State and Local Government Career Guide

Capitol Fellows Programs
The Sacramento State’s Center for California Studies Capitol Fellows Program is comprised of four paid, 11-month programs: the Jessie Marvin Unruh Assembly Fellowship Program, the Senate Fellows Program, the Executive Fellowship Program and the Judicial Administration Fellowship Program. Each program requires a separate application. Law school graduates have put their legal training to use in each of the four programs, and fellows are matched to placements that best utilize their education and skills.

Maryland Law and Policy Fellowship
This one-year legal fellowship, with the possibility for a second year, allows law graduates to conduct legal research and writing on environmental law and policy issues for Maryland Sea Grant and the Agriculture Law Education Initiative.  Fellows conduct legal scholarship and provide education for government agencies, coastal industries, and coastal communities addressing coastal law and policy in Maryland and the Chesapeake Bay with an emphasis on reaching underserved populations. There is a public education component to the work as well.

Justice Geraldine Hines Diversity Fellowship, Massachusetts Office of the Inspector General
This two-year fellowship offers new lawyers the opportunity to develop legal skills and experience. The Hines Fellow is selected from a pool of soon-to-be or recent law school graduates who show a commitment to diversity and public service. Fellows develop core legal skills while assisting with the Office’s audits, investigations, reviews, civil recovery actions and training programs. It also gives new attorneys exposure to state and municipal government and the public sector.

Empire State Fellows Program
The Empire State Fellows Program, based in Albany, is a paid, 2-year program that places fellows in offices to work directly with high-level policymakers in New York state agencies or authorities, or in the Executive Chamber.  Those completing their fellowship successfully may be given the opportunity to continue serving in New York State government afterwards. Among the fellowships is a paid, 2-year legal fellowship in the Governor’s Counsel’s office (the Carey Gabay Fellowship.) Finally, there is an LGBTQ+ Fellowship; the successful applicant serves in the Office of the Chief Diversity Officer within the Governor’s Executive Chamber. Only the Carey Gabay Fellowship is specifically legal in nature, but any of the placements can be a source of government and policymaking experience for a law graduate.

Santa Clara County Counsel Impact Litigation Fellowship
This two-year paid fellowship affords graduates the opportunity to assist in the litigation of high-impact cases, the drafting of local ordinances, and the development of new policies and programs to advance social and economic justice and promote public policy reform.

Sonoma County Counsel’s Office CROWN Attorney Fellowship
This one-year paid fellowship originally focused on Climate, Renewable Energy, Open Space, Water and Natural Resources, but has been expanded to become a General Law Fellowship, touching on all areas of public law.

New York City Law Department
The New York City Law Department hires about 40-80 new attorneys each year. About 7,000 new attorneys apply for these spots. Half of the new hires come from the 2L summer honors program; the other half are hired through fall on-campus or virtual interviews and directly submitted applications. The Law Department seeks applicants who have demonstrated through coursework and work experience a commitment to the public sector and a strong interest in litigation. For some divisions, writing skills are very important. For other divisions, court room experience, such as moot court, clinics and trial advocacy are preferred. Experience in other government legal offices is also valued.

The work performed by the newest attorneys varies based upon division. In civil litigation divisions, attorneys may conduct depositions, attend court conferences, assist experienced attorneys on complex matters, prepare and argue procedural and substantive motions, interview witnesses and attend client meetings. In the Family Court division, attorneys investigate and prosecute juvenile delinquency matters from arraignment to disposition, and work on interstate child support matters. For some of the divisions, like the Environmental Law Division or the Family Court Division, experience in the field is a plus. For most others, a general interest in litigation or urban development is sufficient.

The NYC Law Department also offers a paid one-year Corporation Counsel Honors Fellowship: one or two 3Ls or young graduates are hired annually to work closely with the Law Department and gain significant counseling, legislative, transactional, trial litigation and/or appellate litigation experience.

HPD-HDC Housing Fellows Program
This is a paid, two-year program that includes four 6-month rotations through New York’s Department of Housing Preservation and Development and the New York City Housing Development Corporation.

City of Portland Honors Attorney Program
This is a paid, 2-year program designed to provide an opportunity for new lawyers from historically underserved communities to gain public law experience at the start of their careers.

Capital City Fellows Program
The CCFP is a paid, 18-month program during which fellows may complete 3 6-month rotations in different city agencies or in different departments of the same agency. The program is not specifically legal in nature, but JDs may apply.

Since January 2007, I have had the honor and privilege of serving as First Assistant in the Massachusetts Attorney General’s office. Like other state Attorneys General offices, our office has broad jurisdiction over an extraordinary range of issues. The work is very interesting, and we are able to use a variety of tools – not only investigation and litigation – to make a real difference in people’s lives and to promote the public interest.

My career path from law school did not lead directly to state government. Like many HLS students, I was probably somewhat guilty of harboring a bias in favor of federal government service. After graduating from law school, I completed two federal clerkships, with Judge Michael Boudin on the First Circuit and then with Justice John Paul Stevens. In 1998, I returned to Boston and joined the litigation department of Hill & Barlow, a medium-sized firm with a rich tradition of pro bono work. At the firm, I worked on a wide variety of litigation and other matters, including a pro bono class action on behalf of more than 3,000 persons with mental retardation on a waiting list for state services. We won a landmark ruling in that case, and ultimately obtained a settlement guaranteeing our clients services worth more than $100 million a year.

After four years in private practice (interrupted briefly by volunteer work on the Gore-Lieberman Florida recount team, and also by an unsuccessful run for a state legislative seat), I moved into state government as Counsel and Chief Policy Advisor to the Massachusetts Senate President. In this job, I had a fantastic opportunity to work on a wide range of policy and legal issues, including the Massachusetts landmark universal health care law, legislation promoting stem cell and other life sciences research, and legislative debate over same-sex marriage. Working as a staff member in the state Legislature, I developed a deep affection for state government. At their best, states can find creative, innovative solutions to address major issues and problems in a way that is tailored to the particular needs of its residents. The federal government has more resources, but state governments have the potential to be quicker, more responsive, and more progressive.

In my current job at the Attorney General’s office, I supervise a total of 490 attorneys, investigators, paralegals and other staff members. Our work ranges from criminal prosecution (focusing particularly on white collar crime, public corruption, cybercrime, and environmental crime), to a range of civil law enforcement areas, including environmental protection, civil rights, consumer protection, health care law, energy rate regulation, wage and hour law enforcement, and regulation of non-profit organizations. Our office also defends the state and its public officials when they are sued.

My own position focuses primarily on reviewing and authorizing civil and criminal matters (investigations, civil suit filings, prosecutions, settlements, amicus briefs), supervising other lawyers, and providing legal and policy advice to the Attorney General. At the same time, I personally handle and participate in many different types of matters, including high-level settlement negotiations and various criminal investigations and cases. I find both the management and hands-on-lawyering parts of my job interesting and challenging in different ways.

One of the most exciting aspects of a state attorney general’s office is the very broad range of tools available to address problems. Our consumer protection statute and various other statutes provide us with very broad jurisdiction. As a general matter, with very few exceptions, our office has wide latitude to focus on problems that we think are the most serious and where we can make a real difference. For instance, we have addressed the subprime mortgage and foreclosure crisis by suing or obtaining settlements from national mortgage lending companies, investment banks, individual brokers and attorneys, and others who have engaged in fraudulent conduct. At the same time, we have enacted regulations to prohibit deceptive lending and have successfully promoted state and federal legislation to address the problem. We have taken similar broad approaches to problems ranging from global climate change to identity theft and cyber-security to health care quality and costs.

As for my own career path, I doubt that I would have ended up at First Assistant Attorney General if I had not worked in another state government job first. I feel very fortunate to have had these exciting and fun opportunities. There were two critical elements that helped me move successfully from private practice to these public service positions. First, by finding a firm that allowed me to engage in extensive pro bono work, I was able to develop skills, credentials, and relationships that in turn made it possible to find very interesting state government work. Second, and equally important, I was fortunate to have several mentors who offered guidance and connected me with others.

I love my job. I realize that generally attorneys are not expected to make this statement. In fact, there seems to be some unwritten rule that we are supposed to be unfulfilled, frustrated and dreaming of owning a candy store or something. However, I’m not exaggerating when I say that I love working as deputy legal counsel to the Governor.

How did I get here? Like many law school graduates, I have always been interested in politics and public policy. I wanted a J.D. so that I could credibly work on social change. I have always been one to study and work on what interests me: in college I majored in women’s studies and in law school I opted for local government law and a year long seminar on race, gender and class and the law over tax and corporations. I did the criminal justice institute defense clinical and was on CRCL. I firmly believe that when people work on things they passionately care about they naturally excel and go the extra mile.

After graduating from law school I had an offer from a large law firm where I had worked as a summer associate. I postponed that decision, however, for a two-year clerkship in the federal district court in Boston. Clerking was amazing, and my judge was an incredible mentor and friend. My writing skills improved by light years, and I enjoyed watching the chess game of civil litigation from the skilled oral arguments to the drama of trials to the behind the scenes judicial review. By the end of my clerkship I had learned many things, but perhaps the two most important items were: (1) I wanted to be in the courtroom trying cases. Immediately. Not in 5 years, and not just to carry a partner’s briefcase. (2) I really, really enjoyed working on the local government law matters that had come before us. I found the municipal cases had the perfect blend of public policy and intellectual interest.

Accordingly, after finishing my clerkship, I began working as assistant corporation counsel to the city of Boston in the litigation department. For 3 ½ years I represented Boston in state and federal court, administrative agencies and the Court of Appeals for the First Circuit. Like other government jobs, the corporation counsel provides new attorneys with immediate courtroom experience, a ton of independence and a lot of work! In addition to litigation cases, I sought out additional work in government services, which advises city commissioners and departments. Working on everything from pothole negligence suits to voting rights law, I was constantly challenged and learning about new areas of the law. I found as much as I enjoyed trying cases and arguing a motion, I also enjoyed putting out fires through behind the scenes legal advising (before court action is necessary). The rewards of working for a city are incredible: working on great state and federal legal issues, shaping important public policies about schools, zoning and voting, honing my trial skills fresh out of law school.

There’s another part to this story. Immediately after law school graduation, I looked for an outlet for my feminism and new law degree. I joined the state’s women’s bar association, where I met many mentors and quickly joined the political arm of the organization, the legislative policy committee (“LPC”). The LPC fights for women’s equal rights and for poor women and children. Through testifying at hearings and small meetings with legislators sponsoring (or opposing) relevant legislation, the LPC is an active voice for equality in the Massachusetts legislature. Eventually, I became co-chair of the LPC. Working on the committee was the perfect supplement to my “day job”, and while feeding my feminist legal interests I simultaneously began to learn the ins and outs of the Massachusetts political process.

After 16 years of Republican governors, I was thrilled that Deval Patrick won the governor’s race in 2006. He is smart, progressive and unafraid of taking on challenges for the greater good—not to mention a HLS alum. To join his team and help realize his mission seemed too good to be true. Even though I was incredibly happy at Boston, I immediately sent my application to his chief legal counsel. I have no doubt that in addition to my breadth of experiences at the city of Boston my extracurricular work for the Women’s Bar Association and familiarity with the state legislative process helped land me the job.

From the day Governor Patrick was inaugurated, I have proudly served as one of his five attorneys. Though my constant assignments include legislative review and handling matters related to the Executive Office of Administration and Finance, given the size of the office and the variety of legal issues presented to the Governor, my work is extremely diverse from week to week. I am often overwhelmed by just how rewarding it is to work in the Governor’s Office. My dream of using my law degree to help people is realized (even if in a small way) every time the Governor signs a bill or issues Executive Order or gives a speech. In addition to the fulfillment of working to make people’s lives better, there is no intellectual plateau in this job—no shortage of fascinating legal questions to tackle. So you can see why I love my job.

There is one other reward I have found in working in legal offices in both state and local government worth mentioning. Government law jobs foster a cooperative, collaborative environment. There is no contest for who can bill the most hours or who the best rainmaker is. We are all on the same team, and we all serve the same client. I have found that this type of lawyering and teamwork creates an excellent work product and work environment.

One final note about the pay. Obviously the only downside to public interest law is that you will not receive the level of salary as your classmates at private firms. However, most folks can survive on the government salary, and they will have an incredibly interesting and meaningful life as a state or local government lawyer. LIPP is incredibly generous and I have benefited from the program since I graduated 8 years ago.

Jim Milkey ’83 never expected to argue a landmark case before the Supreme Court. Milkey graduated from both Harvard College and Harvard Law School. While at Harvard Law, he pursued a joint degree in city planning from MIT. Milkey explains, “I always expected to be a planner with a law background. While I was in law school, litigation was not my thing. I was more interested in the policy side of law.”

So how did Milkey end up as a litigator, arguing in front of the highest court in the land? “In my last year of law school, I realized I had not applied for a clerkship and that that had been a mistake. I wrote to the placement office at Christmas time that year looking for openings. I explained to them that I did not apply earlier because I had specialized interests, but then realized that it was a mistake. Luckily, Harvard Professor Benjamin Kaplan, who had been on the State Supreme Judicial Court but had to retire, was appointed recall on the Massachusetts Appeals Court and he needed a clerk,” says Milkey. While there is a bias at Harvard Law towards federal clerkships, Milkey highly recommends that students consider applying for state court clerkships, noting, “I think I actually had a bias against the federal government. Being interested in land use and planning issues, I was particularly drawn to the state side.” Milkey’s clerkship year had a great influence on his career development, as he explains, “I cannot recommend a clerkship enough. The clerkship was a fabulous year because it provides the perfect transitional year. Plus, you are out of the pressure cooker of trying to have your permanent job lined up while you’re still in school. After a year of clerking, you come out as a lawyer with great litigation experience. Before I clerked, I had never considered a career in litigation since I had always been more interested in policy. That said, having gotten the ‘litigation bug’ during the clerkship year and understanding that it’s easier to move from a litigation position to policy position, I ended up applying for a position in Environmental Protection Division in the Massachusetts Attorney General’s Office.”

Milkey spent almost 25 years in the Environmental Protection Division, moving his way up to become the Chief of the Division. “I quickly fell in love with the job having never been interested in becoming a litigator. I suddenly loved the ‘chess-playing’ aspects of litigation, especially being able to do it in the public interest. As a new Assistant Attorney General, you are thrown right into your work. While your classmates are proofreading briefs, you are arguing cases in court. It was a fabulous way to ‘grow up,’” he says about the job. Milkey argued his first appeal in the State Supreme Court less than two years after he joined the Massachusetts Attorney General’s Office.

The story behind the 2006 Massachusetts v. EPA Supreme Court case really begins in 2000. Milkey’s wife, a Professor of Political Science at Boston University, was doing a sabbatical year in Denmark: “For that academic year, we lived in Denmark. That year gave me a lot of time to think about what to do next. At the time, climate change was not at the top of the environmental agenda for Americans, especially on the state side. For obvious reasons, global climate change was not seen as a state issue. State Attorney Generals were not doing anything on the issue of climate change at the time. Yet, in Denmark, it was ‘number one’ on the environmental agenda and there was no ‘number two.’ In the middle of all this, we had a Presidential election in the United States. Both candidates endorsed the idea of mandatory climate emissions, but President Bush repudiated this promise. It was very clear that the Federal Government wasn’t going to do anything and had taken itself out of the game. That redoubled my efforts to see if there is a role for state AGs on climate change.”

Once Milkey returned to work in the fall of 2001, he started looking for causes of action. There were a few different theories that were under discussion. One was a common law theory, a nuisance case, a path which a group of State AG’s pursued. Massachusetts, on the other hand, championed the statutory path, fashioning a case against the federal government for not doing its job under its statute. “We decided to focus on regulation under the Clean Air Act because it covered the issue well and we were able to make the case that the EPA had a mandatory obligation under that act,” Milkey explains. Section 202 of the Clean Air Act gives the federal government the power to regulate any air pollutant that may reasonably be anticipated to endanger public health or welfare. The Massachusetts Attorney General’s Office worked very closely with other state AG’s offices to refine the theory and filed the initial case in October 2003.

Milkey’s office was able to get eleven other states on board, along with three cities, America Samoa and some environmental and health organizations. There were 30 petitioners in all. “We probably had about 50 lawyers on our side, so we weren’t short on help. I argued the case in the DC Circuit in 2005 and they ruled against us.” The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals declined to rehear the case en banc. In the spring of 2006, the United States Supreme Court granted cert.

In getting ready for the big case, they conducted six formal moot courts, including three large outside moot courts and three smaller, more private affairs. Milkey says that he spent about 300 hours preparing his oral argument, trying to anticipate every argument the Justices could throw at him: “I counted and I received 48 questions in a half hour. I will always be known as the person who tried to correct Justice Scalia twice.” Ultimately, Milkey was successful and the Supreme Court sided with the States in a 5 to 4 ruling. In this landmark environmental decision, the Court held that carbon dioxide is an air pollutant subject to regulation under the Clean Air Act.

Still, the work continues. In 2008, Massachusetts led a coalition of 19 states in filing a mandamus petition in the D.C. Circuit seeking to compel EPA to take specific action on the remand. The Massachusetts Attorney General also joined other states in challenging the EPA’s denial of approval for the California state program for regulating greenhouse gas emissions from motor vehicles.

Milkey is now a Judge on the Massachusetts Appeal Court (the court at which he clerked).

After graduating from HLS and taking the bar in the summer of 2005, I started work that fall as an Assistant Corporation Counsel in the Environmental Law Division of the New York City Law Department. The Law Department has been a great fit for me, because I’m most interested in the type of “environmental work” that focuses not on protecting charismatic megafauna or pristine wilderness lands, but on making day-to-day urban life more sustainable.

The plurality of our work in the Environmental Law Division involves environmental litigation (broadly defined) where the City has been named as a defendant. Within the realm of defensive litigation, circumstances vary greatly. Sometimes citizens opposed to a City action or approval, such as a rezoning or the siting of a composting facility, sue the City for reasons that boil down to “not in my backyard” or “not if I have to pay for it.” Other times, the City has been sued by a nonprofit group or by state and/or federal regulators for contributing to pollution, as in the case of the combined sewer overflows that carry diluted but untreated wastewater into the City’s rivers during every major rainstorm. While defensive work can sometimes involve trying to explain away client actions or policies that don’t sound very sustainable, and/or stinking piles of trash and sewage, I’m confident that reducing my clients’ liability for an environmental mishap will result not in lining an executive’s pockets, but rather in freeing up money to build schools and operate homeless shelters.

My office also handles affirmative litigation, through which we try to recover environmental cleanup costs the City has incurred, to advance the City’s environmental policy agenda (for example, we challenged several regulatory actions / inactions by the Bush-era EPA that left our low-lying harbor city at increased risk from climate change), and to prevent or abate environmental contamination in the City and the City’s upstate watershed. These cases range from the massive to the tiny; in four years I’ve worked on everything from a $250 million federal litigation against major oil and chemical refiners over MTBE contamination of City groundwater to an $8000 prosecution in a municipal administrative tribunal of a homeowner who improperly disposed of asbestos in his curbside trash.

Finally, much of our work does not entail litigation at all. Our counseling work (which is more often the province of wiser senior attorneys but also sometimes crosses my desk) often involves helping non-environmental attorneys within the Law Department or policymakers at other agencies understand the environmental law implications of a proposed statute, regulation, or transaction. Recently, we have been consulting on the implementation of PlaNYC 2030, Mayor Bloomberg’s roadmap for sustainable City operation and growth in the coming decades, trying to ensure that Plan-related statutes and regulations cannot be successfully challenged by regulated entities on grounds like state or federal preemption, the dormant Commerce Clause, or international trade agreements. PlaNYC 2030 also forms the backbone of Green Cities: New York, the seminar/clinical course co-taught by Jerry Frug of HLS and attorneys from our division.

In my first years at the Law Department, I really appreciated the balance between the significant responsibility I was assigned, and the significant support I was provided in carrying out those early assignments. I felt very comfortable asking questions of my supervisors, mentors, and peers while making my way up the steep learning curves of litigation practice and of navigating City, state, and federal bureaucracies.

The upcoming big trial, increased responsibility over time, and our budget-crunch-era staff shortage have collectively left me much busier than I used to be, but for the first three years of working here I had evenings free to volunteer at a community center and on a political campaign, act as legal coordinator for a small pro bono project, take Spanish classes, and intensively research the wine bars of Manhattan and Brooklyn. City salaries plus LIPP make it possible to carry on a comfortable lifestyle in the NYC area, and we also get great benefits.

The work is fast-paced and ever-changing. In less than four years here, I have drafted part of a SCOTUS amicus brief, drafted briefs and affidavits in dozens of state court cases, traveled to Houston to depose Texaco, Inc., and taken or defended about ten other depositions. I’m writing this narrative from the focus group suite where my colleagues are conducting a mock-up of the MTBE trial that’s scheduled to commence in the Southern District next month; after watching the “jurors” deliberate through the one-way mirror, I’ll be hopping a train north to speak to the Village Planning Board of Mt. Kisco (population 10,000) about a watershed land use issue. To be fair, there are also occasionally long days of document review. I spend a lot of time speaking with the agency staffers and consultants who make hands-on engineering and technical decisions for the City…ranging from Ph.D. hydrogeologists intimately familiar with issues affecting the City’s drinking water supply, to the traffic engineers trying to craft a better solution for the Van Wyck Expressway, to the Parks Department employee tasked with turning on the Washington Square Park fountain every warm, sunny day. Every time I sip tap water, visit a City park, or take out my recycling, I get to enjoy my clients’ “products.”

When I came to HLS in the fall of 1989, I knew I wanted to be a criminal prosecutor. I had always been interested in criminal law and criminal prosecution and had an intense desire to help people who were victims of crime. An internship with the US Attorney’s Office in Washington, D.C. when I was a junior in college solidified my decision to pursue this career path. After graduating HLS in 1992, I began to work for the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office in Chicago, IL. I spent 11 years with office, working my way up from the Appeals and Traffic/DUI Division to the Felony Trial Division and the Gang Unit. I tried about 25 felony jury trials and hundreds of bench trials. In the Gang Unit, I worked on several gang investigations and tried many gang homicides. I really enjoyed my career and gained invaluable experience. I was promoted to Deputy Supervisor and then Supervisor of the Traffic/DUI Division where I helped teach trial advocacy skills to entry-level attorneys. In 2003, I was given the opportunity to work for Mayor Richard M. Daley at the request of his Deputy Chief of Staff for Public Safety. As an assistant to the Mayor, I worked as a policy advisor on issues affecting crime and public safety. This opened up a whole new aspect of crime prevention issues including community policing, police performance and accountability and violence prevention.

In 2004, the Director of the Mayor’s License Commission retired after 15 years and Mayor Daley appointed me to run the department. Shortly thereafter, the Mayor created the new Department of Business Affairs & Licensing in 2005 which incorporated the Mayor’s License Commission. The Mayor then appointed me to head up this new Department in the spring of 2005. The Department of Business Affairs & Licensing was created to be the main business regulatory department for the city. The department was tasked with the regulation and issuance of all business licenses in the city. This included liquor licenses and I acted as the city’s liquor commissioner. The department was also responsible for streamlining the license applications process and providing various educational services for business owners. Through technology and combining the functions of 3 separate departments into one, we were able to dramatically improve city services to the business community.

In the fall of 2007, the Director of the Department of Administrative Hearings left after 10 years to become the general counsel for the City Colleges. Hence, in January 2008, Mayor Daley appointed me to head up the largest municipal administrative adjudications system in the country. In this position I serve as the Chief Administrative Law Judge for the city and I oversee a staff of about 46 full-time employees along with an additional 86 lawyers who serve as Administrative Law Judges. The department is the chief municipal adjudications system and hears over 500,000 cases annually, ranging from parking tickets to building and health code violations. We serve the citizens of Chicago across three different locations around the city. My primary areas of focus are management and administration, fiscal responsibility and training. I am also constantly trying to figure out ways to leverage existing technological resources in order to provide a more efficient hearings process.

Currently, as a city department head, my main focus is management and administration. However, since our department provides hearings on municipal code violations, I am involved in reviewing legislation that will have an effect on department operations. I am also very involved reviewing and revising department policies in order to maximize department efficiency. We want to make sure that the public receives the best return for every dollar spent. I also spent a great time on performance management in order to make sure that staff are being held accountable. I do not do any litigating in this current position and sometimes I miss being in the courtroom. But I enjoy making decisions and working with my staff to provide the highest level of customer service. My current challenges are trying to figure out how to do more with less and how to leverage existing resources to maintain a high level of service that the citizens have come to expect. With the city facing a $130 million budget shortfall, our department has experienced layoffs, furlough days and service cuts. Trying to keep morale high during these difficult times is also very challenging. The very worst part of the job is looking someone in the face and telling them they no longer have a job. It is very painful but not nearly so painful as hearing that you no longer have a job.

As you can see, my career has had many twists and turns and there was no way I could have imagined where a career in public interest would lead. I have been very fortunate and have faced challenges that allowed me to develop skills in many different areas. I have had a very rewarding career and have been given the opportunity to help many different types of people.

Finally, my advice for HLS students thinking of pursuing a career in State or Local Government, I would say – go for it. Follow your dreams. Working at the local level has been extremely rewarding. At the local level you see where the rubber meets the road. You see how policies directly affect people collectively and individually. Working in local government was not a very popular career choice among HLS students when I was a student and I’m sure that hasn’t changed much. Nevertheless, if you have the passion to help people in your community, a career in local government can give you many opportunities to make a difference. As a prosecutor, the best feeling I got was when a relative of a murder victim would thank me for listening to them and helping them find some sense of justice. No amount of money could compensate for that feeling. I certainly believe that two critical things contributed to my success in local government. The first was the time I spent as a prosecutor not just learning trial skills and legal arguments, but learning how to deal with ordinary people. Learning how to relate to people on different levels is a necessary skill for any kind of success and it is not taught at Harvard. Working in a local government office will give you that skill and you will carry that skill into any future career. The second thing that contributed to my success was the generosity of the Law School’s Low Income Protection Plan or LIPP. Without the financial assistance afforded me through this program, I would not have been able to devote my career to public service. I would strongly encourage any HLS student looking to start a career in local government to explore the LIPP. It is the largest and most generous loan forgiveness programs of any law school in the country. I am grateful to the Law School and the alumni for supporting and growing LIPP. It has made a huge difference in my career.

You won’t get financially rich pursuing a career in local government, but the riches you will gain will make you a better lawyer, and, most importantly, a better human being.

By far the most gratifying experiences I had at law school involved my work at the Harvard Legal Aid Bureau. I had always been interested in a career in the public sector, where most of my law school friends started their careers upon graduation. But I took a different path initially, going to work as an associate in the municipal finance department of Willkie Farr & Gallagher in New York City. For several years, I worked exclusively on municipal finance, representing public sector and underwriter clients in tax-exempt bond issuances to finance affordable housing, public power, economic development, infrastructure projects, public transportation, hospitals and universities. As the firm shifted resources from municipal to corporate finance, I began working on a variety of corporate transactions, including acquisitions, leveraged buy-outs and institutional private placements. I enjoyed the work I was doing at Willkie but continued to be interested in working in the public sector.

In 1992, I was asked by a former investment banking client who had taken a position at the New York City Office of Management and Budget in 1990 to consider a position as Counsel in the NYC OMB. OMB, in addition to preparing and administering the City’s expense and capital budgets, acts as the Mayor’s representative on all aspects of City financings, and OMB’s Counsel’s office reviews every City capital project for compliance with State law. The City anticipates capital spending of over $6 billion in the current fiscal year, for thousands of projects. OMB’s Counsel’s office also participates, with OMB’s Finance Unit, in all City and City-related financings.

I was offered the position, and decided to take it. It was not an easy decision, because I did enjoy the work I was doing at Willkie. It was intellectually satisfying and I liked the people I was working with. Another consideration, of course, was the salary differential between a major corporate law firm and the City, which I had to weigh against the many benefits of working for the City, including the ability to have a life outside of work. Although I did not have children then, I wanted more control over my work hours that comes with being the client rather than serving a client. So, after much discussion with friends and family, I joined the OMB in November 1992 and in 2002 I became General Counsel.

Almost 17 years later, I can say unequivocally that it was the right decision. One of my concerns about working on City finance at OMB was that it might constitute a narrowing of my practice area from the fairly broad array of finance transactions on which I had worked at Willkie Farr. Nothing could have been further from the truth. In fact, my experience at the City, from the very beginning, offered a wide variety of legal challenges, together with an opportunity to participate on the business side in many different transactions. For example, early in my career at OMB, I proposed a strategy for negotiating with the New York State Governor’s office to reverse the impact on City-owned hospitals of a State-wide delay of Medicaid payments. I was one of the City’s chief negotiators with the Governor’s office to implement the strategy, which resulted in millions of dollars in savings for the City’s public hospitals. Drawing on my experience at Willkie Farr, I worked on the City’s acquisition of the assets of a private water utility in Queens and, several years later, on the acquisition of the assets of private bus companies operating in the City. I’ve worked on several securitizations of City-owned mortgages, and am happy to report that none of the securities sold in those transactions has become “toxic.” The different transactions on which I’ve had an opportunity to work while at OMB have, if anything, been more varied than they likely would have been had I remained in private practice.

My primary focus has been working on City finance. I have worked on a range of City financings, including the sale of City “Samurai Bonds” in Japan and the first securitization of revenues from the nation-wide settlement agreement with tobacco companies. I have been deeply involved in the creation of new financing authorities, from drafting the original authorizing legislation to participating in the structuring of the credit and the subsequent bond issues. The past 18 months have offered some unprecedented challenges in the financial markets and the entire municipal market (as well as financial markets everywhere) has changed in ways that could not have been imagined two years ago.

One of the most interesting, albeit oftentimes frustrating, aspects of my job has been helping to develop the City’s legislative agenda in the finance area and working on State and federal legislation. On September 12, 2001, I received a phone call at home from the Budget Director, who told me that the State legislature was prepared to pass a bill to help the City recover from the terrorist attacks of September 11. He asked me to draft the legislation, and the next day the State legislature passed the bill authorizing the borrowing of up to $2.5 billion to provide for some of the City’s costs relating to the attacks.

More recently, we secured enactment of a bill that expands the debt issuing capacity of one of our most highly rated issuers, which will enable the City to save substantially on its debt service costs.

I hardly know where to start in describing the rewards of my job, and of working for the City of New York in general. The first and most obvious is the ability to do interesting work that makes a difference in the lives of millions of New Yorkers, while maintaining a sensible work/life balance. I have two children, age 12 and 9, and am able to get home regularly to have dinner with them at a reasonable hour. It’s also very rewarding to be a part of New York City government—I have always loved the energy and diversity of the City, and to be a part of City government and see how it works from the inside is fascinating.

I am happy to see that there appears to be more support at HLS for students interested in public sector careers than there was when I graduated. I would encourage students to consider jobs with local governments, where decisions are made and services provided that directly affect residents and the quality of their lives.

A colleague of mine once described a local government as a “nonprofit in the business of everything.” San Francisco doesn’t just pave the roads and operate parks; on top of providing for public safety and running a mass transit system, it also operates two public hospitals and satellite clinics, a water system that supplies not just San Francisco but millions of other Californians, and an international airport and port. In addition to this, San Francisco has executive and legislative officials who pride themselves on forward-thinking policy initiatives, and who are not afraid to take on powerful and well-funded opponents. That is a client who needs a good lawyer: San Francisco’s elected City Attorney and a staff of 180 Deputy City Attorneys (DCAs).

When I started law school, I had no idea what a city attorney or county counsel was. I found out when I visited an OPIA panel on careers in government, and one of the panelists was the Chief Deputy City Attorney for San Francisco. Luckily, the attorney was also a Wasserstein Fellow, and an informational interview turned into a 1L summer internship. That summer, I supported DCAs advising on homeless shelter policies, and helped defend against a suit brought by a street minister who thought City noise ordinances should not apply to him, as well as other civil cases. One case, though, “hooked” me on the City Attorney’s Office. I worked with a group of dedicated and talented attorneys to defend San Francisco’s then-landmark Equal Benefits Ordinance – a law that required contractors with San Francisco to offer the same benefits to employees with domestic partners as they offered to married employees. Not only was the cause righteous; working on that case, and the others, I also learned how good attorneys think through every step of litigation, and consider every legal problem from every angle. That was the kind of job I wanted, and those were the people I wanted to learn from.

After I finished a clerkship with Judge Jon O. Newman of the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, I started as a new DCA on the office’s Trial Team. It was formally known as the “Litigation Team,” but no one called it that, because we did not “litigate”; we tried cases. I had my first bench trial after less than three months, and my first jury trial in nine months. And a couple of months after that, I was the lead DCA in a fraud investigation that ended with a multi-million dollar recovery for San Francisco. Soon after I started, I soon lost count of how many depositions I took and dispositive motions I argued. I recently argued a case before the California Supreme Court. Only in a government law office can a young (or old, for that matter) attorney get so much civil litigation experience so quickly. Particularly in a local government law office, the same attorney litigates a civil case through discovery, motion practice, and trial, and then goes on to argue the appeal. That model stems not only from limited resources; it also reflects a culture that values each attorney’s ability and capacity for professional growth.

While my own experience has been in litigation, that is only one aspect of a local government law office’s work. Local governments need attorneys to advise them in every aspect of governance, from legislation (there is no such thing as simple legislation) to transactions (consider the task of purchasing a fleet of environmentally sound buses, or building a ballpark with private funding) to labor, land use, public works, and administrative proceedings. Local government attorneys have a range of backgrounds, whether with private law firms, state and federal government, even criminal law practice.

An attorney representing a local government can look forward to variety. Over my nine years as a Deputy City Attorney, I’ve represented San Francisco in matters involving civil rights, personal injury, contract disputes, local taxes, land use, bankruptcy, and other areas. Right now, my case load focuses on consumer protection, public corruption and contractor fraud investigations, and tax fraud. These types of cases require lengthy investigations and strategic thinking – and trial and negotiation skills that will lead to good results.

Students hoping to find a job in a local government law office should recognize that local government is local; a city attorney will take seriously an applicant who already works in, or has ties to, the city that the office represents; already being a member of the State Bar is a must. And local governments – particularly in California – are subject to budget constraints that can translate into long droughts in the hiring process; attorneys need to be ready to take a job when it becomes available. It is typical for new DCAs to have at least a few years of experience elsewhere, but some offices occasionally hire new attorneys immediately after a clerkship. Local government law offices look for the same things other potential employers look for: achievement and credentials, demonstrated interest, and the ability to work independently and exercise good judgment.

From a personal standpoint, the opportunities for professional growth and intellectual stimulation are two very good reasons to work in a local government law office. But there are two other aspects of working as a Deputy City Attorney that are profoundly satisfying; one of them is generally true about serving in a government law office, and the other is particular to the San Francisco City Attorney’s Office.

First, government attorneys are trustees of the public good. When they advise lawmakers, or represent any government – state, local, or federal – in court, they cannot view their client’s interests narrowly. Rather, their interest is in justice being done. Judges and opposing attorneys rightly expect that government attorneys will meet higher ethical and professional standards in exercising governmental authority. Living up to that responsibility is a constant challenge – but doing so is its own reward.

Second, San Francisco’s elected City Attorneys – Louise Renne from 1986 to 2001, and Dennis Herrera since 2002 – have been national leaders in expanding the role of a local government law office, to serve not just the traditional defensive and advising role, but also to use its powers to file litigation on behalf of constituents’ interests and the general public interest. Under their leadership, San Francisco was the first local government to sue cigarette companies to recover the public health costs of tobacco use, to sue for women’s reproductive freedom, and to sue to invalidate discriminatory marriage laws. And along with that impact litigation, the City Attorney has exercised the office’s consumer protection and code enforcement powers to fight – for example –predatory lenders, businesses marketing alcohol to minors, elder abusers, slumlords, and violent gangs.

The San Francisco City Attorney’s Office continues to innovate. In 2006, City Attorney Dennis Herrera appointed an Affirmative Litigation Task Force to develop high-impact lawsuits for the benefit of San Francisco and the public at large. The task force involves DCAs with a broad range of legal expertise and skills. These attorneys work directly with Berkeley and Yale Law School students, who get a seminar-style introduction to relevant California local government law and work closely with Deputy City Attorneys on case development and litigation. It has been one of my career highlights to work on the task force with other skilled attorneys and these motivated law students.

Other local government law offices have followed San Francisco’s lead. San Francisco has actively promoted its model, both through the American Constitution Society (Dennis Herrera is on the Board of Directors) and through contacts with other offices. The Santa Clara County Counsel’s office has a similar partnership with Stanford and Santa Clara Law Schools, and New York City Law Department with Harvard Law School. Many other local government law offices are doing innovative work, including Seattle, Cincinnati, Chicago, Washington DC, Los Angeles, Oakland, Baltimore, Newark (NJ), and others. Many Harvard Law School graduates are helping to lead the way. Join us.

I have worked for the City of Boston Law Department for almost three years. I sought this job because of a strong interest in local government, spurred on by my Local Government Law class at HLS, and because I was looking for a job that would give me a variety of hands-on legal practice opportunities.

I work in a group called “government services,” which represents City departments on the whole range of legal work they need (excluding certain common categories of lawsuits suits against the City, such as unintentional torts, employment complaints, and civil rights complaints). My work is unspecialized, so I frequently address questions, and situations that I have never seen before. My work can roughly be grouped into four categories:

1. Questions and advice. In a typical week, I get a number of small questions from City departments (my clients), such as whether a proposed contract conforms to our living wage ordinance or what to do about a subpoena, that take minutes or only a few hours to I also do slightly longer research projects (a day or two) on a variety of questions, such as which police force has jurisdiction over certain public property, or whether a proposed law must originate as a Home Rule Petition?
2. Contracts. I spend at least some time every week working on contracts. This includes mundane work like ensuring that all of the necessary documents have been completed. I also help departments put together solicitations for services to ensure compliance with public bidding laws, and negotiate terms with companies the City is contracting with.
3. Projects. In addition to discrete requests for legal advice that can be handled in minutes or days, I work on longer-term issues that can benefit from legal input. There is no typical issue, but here are a few examples: working with a City-State team to draft legislation concerning pension issues; working with a City department to figure out what to do about long-forgotten property it may own; working with a group redrafting the standard contract the City uses for dependent contractors.
4. Litigation. I spend approximately half of my time on litigation. My cases include land use cases (defending zoning and historical district decisions), contract disputes (with components of traditional contract disputes plus issues concerning public contracting laws), some challenges to the statutory and constitutional validity of various property tax levies, and “other government” cases – for example, a challenge to a City law limiting the number of college students per apartment and a dispute with the MBTA over whose police will staff certain traffic details.

One of the best parts of this job is that I have lots of responsibility for my own cases and issues, and lots of opportunities to do things myself. For example, with respect to litigation, I’ve taken and defended depositions, argued motions, I’ve tried a case in federal district court with a colleague, I’ve tried a very small case in the Massachusetts Superior Court and will try a bigger one in a few months, and I’ve briefed and argued cases in the Massachusetts Appeals Court, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, and the First Circuit. I also really like the opportunity to work in the public interest, and the variety of my work. Finally, working in government is fun because your clients are doing really interesting work and a lot of it is of general interest to you, your family, and your friends.

There are also challenges working for the City, beginning with the obvious one of not getting paid very much. Another real challenge is that I don’t usually get to learn how to do something from more experienced lawyers. I learn from doing things myself and my own mistakes, but I am sure there is a lot I am not learning. Finally, working as a practicing lawyer representing City departments is not primarily a policy job. By and large, those decisions are not made by lawyers (at least at my level); in fact, a lawyer often comes to a situation after the policy work is done and the questions concern implementation or addressing problems.

In 2008, between my second and third years of law school, I worked as a legal intern in the Environmental Protection Division of the Massachusetts Attorney General’s Office. I was eager to work both in government and in environmental law, but I was uncomfortable about seeking work at the federal level because of the then-current administration’s environmental policies. Further, it was a time of tremendous action by the states. During the preceding year, Kansas had emerged as the first state to consider the effects of greenhouse gas emissions in deciding whether to grant permits to coal power plants; more famously, the U.S. Supreme Court had recently handed down its decision in Massachusetts v. EPA, in which the Commonwealth and a number of other states effectively challenged the EPA’s position that it lacked the authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions. It was beginning to seem like progress in environmental law progress was more often than not the result of state initiative, often against the federal government. So it was an easy choice for a lefty environmental type like me to work in Massachusetts AG’s Office.

When I showed up for my first day, there were two case files waiting on my desk; I was instructed to do some research and pull together a memo a state constitutional issue and another on some litigation over a landfill closure. The first morning set the tone for the summer: there was always work to be done, and it was never busywork. But after completing these, I didn’t write another memo for the rest of the summer.

The thing was, every summer the Division brought in two legal interns, but no one seemed to have a terribly precise idea of what to do with us. The attorneys were used to doing their own research, and, because the legal intern program was so small, there wasn’t a whole lot of structured programming. But this lack of structure turned out to be a very good thing indeed for a legal intern who wanted as much responsibility and experience as he could get in ten weeks. I soon found that, as long as I could prove myself reliable and capable to the attorneys, they’d let me try my hand at just about any project I expressed an interest in. I drafted or helped to draft motions, complaints, and briefs, plotted trial strategy regarding the presentation of complex scientific issues to a jury, participated in settlement negotiations, identified and interviewed witnesses, and took part in policy meetings, interagency planning meetings, and all sorts of other events. The work I did touched on just about every aspect of environmental law, including air, water, and toxic waste, as well as constitutional law, administrative law, and procedure.

The best part of the summer, though, was the group of attorneys I had the privilege of working with. These were all career government attorneys, folks who loved their work, cared about protecting the environment, and wanted to serve the public. And they were all ridiculously talented lawyers. Perhaps surprisingly, the office was also extremely social. There were not formal social events structured into the internship program, but the attorneys and staff were genuinely friendly, and we’d often go out for drinks after work or for lunch.

For someone who really wants to get into the trenches of public-sector environmental law, this is a fantastic summer job. Environmental law is a field where there is so much action and innovation taking place at the state level, and working in a state like Massachusetts, which is really on the cutting edge and dead serious about environmental protection, can be truly inspiring. If one is interested in this kind of a job, it’s definitely helpful to have as much relevant knowledge and experience as possible: any clinical work, as well as courses in environmental law, administrative law, constitutional law, evidence, and so forth, would be helpful. More important to finding the fullest experience in a small and informal setting like this, however, is a broad curiosity and desire actively to make the summer what you want it to be.

The New York City Law Department is broken down into 17 distinct departments, and each intern is assigned to one department. (You get to express a preference when you are hired.) I can only directly speak to the department to which I was assigned, Affirmative Litigation (i.e., plaintiff-side litigation). I had substantive work assignments from my first day in the office. The vast majority of the work is legal research and writing. The attorneys were quite attuned to giving me opportunities to write formal memorandums so that I could come out of the summer with a good writing sample; as the summer went on, I sometimes wrote formally and sometimes sent emails summarizing my research according to the complexity of the problem. The lawyers were definitely happy for me to stop by their offices to ask questions. Unlike a firm, the structure at the Law Department is non- hierarchical, so I always worked directly with the attorney that gave me an assignment. The quality of feedback varied from lawyer to lawyer, but I got constructive feedback on my larger/longer-term assignments.

The most enjoyable aspect of interning in local government is that you work with lawyers that are committed to what they are doing. At least the people that I met and worked with at the Corporation Counsel were there because they wanted to be there and felt they were performing an important public service. I don’t think there are significant challenges or frustrations inherent in working for local government for summer interns, but for full-time employees, the relatively low compensation can be a matter of real concern.

I was a government major and interned on the Hill in college, so working for the government was a pretty easy decision for me to make. More difficult was choosing between the civil and criminal sides for the summer. I wound up choosing civil for two reasons. First, I thought I would have more significant researching and writing opportunities on the civil side. Second, I already had some exposure to criminal work and wanted to experience civil work first-hand. I’m confident I made the right decision for myself. Someone that cared less about researching and writing and wanted much more courtroom exposure would be better served going to a District Attorney’s office.

I didn’t fully appreciate the differences among the departments at the Corporation Counsel when I applied to the job. I chose Affirmative Litigation because I thought I would see a variety of different subject matters, and that was borne out in my summer. But whether at the Corporation Counsel or any other government job, I would urge applicants to speak to current lawyers or past interns to get a flavor of the different divisions, because the pace, style and nature of work can be very different even within the same building.