Most public-interest employers do not participate in any OCI-type process for post-graduate hiring. Rather, public-interest minded students usually apply to post-graduate fellowships. Fellowships are typically one or two-year commitments to do a particular project with a public interest law organization. These fellowships are often funded by third-party boards or charities, so prospective fellows have to win over both a host organization and the funder before being awarded a fellowship. If you’re like me, having to wait until your 3L year to apply for your first attorney job is nerve-wracking enough, let alone having to go through multiple rounds of interviews where you know you are being compared to some of your most impressive and dedicated peers. Hopefully, the pieces of advice I give below will help to ease some of your anxiety as you maneuver the process. 1L and 2L year During this time you should be trying to get as much experience at Philadelphia public interest law organizations as possible. Even if you had some experience working with a public interest organization before school, …

This March, I was honored to be selected as a Federal Fellow as part of the Reproductive Justice Fellowship Program sponsored by If/When/How: Lawyering for Reproductive Justice. I will complete a one-year policy fellowship at Unite for Reproductive Justice and Gender Equity (URGE) in Washington, D.C. I am currently on the Board of Temple’s chapter of If/When/How: Lawyering for Reproductive Justice, where we advocate to ensure that people can decide, if, when, and how to create and sustain families. URGE is a youth-based reproductive justice organization that advocates parenting with dignity, abortion access, health and wellness, sex positivity, and civic engagement. In this Voices post, I’ll discuss why I decided to pursue policy work instead of direct service work, why I pursued a fellowship, and the pros and cons of fellowships as the next step after graduating from law school. Fellowships are well worth the effort because they are an excellent way to start a legal career, and place you within a network of other fellows with whom you can build relationships. Direct service or …