October 10, 2006 Host: Jen Woods Guest: Nicole Paquette
Nicole Paquette, General Counsel and Director of Legal and Government Affairs of the Animal Protection Institute, explains some of the important issues pertaining to animal law. Duration: 13:07:03
Hi everyone and welcome to another LawCrossing podcast. This is Jen, and today I have with me Nicole Paquette who is the general counsel of the animal protection institute in California. Nicole thanks for being with me.
Q: So my first questions for is, can you give a basic overview of the animal protection institute and your role at the organization?
The Animal Protection Institute is headquartered in Sacramento, California. We are a national nonprofit organization that works on a variety of animal issues on the local, national, state, and international level. We primarily work on issues surrounding exotic animals, wild life, research animals, as well as farm animals.
I'm the General Counsel for the organization, and I'm also the Director of Legal and Government Affairs. In that role I oversee all of our litigation matters, in which the Animal Protection Institute is suing another entity as well as overseeing all of the legislative efforts on our behalf.
Q: And why does the Animal Protection Institute need legal support? What types of issues do you regularly deal with?
On the general counsel side of it essentially it's dealing with reviewing all of our contracts, all of our content, all of our materials that we produce to go out to our members, as well as to the general public. In addition, it's working on personnel issues and things like that. Just anything that you would typically think of a general counsel doing, I do handle.
And in addition, on the other side of the coin, is one of our main tools is we work on legal matters where we take our particular campaign, and if one of our options is to sue in order to protect animals, we often take that route.
For example, we've tried numerous times to protect animals in the circus, and we haven't been as successful as we would have like to. So one of our legal matters is, we are actually suing Ringling Brothers. And it's a tool for us to go ahead and to protect animals.
In addition, oftentimes we could be the brunt of an action, and therefore, we would take on defending ourselves in the court as well.
Q: And has the institute helped changed any state or federal animal laws?
We have. We work pretty extensively on the local and state level. We do support and work on federal initiatives, but our primary work is on the local and state level. We work on trying to prohibit the private possession of exotic animals as pets. We are the leading organization to try to end that fight.
We have passed numerous laws. Just this passed year we passed a law in Kentucky and in Arkansas, which prohibits certain species of exotic animals. And under this legislative session we have assisted several states in introducing bills and we're still in the process of a few of those.
In addition, we actually passed a law in North Carolina this year on exotic animals which would study the issue.
We've also passed laws on protecting birds being sold in pet shops in California. We've worked on a lot of bills on protecting wildlife in the state. In California, we helped pass a law a couple years ago, which would protect wild animals who are trapped and killed because of they are so-called nuisance animals. So we are regulating that entire industry now in the state of California.
Those are just a few of the issues, but they primarily range on the issues of exotic animals, both in the circus and kept as pets. We work a lot on birds and pet shop issues and then wildlife issues.
Q: And how does API help keep the public informed about animal rights and issues that are currently going on?
We have a quarterly magazine that goes out to our members that updates them on all of our various campaigns and what we're working on. In addition, we have action alerts that go out on a weekly basis to our action alert team, and those would be people who are our members but in addition are just people who have signed up on our website to stay informed on animal rights issues.
So we do weekly updates and good news, some action items, and then obviously things that we're particularly working on. In addition, we have our website, and a lot of people visit our website on a daily basis just to do searches on a particular animal issue. We are contacted quite regularly due to them finding us on the website.
And then also we do a lot of public outreach by speaking at events, tabling at events, things like that to get our message out to the general public.
Q: Does the public play an important role in API's campaigns?
Definitely. Especially on any of our legislative efforts and our public education efforts. We depend heavily on constituents, residents, and the general public to assist us. For example, in order to get a bill passed you need people in that state writing their own legislators. We send out our alerts far and wide and post them on various listservs in the hopes that people are going to write their legislators and urge them to support a progressive piece of animal legislation.
In addition, we often do various types of public outreach by speaking to communities, say on coyote conflicts or on the circus issue, and we're heavily dependent on people showing up for those events, working with their communities to make positive change.
Q: And a lot of our audience members are law students, people in the legal industry. So I was wondering if you could tell me what first sparked your interest in law?
I've probably wanted to be a lawyer since I was 16 year old. It was ever since I took an extra curricular course at my high school. It was a moot course case that we did that was organized through the school district. So ever since I did that I wanted to become lawyer. So it's been a long time coming. At that point I didn't really care what type of lawyer I was going to be. I just knew that I wanted to be a lawyer.
Q: And when did you decide that you were interested in animal law?
I was originally going to be a women's rights attorney. I was a minor in women's studies in college, and then at some point when I was about two years away from graduating college, I discovered Vermont law school. And Vermont law school had just started a program on animal law.
There was a teacher there, Stephen Wise, who essentially kind of pioneered the animal law courses, and was one of the very first teachers in that course. And essentially I just did more reading and I had been a vegetarian for numerous years at that point and I did some more digging into women's law vs. animal law, and I realized that there were a lot more women's lawyers than animal lawyers, and I felt that the animals needed my voice more than probably women did.
So I did a lot of digging into how big animal law was, and at that time it wasn't that big. I looked at the options out there, and I started getting interested in doing that, so within the next two years I kind of basically did research on the different types of jobs until I finally applied to law school.
Q: And how long have you been the general counsel for API? Did you work for the institute before you were appointed GC?
I've worked for the animal protection institute for a little over seven years. And I started here as our Government Affairs Coordinator, and that was in 1999. And then in 2001 I was promoted to the general counsel. And so I've been doing general counsel work for five years. And then, I believe in 2002, they altered the role to be General Counsel and the Director of Legal and Government Affairs. So I've been doing both roles for the last four years.
Q: And why did you decide to work in-house rather than for a law firm?
To go back, I guess throughout my whole law school career I interned only in nonprofits, and so I realized that that was really the route I wanted to go - to work not for a big corporation or a firm, but just to work for a nonprofit that's doing good work and obviously for the animals.
When I got out of law school, I couldn't find a job right away, and so I worked for a small firm because I needed a job. It was a wonderful experience, and even at that point I realized that if I was going to work anywhere that I really wanted to work for a nonprofit and work basically in-house to do all of their legal and government affair work.
Q: What advice would you give to law students who are interested in specializing in animal law?
Be persistent because there isn't a lot of jobs out there. At some point when you know you really want to work in the animal field it may seem like it's never going to happen, but if you keep pushing and you keep pursuing various organizations, the likelihood of it happening is greater than one would think. When you're in that particular predicament you're not feeling like you're options are very high.
I basically interned at animals groups while I was in law school, and a lot of the counselors advised against it - rather that I should have interned at large firms so I could at least be guaranteed a job. But I stuck to interning at animal groups, which ultimately paid off because I was able to make the right connections and to have the proper experience to where just one year after graduation I was able to get this job.
I've been extremely lucky, but it's also because I kind of planned it out. I got involved right away with a student animal legal defense fund group, and I went to conferences and I met people. And so I really put my name out there before I even graduated from college. So that would be definitely something I would do if I were awaiting graduation from law school.
Q: Well, I don't think I have any other questions for you unless there's anything else you wanted to add.
I don't think so. But I appreciate your interview and thank you so much.
Well, thank you Nicole for taking the time to speak with me today, I really appreciate it.
Enter your email address and start getting breaking law firm and legal news right now!
BCG JOB OF THE DAY
Sponsored by
Location: Illinois - Chicago
Description:
Chicago office seeks associate with 5+ years of experience to join the General Litigation practice group. "This is a large, prestigious full service firm based in Chicago, with offices in two of the major cities in the East Coast and the Midwest. Its strong suit is handling corporate and finance, litigation, intellectual property, trusts & estates, product liability, real estate, environmental, tax, labor and employment and construction matters. The firm has an interesting ...
Why Try LawCrossing Now?
