Crowell & Moring Summer Associates Past and Present Find Great Opportunity in Public Interest Program
by Erica Winter
When he was in law school, Dan Sasse, like many law students then and now, was trying to figure out whether he wanted a future working at a firm or wanted to go into public interest law as he assessed his summer options.
Now a counselor in antitrust with Crowell & Moring's Irvine, CA, office, Sasse remembers wanting firm experience during the summer after his second year at Emory Law School, to help him make a more informed career decision. Sasse interviewed with Crowell & Moring and heard about its Summer Associate Public Service Program, which allows summer associates to spend five weeks of the summer interning at a nonprofit organization, while still being paid by the firm.
It was 1996, and Crowell's program was one of the very few of its kind. The program "caught my attention," he says; and it was "really one of the things that drew me to this firm."
That summer in Washington, DC, Sasse interned with the NAACP's Legal Defense and Education Fund (LDF). In 1951, the group, headed by Thurgood Marshall, organized the filing of five different lawsuits against segregated schooling. Three years later, the Supreme court issued the landmark ruling on all five lawsuits in Brown v. Board of Education.
Sasse was fascinated by desegregation cases while at Emory Law School and was drawn to the idea of using the courts as an "implement of change," he says. He was inspired by Thurgood Marshall as well and saw that summer as "a great opportunity" to get involved with a group that was an integral part of the Supreme Court Justice's early career.
Virginia Monken was one of the first recipients last year of a law school monetary award allowing her to do unpaid public interest work during the summer after her first year at Pepperdine University School of Law. Monken also received a law student organization fellowship last summer, which meant she did not ....
More law school graduates are able to pursue careers in public service than ever before because of loan repayment assistance programs (LRAPs) at more than 50 law schools. The programs help students manage educational debts that can exceed $100,000 in exchange for pubic interest jobs. ....
While with the group for more than six weeks that summer, Sasse researched whether Maryland was enforcing its "motor-voter" law properly, with the group working on several motor-voter issues that year. Also, he did research on Hopwood v. University of Texas Law School, in which the ruling ended an affirmative-action program, and the Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal of the ruling.
At Crowell that summer, Sasse worked on white-collar-crime matters and worked on antitrust and general litigation projects. He was not concerned about missing out on any in-firm networking while away at the LDF. "I didn't want all my eggs in one basket, either," he says. Still, when a law student divides up a summer among different offices, "you need to make the most of your seven weeks" with the law firm, he advises.
It was "a great thing to find a firm" that had the public interest summer program and one that encourages pro bono work from its attorneys, says Sasse.
April Nelson is also glad she found a summer associate position that allows her to combine public interest and firm work in one summer. Nelson, who is participating in Crowell's program this summer, will be a third-year student at Duke Law in the fall.
So far this summer, Nelson has spent two weeks at Crowell's office and is in her third week working at the ACLU. She will return to Crowell for the last four weeks of the summer. Being able to work with that group was "a big part of the appeal of the program," says Nelson, who is serving as the legal intern to the group's Legislative Counsel.
Right now, she is doing an analysis of whether renewing some provisions in the Voting Rights Act of 1965 would be constitutional. Some provisions of that law are set to expire in 2007. Also, Nelson is researching the path taken by the reauthorization legislation in 1982 for the law. There are many issues to examine, she says, "I am writing a very, very long memo."
Khalid Jones wanted to steer away from policy making and towards helping people in the local community through direct services when he participated in the public service program in the summer of 2001. Jones—now an Associate in Crowell's Washington, DC, office—worked with the Legal Aid Society that summer, looking for "a robust pro bono experience," he says.
Jones felt the program gives summer associates "the best of both worlds," working both in a firm and in public interest, with law firm backing. The program "shows a commitment" to the community and to pro bono service that he says "absolutely did" make Crowell a more attractive place in the job search.
Jones, a Stanford Law alumnus, is one of the few (possibly the only) program participants who had just finished his first year of law school. He wanted an "in-your-face experience," he says; and he got it, with a very "fast paced, frenetic" scene at legal aid. He soon got used to it and assisted on landlord-tenant issues with the group for six weeks. He worked in the group's offices and also went out into the city, once taking photos of an apartment to substantiate a claim for a client who was facing eviction. It was "the type of work that made immediate changes in people's lives."
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