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I'm wondering whether a job like what I have in mind exists and, if so, how competitive it would be to obtain...

I'd love to work in child advocacy with a focus on special education and/or law surrounding immigration. I'm interested both in knowing/working with individual families and in national advocacy/public policy work. A situation like The Southern Poverty Law Center (with a different focus) would be ideal; they seem to focus on selecting individual cases that have the potential to impact large numbers of individuals by changing the law/interpretation thereof. I would also love it if my job involved considerable travel, at least for a while. Long hours are fine, and making a top salary is not important to me.

Any chance that a job like what I have in mind is out there?

They exist but are rare.

ConsideringLawSchool wrote:I'm wondering whether a job like what I have in mind exists and, if so, how competitive it would be to obtain...

I'd love to work in child advocacy with a focus on special education and/or law surrounding immigration. I'm interested both in knowing/working with individual families and in national advocacy/public policy work. A situation like the Southern Poverty Law Center (with a different focus) would be ideal; they seem to focus on selecting individual cases that have the potential to impact large numbers of individuals by changing the law/interpretation thereof. I would also love it if my job involved considerable travel, at least for a while. Long hours are fine, and making a top salary is not important to me.

Any chance that a job like what I have in mind is out there?

Given the bolded, I think its doable.

Drake014 wrote:

ConsideringLawSchool wrote:I'm wondering whether a job like what I have in mind exists and, if so, how competitive it would be to obtain...

I'd love to work in child advocacy with a focus on special education and/or law surrounding immigration. I'm interested both in knowing/working with individual families and in national advocacy/public policy work. A situation like the Southern Poverty Law Center (with a different focus) would be ideal; they seem to focus on selecting individual cases that have the potential to impact large numbers of individuals by changing the law/interpretation thereof. I would also love it if my job involved considerable travel, at least for a while. Long hours are fine, and making a top salary is not important to me.

Any chance that a job like what I have in mind is out there?

Given the bolded, I think its doable.

My sister has been practicing for just over ten years now and did something like this for the first few years (though without the immigration focus). As Drake hinted at, she didn't make a lot of money and worked long hours. If you're good with that as stated, I think you can find it.

So, something like NAACP, ACLU or Institute for Justice, except for children? A public interest group focusing on appellate/constitutional appeals? If you can find a group already doing this, then you can take a look at their attorney profiles and see what path people took to get there.

I tried this for the IJ, since they take all sorts of interesting cases. I know for IJ they specifically say clerking is valuable for job seekers. I imagine this is because a constitutional litigation boutique prizes people with experience from the judge's perspective, and clerks have already been somewhat pre-filtered by judges for having high LS GPAs.

Rule out the travel and the policy work, and its something you could probably do. The latter two come after you've been on the ground for a long time (unless you go to Yale, then you can spend your entire career in the clouds).

You might check out the Education Law Center(s) - there is one in PA and one in NJ:

http://www.elc-pa.org/
and
http://www.edlawcenter.org/

nealric wrote:They exist but are rare.

Does that mean they are more competitive or no since not many people want such jobs?

Children's Law Center in DC is what you need

Thanks so much for the suggestions! I am definitely looking into Children's Law Center now, and it looks great.

Bumping for other thoughts... thanks!