2025 SUMMER LAW CLERKS with focus on Access to Justice Project, Debtors’ Prison Project, Environmental Enforcement Project, or Students’ Civil Rights Project WASHINGTON, D.C., OAKLAND, CA, or REMOTE
July 2024
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Who We Are
Public Justice is a nonprofit legal advocacy organization that takes on the biggest systemic threats to justice of our time—abusive corporate power and predatory practices, the assault on civil rights, and the destruction of the Earth’s sustainability. It connects high impact litigation with strategic communications and the strength of our partnerships to fight these abusive and discriminatory systems and win social and economic justice.
What We Are Looking For
Public Justice seeks to hire four law clerks for Summer 2025, one in each of our four project areas. While each law clerk will focus on a single project area, they may work in other project areas as need and opportunity arise. Our four project areas are:
• The Access to Justice Project seeks to make the civil court system a fair, equitable, and effective tool for those with less power to win just outcomes. Primarily through high-impact litigation, we dismantle the procedural and structural barriers between ordinary people and the civil justice system, such as forced arbitration, limits on collective actions, overly strict standing requirements, and unwarranted court secrecy.
• The Debtors’ Prison Project fights to end the criminalization of poverty and shrink the carceral system. Working with allies and impacted communities, we use litigation, advocacy, and education to ensure no one is jailed simply because they can’t pay and to stop governments and for-profit corporations from treating people impacted by the system as a revenue source.
• The Students’ Civil Rights Project combines high-impact litigation with other advocacy tools to combat harassment and other forms of discrimination in schools. We strive to create systemic change so all students can learn and thrive, and to secure justice for students who are denied educational opportunities based on their race, national origin, ethnicity, or sex, including sexual orientation, gender identity, and gender expression.
• The Environmental Enforcement Project goes to court every day to fight climate change, secure environmental justice, and make polluters pay. We utilize the most powerful tools available to citizens by enforcing our Nation’s environmental laws in state and federal court. Our
experienced litigators win precedent-setting cases that result in meaningful, transformative change. We hold polluters accountable by requiring corporations to clean up their act and comply with our Nation’s environmental laws.
Law Clerks are welcome to work in-person in either Public Justice’s headquarters in Washington, D.C., or its Oakland, California, office, subject to pandemic conditions and vaccination status. Law clerks may also work remotely, subject to some limitations. All law clerks may assist attorneys in both of Public Justice’s offices, as well as remote attorneys throughout the country.
Public Justice’s law clerks research and develop new cases in conjunction with our attorneys, law fellows, and cooperating counsel. They also assist attorneys in ongoing litigation. Our law clerks are involved in legal research and writing, case review, and brainstorming on theories and approaches designed to ensure that justice is achieved.
Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Access
Public Justice is an equal-opportunity employer and values a diverse workplace. We are committed to providing an environment of mutual respect where equitable employment opportunities are available to all applicants. We encourage applications from all qualified individuals without regard to race, color, religion, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity or gender expression, age, national origin, citizenship of immigration status, disability, veteran status, record of arrest or conviction, or any other characteristic protected by applicable law. People of color, lesbian, gay, bisexual, queer, transgender and gender diverse people, women, people with abilities in multiple languages, immigrants, people living with disabilities, veterans, and formerly incarcerated individuals are strongly encouraged to apply. Please visit this link to read our Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Access policy statement: Diversity, Equity, Inclusion & Access.
Public Justice is committed to providing reasonable accommodations to individuals with disabilities. If you require reasonable accommodations during any part of the hiring process, please email lhughes@publicjustice.net.
How to Apply
We encourage students to seek and use outside sources funding or stipends, and we will help students secure that funding. Where necessary, Public Justice will provide supplemental funding equivalent to the minimum wage. Applicants must have completed their second year of law school by Summer 2025. We do not accept applications from first-year students.
Please submit your application to lawfellow@publicjustice.net no later than August 22, 2024. Reference the project for which you are applying in your subject line, and specify in your cover letter whether you are applying to work in the Washington, D.C., office, the Oakland office, or remotely. If you seek to work remotely, please state whether you anticipate being able to secure funding and from what state you anticipate working. You must submit multiple applications in order to apply for more than one position. Applications should consist of two electronic files: (1) your cover letter, resume, transcript, and contact information for two references in a single .pdf file; and (2) a writing sample in another .pdf file. In addition, Public Justice considers applications via the Equal Justice Works Career Fair and certain law schools’ OCI programs; applicants participating in those programs should follow those applicable deadlines and submission procedures and need not also submit an application to the “lawfellow” email address.
For more information on Public Justice, please visit our website at www.publicjustice.net.