of current importance. Our goal is for practitioners to continue their engagement with the law school and our students after their residency.
Curriculum
The Center will provide academic advising to help students prepare substantively for public interest careers. It will prepare multiple guidance documents, tailored to the range of public interest careers, that will recommend doctrinal courses, as well as experiential and skills courses, including clinics, field placement, and internal moot courts and mock trials. The goal is to help students obtain their preferred positions and enable them to succeed once they have them. And over time, the Center will be a focal point for helping faculty develop new courses, experiential education opportunities, and a concentration in Public Interest Law.
Non-Government Field Placements
The Center will work with the Assistant Dean of Field Placement to broaden the robust array of governmental field placements and add new non-governmental positions by encouraging additional employers to participate in the program.
Engage & Network
In addition to the practitioners in residence, the Center will bring mid-career public interest lawyers for three-day visits to meet with students particularly interested in their practice area. Known as Richey Fellows, named for the fund created in honor of deceased District Judge Charles Richey by his former clerks and admirers, the fellows will complement the practitioners in residence by significantly expanding the practice areas to which students will be exposed, in addition to the regular panels of subject area practitioners that the Center will sponsor.
Financial Support
On the financial side, the Center will work with the Dean to assure that every student who wishes to take a summer public interest position is paid a reasonable stipend and does not have to go further in debt.
The Center will also help raise funds to augment substantially the very modest Loan Repayment Assistance Fund, which helps graduates repay their law school debts, as well as seek to create other forms of financial aid that assist those who choose lower-paid public interest positions.
On the national front, the Center will monitor the Public Service Loan Forgiveness Program and work with others, both to suggest ways that the Program can be improved, administratively and legislatively, and to guard against threats to its erosion.
Augment the Pro Bono Program
The Center will support the Assistant Dean for Pro Bono to increase the reach of the pro bono program. Our long-term goal is to hire a staff attorney who will be available to provide direct supervision for some of the students where existing organizations cannot perform that function. The law school also recognizes that there are far more jobs in the private than the public sector and that many of them have significant pro bono opportunities for their lawyers. The Center will convene panels of law firm representatives and in house counsel to explain how pro bono works there and how students can leverage their positions as job applicants to assure that they are provided pro bono opportunities.
Conclusion
The GW Law Community looks forward to building a comprehensive, full-service Center to encourage, support, and equip students interested in taking advantage of our location in the nation’s capital, our rich legacy of public service, and the deep expertise of our alumni, faculty and staff to enter fulfilling careers serving the public, in not-for-profit organizations, in government, or by providing pro bono assistance to those who cannot afford a lawyer.