Public Interest
The University of Michigan Law School has long been a leader in public interest law and is dedicated to assisting current students and graduates who are interested in pursuing public interest opportunities.
Our Public Interest Program is committed to:
- Building and fostering a robust public interest community of alumni, students, and faculty
- Linking students with hands-on experience during the school year
- Providing career advising for summer and post-graduate positions
- In conjunction with the Financial Aid Office, helping students find financial support for public interest work
Please click on the headings below for more information.
Schedule an appointment with Alyson Robbins, Public Interest Director, or another counselor in the Office of Career Planning
- Networking Guide for Law Students (PDF)
- Public Service Network: A network of Michigan Law alumni and students working in public service law in the U.S. and abroad.
- Join the public service email group (PIMichLaw) for current students interested in public interest and government announcements/job postings by emailing Katie Ulivi at kmrus@umich.edu
- Join the MLaw Public Interest Community Group on LinkedIn
- Follow the MLaw Public Interest Community on Facebook and Twitter
Fellowships and Funding
We have a thriving community of alumni, students, and faculty who are committed to using law as a tool for justice.
Michigan Law boasts a vast community of over 1700 alumni worldwide who work in public service, including a network of more than 800 alumni who have eagerly volunteered to counsel students exploring public service opportunities. Whether in-person or over the telephone, alumni generously offer their time to speak with students and provide career guidance. Our students and alumni stay connected through specialized email groups.
As a student, you also will find a supportive community among your classmates, who are more than willing to mentor and share advice. Student groups, such as the Organization of Public Interest Students (OPIS), offer formal peer mentor programs, develop their own pro bono and community service projects, and host numerous programs throughout the year.
You will also have the support of some of the best practitioners in public interest through the Public Interest/Public Service Faculty Fellows (PIPS). Beyond the classroom, the PIPS offer career mentoring om public interest career paths. The PIPS also have expanded networks of public interest contacts, which they readily share with students.
Finally, while you are here in Ann Arbor, our office brings the public interest community to you through our Inspiring Paths Speaker Series and other presentations. These lectures, panels, and face-to-face meetings with public interest community leaders will broaden your exposure to the ways to serve the community with a law degree.
As soon as you set foot on campus, you’ll have the opportunity to get out into the community to use your developing legal skills.
First, you can take the Pro Bono Pledge, which asks each student to complete 50 hours of pro bono service during law school. At any given time, we have more than 30 active projects to choose from that span the globe. Some are right here in Michigan, others reach into New York, D.C., or Mississippi, and others—such as the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY)—take students abroad. Our numerous projects cover a vast array of practice areas—from human rights to consumer law to criminal law—and offer the chance for in-person contact with clients or remote research, depending on your preferences.
While pro bono projects offer you the chance to help lawyers with their clients and cases, our clinics give you the chance to BE the lawyer. Starting in your second year, you can take one of our 14 clinics, ranging from litigation to transactional and from trial to appellate. They cover a vast variety of topics—from human trafficking to child advocacy to environmental law—and are led by practitioners at the top of their various fields. Public interest students routinely report that their clinical experience is a highlight of their entire law school career.
In addition to the real-world experience provided by clinics, you can gain more practical experience via our full-time and part-time externship programs. Our full-time program allows you to spend a semester away, either within or outside the U.S., working for an organization of your choice. Or you can choose to participate in our established international externship programs in Geneva or South Africa. Past full-time externship students have worked in Paris, London, India, D.C., San Francisco, New York, and Chicago. For the part-time program, you choose a local organization and spend at least one day per week there.
An essential component of our Public Interest Program is individual career counseling to help you plan and prepare for your public interest career.
We have two attorney-counselors dedicated to public service: Alyson Robbins, Public Interest Director, and Robin Kaplan, Government Advisor. Many of our other counselors also have experience in the public sector. Our counselors will help you with the nuts and bolts of applying for public interest jobs, such as resume and cover letter review, and mock interviews, and we can go much farther than that, too. We'll refer you to other students and alumni who have followed similar paths to help you start creating your own network. We'll make sure that you're not overlooking resources or opportunities that might be a good fit, and we’ll guide you about what you need to be doing and when you should be doing it.
As a student seeking a career in public interest, you might be particularly interested in pursuing post-graduate fellowships, such as the Skadden or Equal Justice Works fellowships. Michigan Law has a long history of successfully placing fellows in these prestigious positions. Our fellowship resources include an extensive library of application materials and tips shared by students and alumni over the years.
And if you ever contemplate a career change, you can always come back to us—even long after graduation. Our career planning services are for life!
One of the biggest questions on the mind of public interest students is how they can possibly afford their dream job. Michigan Law has extensive resources to help you do just that.
First, we have one of the nation's best loan repayment assistance programs, making a career in public interest financially feasible (through the Law School Financial Aid Office).
Second, we have the Dean's Public Service Fellows Program and the 2L Public Service Guarantee, which together make funding available to every second-year student pursuing a public interest or government job in the summer.
There are numerous other funding opportunities specifically for Michigan Law Students, including Student Funded Fellowships, Clara Belfield and Henry Bates Overseas Fellowships, Bergstrom Child Welfare Law Summer Fellowship, the Fellowship in Refugee and Asylum Law, Program for Cambodian Law and Development, and the Robert B. Fiske, Jr. Fellowship Program for Government Service. There are also hundreds of outside sources of funding that our office can help you identify.