Interviewing skills, or "This one time I ..."

The hot trend in human relations for at least the last decade has been using behavioral questions in interviews. Those are questions that get at your skills and experiences by seeking information about a specific time you encountered difficulty or managed a heavy work load or showed whatever skill the employer is looking for. Reports are starting to arrive that law firms have begun to rely on behavioral questions more in order to confront a growing applicant to position ratio.

Many businesses adopted this practice years ago, and the trend applies to the public sector as well. I once participated as part of a panel interviewing candidates for a state investigatory position, and behavioral questions were among the bureaucratically generated questions we had to ask in an identical manner of each applicant.

So, what should the hopeful interviewee do? As always, prepare. Prepare to answer questions about planning and organizing skills, decision making and leadership, taking calculated risks and sometimes failing, and effective communication and working with people from disparate backgrounds.

While you are at it, pay attention to how your answer is formed. The more specific you can be the better; employers are looking for an example of an event that happened to you and not a broad overview of best practices. Focus your attention on the context, your actions, and the results, or if you like the word what: what was going on, what you did, and what came of it.

Keep in mind that some behavioral questions ask for situations where things did not go your way. It is important with these questions about negative situations to end with a positive; there is always a lesson to be learned, and if you find that lesson, even a story of a bad experience can be an example of building character and skill.

For more information, check out the ABAJournal story and follow the link in that article to a 2005 reprint from the NALP bulletin.

So you want to volunteer, are you missing the postings?

If you are looking for volunteer opportunities and you did not receive the latest pro bono listserve email, here is what you are missing:

Hello Pro Bono List People,

Two volunteer opportunities to publicize today:

1. The Washington County Circuit Court Family Law Facilitators Office
has its posting up for volunteers to help file family law cases. This
is a great opportunity to learn some of the basics of family law, to
see how civil practice works, and to gain experience with client
contact. Open to all levels from 1L through practicing lawyer.
Shifts are flexible and the commitment is minimal. Mandatory training
is this Friday the 9th 2:30 to 4:30 at the law school in Seminar
Smith. Email me at wcpenn AT lclark.edu by 4 pm Wednesday the 7th if you
are interested.

Full Posting:
The Washington County Circuit Court Family Law Facilitators Office
operates in the Washington County Courthouse in Hillsboro. This
office helps people who are filing family law cases pro se (meaning on
their own without an attorney). The court facilitators direct clients
to the correct paperwork and answer non-legal questions about the
process of filing a case. Students who volunteer with this project
assist the facilitators in assisting pro se clients following the
guidelines set in ORS 3.428.

Staff facilitators rely heavily on Lewis & Clark volunteers. If you
have any interest in family law, or on working on client interaction
skills, this is the project for you! The Courthouse is about a 40
minute drive from campus, but there is a MAX stop only a couple of
blocks from the courthouse. In the past students have coordinated
their shifts and carpooled.

2-4 hour shifts either weekly or bi-weekly for the Semester or the
year. Scheduling of shifts is VERY flexible (anytime that the
facilitation office is open). There is a mandatory two-hour training
scheduled on Friday, October 9th from 2:30 to 4:30 pm on campus in
Seminar Smith in Wood Hall.

Indicate interest by 4 pm Wednesday, October 7, 2009 to wcpenn AT lclark.edu



2. The Health Law Section of the Oregon Bar is looking for students
to write articles. Writing for bar section newsletters can be a great
way to meet people who work in a particular area of the law and can be
a great way to get your name in front of lawyers across the state.
Sections are always looking for people to write, and there are
sections in many areas, check out the list of sections at:
http://www.osbar.org/sections.

Full posting:
We are providing students the opportunity to publish short articles on
different areas of health law- whatever they are interested in or want
to write about. We ask for at least 2-3 paragraphs, but not a
multipage article. We will not edit the articles, or check cites, but
we could see if someone would be willing to mentor if that is an
issue. The articles will be published on the website with the
student’s name- and this could be a great opportunity for students to
get their name out there. If students are interested, need more
information, or want to submit something, they can contact Amy
Vandenbroucke: vandenbr AT ohsu.edu.

Best regards,

Bill

Signup for the listserve today. You can either send an email to majordomo@lclark.edu with "subscribe probono-list" in the body or email wcpenn AT lclark.edu and ask to be added. Volunteering, it is a great way to get experience, a great way to give back to the community, and a great way to remember the reasons why you came to law school.

Fellowship Season

It is fellowship season. Checkout the convenient fellowship calendar at pslawnet.org to find our where and when to apply. Some fellowships are simply jobs with a set term (1 year or 2 year), but others require you to develop a project and find a host organization in addition to finding a source of money.

Two of the largest funders of the latter type of fellowship are Equal Justice Works and Skaden Arps. Sometimes host organizations go out looking for people who want to apply for fellowships. These searching hosts can usually make a fast fellowship application possible (without a searching organization it takes months to develop a project find an organization and put together an application).

PSLawNet.org has many nationwide searching organizations in their database (signup for a free account to search), and there are some right her in the Pacific Northwest. One of these is the Northwest Workers' Justice Project (NWJP):

NWJP SEEKS FELLOWSHIP APPLICANTS

The Northwest Workers' Justice Project (NWJP) is seeking to sponsor fellowship candidates for Equal Justice Works and/or Skadden Arps fellowship programs. See www.equaljusticeworks.org/ or www.skaddenfellowships.org/. NWJP staff will help the successful applicant design a project for the proposal and act as the sponsor. Please submit resume and letter of interest to D. Michael Dale,michael@nwjp.org as soon as possible (final applications for the fellowships are due September 17 and October 5).

At NWJP we believe that all workers share the fundamental human right to live and labor with dignity, safety, and hope. Whether harvesting the food on our tables, cleaning our offices, houses, and hotel rooms, or constructing and landscaping the buildings in our communities, all workers deserve freedom from fear in the workplace, the assurance of payment for their labor, a wage that is enough to meet their basic needs, and the right to bargain collectively a wage and working conditions – in short, fair and lawful working conditions. People who work hard ought to have enough time to spend with their families and be able to participate in civic life, to contribute to making their community a better place to live.

Founded in 2003, NWJP uses advocacy, education, organizing, and direct legal services to protect workers’ right to organize, defend and strengthen the rights of contingent¹ and immigrant workers, and challenge the negative effects of international trade on low wage workers. Over 95% of the workers that NWJP supports are people of color and immigrants from Mexico and Central America who speak little or no English. They work in diverse industries, including agriculture, construction, manufacturing, child care, janitorial, automotive services, food service, landscaping, and food processing. At work, they face employers’ wage and hour violations, retaliatory acts for organizing, illegal and unsafe working conditions, and race and sex discrimination (including severe sexual harassment). While our primary focus is on improving the wages, working conditions, and legal protections for low wage workers in the Pacific Northwest, we engage in national and even international strategies where necessary and appropriate. A key part of our strategy for social change begins with the understanding that the problems facing low wage workers today are global.

Everybody does it, even the judges, so why don't you?

Last week in an article on the Law.com Legal Blog Watch Blog, they reported on a number of judges with LinkedIn profiles, including five US Circuit Court Judges. Like it or not, between Facebook and LinkedIn more and more social and professional interaction is taking place online, so why not just dive in, talk to people, and share your life online?

Well, as an earlier article on the Legal Blog Watch Blog shows, even the best of us, judges included, can get carried away with the social networking. There are, of course, the issues of sharing too many of your youthful indiscretions too freely. (I am personally thankful that, even though photos of me--both strangely messianic and less flattering--are freely available online, I came of age in the era before ubiquitous camera phones and Facebook; otherwise I might regret some of my wilder days, or that toga party when I was in law school...) But beyond unseemly photos of your last kegger, there are more complex social networking considerations for lawyers and law students.

The judge who got reprimanded for using Facebook fell into the trap of commenting without enough thought. You see the Judge's Facebook Friend was an attorney who had an active case in front of the judge, and Facebook comments can be ex parte communications; hence, a trial no-no and a reprimand. The judge did some other mis-deeds like Google a litigant and read the litigant's online poetry into the record, but this story is about caution in social networking...

So you might do well to network in the electronic world possibly even finding a judge to be your friend, but you should not leave your reason and ethical considerations at the keyboard.

Helping clear up some of the fuzzy details of OSCAR

OSCAR the online application for federal clerkships can be a bit of a bear to deal with, and there are many aspects are not well documented. To help you out on your journey through OSCAR, I prepared a step by step (with pictures and little red circles with shadows) Guide to Starting Applications and Adding Recommenders in OSCAR.

The Guide tries to clear up the process and, along the way, answer a couple common questions from this year:

1. When are recommenders notified? Notification happens only after you have BOTH added recommenders to the My Recommendations tab and created a draft application with the recommender attached.
2. I think I am done, is there anything else I have to do? Possibly, make sure to Finalize your applications. If your application is in all other respects complete but you have not Finalized it, it will NOT be released to judges.

Adding recommenders, attaching them to applications, and finalizing applications are all covered in the guide.

As an added bonus, here is a template excel file that you should use to supply lists of your judges to your faculty recommenders and/or their faculty assistants.

Sometimes someone else sums up your feelings completely

Feeling bad about not blogging.

Hopefully very few of you have been feeling this way during the first week of classes.

Welcome back returning students and hello new students!

Perspective on Seventy Cents

Seventy Cents an hour, or about $1,400 a year for full-time workers is what today's minimum wage increase means. In Oregon, though, it will not mean any change because the state minimum wage is already $8.50 per hour, that is $1.25 more than the new national minimum wage of $7.25.

What does $7.25 per hour mean for the working poor? First it means that, in states where the federal minimum wage applies, a single parent of one who works a full-time minimum wage job will make just slightly more than the federal poverty guideline for a two person family. But beating the poverty level (just $14,570 annually for a family of 2 in 2009) is far from a comfortable or secure life.

The State of Oregon Housing and Community Services attempts to make a more realistic estimate of what constitutes poverty in each of Oregon's County and reports the results in an annual report. According to the most recent, January 2009, report that single parent with one child living in Multnomah County would require $35,556 per year to afford a basic family budget. In order to create that income, the single parent working full time would have to earn $17.09 per hour. More than twice Oregon's minimum wage, and nearly ten dollars an hour more than the new national minimum wage. It would take $41,316 for two parents with one child to afford a basic budget in Multnomah County, equivalent to $9.93 per hour with both parents working full-time jobs; still well in excess of Oregon's and the nation's minimum wages.

Surely the 24 hour news channels and the Sunday TV Politics and Press shows of the chattering class will be full of people alternately calling the minimum wage increase salvation for the poor and the death knell for our economy, but neither of those things loudly proclaimed straight from the gut of their speakers will prove to be true. When talking about those who live at the edges of poverty, it is easy to react from the gut, but a little perspective can provide more meaning.

Even with the 70 cent increase in the minimum wage, it is still possible to work hard, to work full-time in American and not make ends meet. It is possible for a woman to work full time and come home to wonder how she will find enough money to pay a lawyer to get a restraining order to help keep herself and her child safe from an abusive relationship she just escaped. It is possible for man to work full time and wonder where the money will come from to pay a lawyer to help get back what was lost when a shady mechanic took advantage of him. It is possible for a couple, both working full time to find themselves staring at a retaliatory eviction notice without money for a lawyer to fight and afraid that they and their kids will be kicked out into the street.

These are some of the people served by public interest attorneys. To leave you with a little more perspective: some of these public interest attorneys do not even make enough to afford the state of Oregon's budget for a single parent in Multnomah County. See the national distribution of attorney salaries for the class of 2008.

Returning to Plan A

Sometimes when the job market is tough, it can be important to embrace your ideals and return to the reasons you came to law school to guide your search for work.

Law school entrance essays across the country are filled with people expressing their mission to fight for civil and human rights, help the downtrodden, and contribute to the increase of human development around the world. By law school graduation time, many have shed that mission, citing finances or a lack of opportunity in the place they want to stay. Nationally this means that, for the class of 2008, only 5.4% of law graduates took public interest positions with an additional 11.8% working for the government in public service positions. Lewis & Clark does better with our 2008 class sending 11% to public interest careers and 17% to government work, but there are still many who have a change in direction while they are students.

For those concerned with money, it is worth looking into the new loan repayment programs for federal school loans that allow graduates to pay only 15% of discretionary income and have their loans canceled after 10 years if they work public service positions (non-profits and government).

For those looking for positions in a certain local, it can pay off to go all in and let the world be the place that you consider. Jobs with places like the Peace Corps, USAID, and the Department of State fit those Plan A ideals of many entering law students, but relatively few take these jobs after graduating. This is the time to return to ideals and seriously consider these careers.

The Peace Corps offers the chance to have hands on involvement in developing countries with a commitment of a little over two years. When you return, you will have had an extraordinary experience and fantastic material for your resume whether you seek to continue in the direction of international social development, take a legal services job, or head into the private sector. If the three mission goals of the Peace Corps--

1. Helping the people of interested countries in meeting their need for trained men and women.
2. Helping promote a better understanding of Americans on the part of the peoples served.
3. Helping promote a better understanding of other peoples on the part of Americans.

appeal to you then check out the Peace Corps. There will be presentations on the Peace Corps in Portland on August 26, 2009 and September 16, 2009.

USAID works to provide a better future for everyone in the world by

• Supporting Agriculture & the Environment
• Expanding Education & Training
• Fostering Democracy & Governance
• Advancing Global Health
• Promoting Economic Growth & Trade
• Cultivating Global Partnerships
• Providing humanitarian assistance

Graduates start in Foreign Service positions through the Junior Officer Program. Applicants respond to postings for specific subject areas relating to USAID's mission. A listing of current openings is available. Junior Officers receive training including language training in DC before they go abroad for additional training. For those seeking careers in international humanitarian work, USAID can be a great start.

Foreign Service Careers through the Department of State allow you not only to represent the United States Government abroad, but they also let you escape the job search. If you have ever wished there was just a test that would result in an appropriate job at the end if you pass, then you will appreciate the application process for becoming a Foreign Service Officer through the Department of State. The process starts with the Foreign Service Officer Test, and continues on with an Oral Assessment. Foreign Service Officers work throughout the world in Management, Consular, Political, Economic, and Public Diplomacy Positions. The next written test dates are October 3 through 10, 2009 nationwide including Portland, Eugene, Salem, and Medford.

Volunteers needed to serve on the Portland Police Citizen Review Committee

The Portland police are looking for people to serve on the Citizen Review Committee. The work involves looking into complaints about the police and reviewing police bureau policies. You must be a Portland resident or business owner and you must commit to a two-year term with 5-7 hour a week of committee work. Applications are due July 20. Full details and application.

Go federal, apply or be appointed.

The federal government has been bracing for a mass retirement of baby boomers by ramping up efforts to recruit new employees. The focus of that recruiting has been through Making the Difference, check out the site for where the feds have need and how you can get headed toward a government career.

Who needs a job when you can get appointed? The Plum Book is the government's directory of appointed positions is 210 pages long and is published every 4 years. There are many appointed positions beyond the big name ones, and with lower level political positions, there is no confirmation hearing so your skeletons can stay hidden safely away. Thumb through the Plumb to see what the possibilities are.

William is wondering if he will be destroying his career with his status message

The weblogs and even the NY Times have been all Henny Penny concerning a beta and possibly broad changes to how people can control privacy on Facebook, but the reality sounds much more subdued than the initial end of June panic. Despite reality being less frightening than some have predicted, this is a good time to do a social networking privacy checkup.

What is going on with Facebook and privacy?

Fecabook rolled out a beta of the new publisher (that box where you enter your status message, links, and other things) that allows people to select the privacy level they want on a per post basis. A combination of the fact that one of the options is to make your post visible to everybody, and the fact that the beta was only provided to people who previously set their status to visible by everyone caused some fear that we would all be soon living in a brave new Facebook naked of privacy settings and having to remember to lock away every single post. From what I can tell, past the hype, your default settings will remain if/when the new publisher goes beyond the beta tests. So let us checkup on your defaults.

Defaults?

In Facebook you can control your default privacy settings on several elements of your profile. You can even partition your friends into lists and specifically block certain profile elements from certain friends; this can be useful for separating things you want professional colleagues to see from all your friends/acquaintances/angry towns people who remember that wicked awesome toga party you once threw--no matter what you think, there are photos, and they will be posted one day. Facebook has detailed help on privacy settings. Pay attention to friends of friends and network settings thinking hard about who this might include.

Do not forget the search settings.

Separate from your default privacy settings are your search settings. These control what shows up when people search for your name. It is worth noting that one of the items you can turn off in your search settings is the listing of the pages you are a fan of. If you tighten down all of your other privacy settings and forget this one, everyone will be able to see that you are an enormous fan of Emo Sponge Bob and judge you based on that revelation.

2010 Equal Justice Works Fellowship Applications Now Available

The Equal Justice Works Fellowship application for 2010 fellowships is available now. Deadline to apply September 17, 2009. Do you have a project that will change the world? To apply you need a well thought idea and a host organization. Interested students entering their final year should come to Career Services and talk to Bill as soon as possible to brain storm and discuss strategies.

Read all about fellowships in the Post Graduate Public Interest Fellowship Handbook

Make a free account and search for other fellowship sponsors and host organizations at PSLawNet.org.

Lewis & Clark Graduates have received this fellowship in the past, will you be our next recipient?

Alum fights for the right to heat, light, and telephone

There are many ways to fight for the little guy, some of them at legal services organizations like Legal Aid, others in the government like Attorney General consumer rights divisions. Alumnus Simon ffitch has done both. Read about his path and how he fights to see that the people of Washington have power in utility rate cases.

The dreaded loans and ways to not pay them - something for grads, something for students

Tomorrow, July 1 marks the first day that law school grads will be able to select Income-Based Repayment which limits federal loan repayments to 15% of discretionary income. Combine this with Public Service Forgiveness to get rid of your loans in 10 years, afford to work for the government or a non-profit, and save the world.

Can't wait to graduate to not pay your loans? How about a scholarship. There are many scholarships out there ranging from need based to merit based to contest based (think Miss America). In the third bin (it is not Miss America) is the Access Group's "My Inspiration" contest. All you have to do is submit a video explaining your reasons for coming to law school. The prize, $10,000 and 15 minutes of fame on the YouTubes of the interwebs.

Federal Law Clerk Hiring Plan

Students preparing for their final year - now is the time to think about federal judicial clerkships; applications are due next fall for work starting the fall after you graduate.

Most federal judges follow the Federal Law Clerk Hiring Plan. The Plan sets the timing of hiring. In the past, many judges rushed to hire students as early in their law school careers as possible. In fact, judges used to hire students as early as the fall of their second year for positions that would not begin until the Fall after the student’s graduation.

The Hiring Plan does not allow judges to hire before the fall of the third year of law school. Although some federal judges do not follow this plan, most do. Students interested in applying for a federal clerkship starting after graduation should submit applications at the beginning of fall semester of their final year of law school.

Important Federal Hiring Plan Dates

• Tuesday, September 8, 2009: The day after Labor Day - The first day that application materials may be RECEIVED by judges, also the day the online application system OSCAR releases applications to judges.
• Friday, September 11, 2009: The first day judges may contact applicants to schedule interviews.
• Thursday, September 17, 2009: The first day judges may hold interviews and the first day judges may make job offers.

Timing Issues to Consider

• Do not submit your materials too late. Because of the tight time-lines, it is important that you submit your materials as soon as possible without arriving before the deadline. If your materials arrive late in the reading period, the judge may have already received many good applications and may not even review your materials.
• Do not submit your materials too early. Judges who are strictly following the Plan will not review materials if they arrive early.
• Prepare your application early. Most judges require you to submit a cover letter, resume, transcript, writing sample and 2-3 letters of recommendation. You will need to prepare your materials over the summer, so that you can have them ready to submit immediately after Labor Day. Think about who you will ask to write your letters of recommendation. Advise them of your plans. Ask them no later than mid-summer, so they will have plenty of time to prepare a good letter for you to submit on time.
• Keep in mind that the Plan only applies to federal judicial clerkships. Some state courts follow these timing guidelines, many do not (including the Oregon appellate courts).
• Remember, when you apply through OSCAR, your completed applications will be automatically released to the judges according to the hiring plan.

What to Do NOW

• Review The Hiring Plan
• Pick up a copy of the Career Services “Judicial Clerkship Handbook” - pick one up from the Career Services front desk anytime or read online (login required).
• Register for OSCAR, the online judicial hiring system. It is never too early to start entering your information to OSCAR!
• Ask faculty and other recommenders about writing letters of recommendation for you.
• Research judges and determining where you plan to apply. A list judges and openings is available from OSCAR.
• Schedule an appointment to talk with Libby Davis, Ellen Jones, or Bill Penn in Career Services about your clerkship plans.

What do Montana, Iowa, Maine, Hawaii, New Jersey, and Minnesota have in common?

Right now on the Career Services online job postings, there are listings for judicial clerks for Montana, Maine, Iowa, Hawaii, New Jersey, and Minnesota. The Montana and Iowa positions starts in this September, 2009, all others are for terms starting in fall of 2010 (these are positions for students entering their final year of law school). Some are Trial Court, some Court of Appeals, and some state Supreme Court. Log into the job postings site to view the full details.

• Montana - Apply by 7/10/09, start 9/1/09
• Iowa - Apply by 7/1/2009, Start 8/3/09
• Maine - Apply by (multiple positions) 8/28/09 & 9/8/09, Start fall 2010
• Hawaii - Apply by10/1/09 Start 9/3/10
• New Jersey - 480 positions, Apply by multiple dates from 5/8/2009 through 12/24/2009, Start fall 2010
• Minnesota - Apply by (multiple positions) 8/14/09 & 8/21/09, Start August 2010

Interested in another state, check the Guide to State Judicial Clerkship Procedures (login information available in Career Services). Check now, as there is no consistent date for state clerkships.

Lead Today, Succeed Tomorrow

Taking Leadership roles can be a great way to help the community, connect with other dedicated people, and shape the legal profession. Leadership opportunities include helping bar sections (many sections have newsletters, and there are few better ways to get your name in front of attorneys than writing for or editing a section newsletter); taking a role in politics as a volunteer or Precinct Committee Person whether your leanings be left, right , or of another tone; and serving on committee and boards. Below is an announcement for an opportunity of this third kind.

Equal Justice Works, an organization that advances public interest law is looking for students (2L, 3L, 4L) to serve on its Advisory Committee for a two year term with about a five hour per month work amount. This is a great opportunity to show your commitment to public interest work, to connect with public interest players outside Oregon, or to guide the advancement of public interest issues.

The Overview

Equal Justice Works is now accepting applications for the National Advisory Committee. Committee members guide and advance the organization's goal of having students develop a lifelong commitment to working on behalf of underrepresented individuals, communities and cause.

As part of the Committee, members serve for a two-year term, beginning in July 2009 and ending in June 2011. Applications are now being accepted to fill ten positions: five law school professionals and five students. Applicants may be any of the following:

1. Law School Professionals:
2. deans
3. faculty
4. clinical professors
5. professors (full-time, adjunct or part-time)
6. career services staff
7. public interest staff
8. Students:

• rising 2L students
• rising 3L/4L students
• Part-time / evening students
• LLM students

Applicants should complete the application cover sheet and answer the accompanying questions. References are optional but suggested. All application materials should be sent together to awards@equaljusticeworks.org no later July 9, 2009 at 5 p.m. EDT.

Full details, Application

Welcome!

Welcome to the Lewis & Clark Law School Career Services blog. We'll add information on a regular basis that we hope will give you helpful hints and important information relevant to your career planning and job search.