100% committed to Public Interest. Is Sticker price okay? Forum

[A. Nony Mouse]

Why would ties matter less for a public interest job?

I think the OP was saying that ties do matter, which was their concern. But actually, while I'm not saying ties never matter, I don't think they matter the same way as for biglaw. It depends on the job, but usually people going into public interest have some kind of passion/dedication to a specific cause. If you have to move to location X to work for that cause, and you can show that you have the commitment to that cause, I'm not sure that not having ties to the location matters as much. In other words, since PI jobs can be less fungible than biglaw, PI employers don't have the same kinds of concern about ties.

(Though it will depend - something like PD/DA, which you can do in a lot of locations, may care more about ties than something like the ACLU/Earthjustice/whatever; but that said, anecdotally, I've definitely seen people here get ADA/PD jobs in locations where they didn't have ties. And it probably works differently for different people - if you're a K-JD with no relevant experience who's never left a particular region, it may be harder to convince employers you want to move for their job than if you have a demonstrated record of relevant pre-LS employment, and you have moved around a bit.)

[AReasonableMan]

Why would ties matter less for a public interest job?

I think the OP was saying that ties do matter, which was their concern. But actually, while I'm not saying ties never matter, I don't think they matter the same way as for biglaw. It depends on the job, but usually people going into public interest have some kind of passion/dedication to a specific cause. If you have to move to location X to work for that cause, and you can show that you have the commitment to that cause, I'm not sure that not having ties to the location matters as much. In other words, since PI jobs can be less fungible than biglaw, PI employers don't have the same kinds of concern about ties.

(Though it will depend - something like PD/DA, which you can do in a lot of locations, may care more about ties than something like the ACLU/Earthjustice/whatever; but that said, anecdotally, I've definitely seen people here get ADA/PD jobs in locations where they didn't have ties. And it probably works differently for different people - if you're a K-JD with no relevant experience who's never left a particular region, it may be harder to convince employers you want to move for their job than if you have a demonstrated record of relevant pre-LS employment, and you have moved around a bit.)

I didn't go the public interest route, but I don't get why passion would impact the importance of ties. The same concern would be there, that you would try to get a public interest job in your home state.

[A. Nony Mouse]

Why would ties matter less for a public interest job?

I think the OP was saying that ties do matter, which was their concern. But actually, while I'm not saying ties never matter, I don't think they matter the same way as for biglaw. It depends on the job, but usually people going into public interest have some kind of passion/dedication to a specific cause. If you have to move to location X to work for that cause, and you can show that you have the commitment to that cause, I'm not sure that not having ties to the location matters as much. In other words, since PI jobs can be less fungible than biglaw, PI employers don't have the same kinds of concern about ties.

(Though it will depend - something like PD/DA, which you can do in a lot of locations, may care more about ties than something like the ACLU/Earthjustice/whatever; but that said, anecdotally, I've definitely seen people here get ADA/PD jobs in locations where they didn't have ties. And it probably works differently for different people - if you're a K-JD with no relevant experience who's never left a particular region, it may be harder to convince employers you want to move for their job than if you have a demonstrated record of relevant pre-LS employment, and you have moved around a bit.)

I didn't go the public interest route, but I don't get why passion would impact the importance of ties. The same concern would be there, that you would try to get a public interest job in your home state.

Because public interest jobs are hiring for dedication to/relevant experience in the field, not just grades and ties, and they're also not equally distributed around the country the way firms are. If you want to work for the ACLU, you can't just hope there's an opening in your city; you have to go where there are openings (if you're lucky enough to get the job at all, of course). If you want to work for the feds, many of those jobs are in DC (and they're not going to care whether you're from DC if you can show you want to work for the feds specifically). Again, DA/PD jobs are more universal, but there are definitely DA/PD jobs that hire nationally, since they want the best people who want to do those jobs, not just locals.

There are certainly offices that do care. I just think overall it's different from firm hiring. Firm jobs and prospective associates are way more fungible than PI jobs/applicants, so employers worry about ties, because the jobs are pretty similar from one location to another (except on the margins, like regulatory work in DC or IP work in Silicon Valley).

[sublime]

..

[dnab bulc straeh]

The general idea I'm getting from this is that attending a T14 at sticker and attempting to use PSLF and LRAP is not a good plan because of the uncertainty in getting a qualifying PI job in an acceptable timetable. Focusing solely on the T14 decision, is there another way to make it work? Biglaw lateraling to PI after ~3 years or something like that? Or is the consensus that it is a mistake to attend a T14 at sticker regardless of what your goals are. For what it's worth, I do not currently have a background in PI.

[BigZuck]

The general idea I'm getting from this is that attending a T14 at sticker and attempting to use PSLF and LRAP is not a good plan because of the uncertainty in getting a qualifying PI job in an acceptable timetable. Focusing solely on the T14 decision, is there another way to make it work? Biglaw lateraling to PI after ~3 years or something like that? Or is the consensus that it is a mistake to attend a T14 at sticker regardless of what your goals are. For what it's worth, I do not currently have a background in PI.

If you don't have a background in PI why do you think that's what you want to do?

I dunno, 300K just seems like an awful lot of money

[Elston Gunn]

just saying that the point of LRAP and PSLF is to enable lawyers to do public service work that wouldn't otherwise be possible with the weight of loan payments

Yeah, except that LRAPs used to be a lot less generous because the school paid for them rather than DoED. PAYE/new-IBR is pretty ridiculous no matter how desperate gov/PI orgs are.

Yeah, it's definitely PAYE and not the fact that federally guaranteed loans with virtually no downward pressure have made it possible for law school to cost $300k that is ridiculous.