From the Institute for Justice, a law firm for which I have the highest regard:
Subject: Staff Attorney Opening at the Institute for JusticeTired of working on cases you don’t believe in? Longing to do something meaningful with your law degree? The Institute for Justice, the nation’s leading libertarian public interest law firm, is seeking a staff attorney to join its merry band of litigators in its Arlington, Va. headquarters. IJ litigates cutting-edge constitutional cases in the areas of private property rights, economic liberty, school choice, and free speech in both state and federal courts nationwide. We’ve litigated cases before the U.S. Supreme Court including the Kelo eminent domain case, the Swedenburg wine direct shipping case, and the Zelman school choice case. We seek attorneys with 0–4 years of litigation experience, excellent communication skills, an entrepreneurial spirit, solid academic records, a passion for freedom, and a good sense of humor. Clerkship preferred. We offer a competitive salary, full health, dental, and life insurance benefits, and a pension plan as well as a collegial, positive work environment and the opportunity to gain real litigation experience with meaningful responsibility in cases that will have immediate real-world impact. If you love liberty and the law and fighting for our nation’s founding principles, this is the place for you.
Send cover letter, resume and writing sample, in confidence, to:
Human Resource Department
Institute for Justice
901 North Glebe Road, Suite 900
Arlington, VA 22203
Email (preferred): employment@ij.org
Fax: (703) 682‑9321No phone calls, please.
Disclosure: I have in the past gotten a modest fee from IJ for some consulting I did for them.
Jay says:
Does anyone have thoughts on how competitive these IJ positions are, and whether they typically hire only those with something obvious on their resume to point to in terms of libertarian activism?
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November 12, 2009, 11:55 amwithout a clue says:
Why do they seek attorneys with only up to four years of litigation experience? I think this is a subtle form of age discrimination (I don’t do employment law so I could be legally wrong, but think I morally right). Why not simply the best canidate?
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November 12, 2009, 12:14 pmbob says:
Probably because they don’t pay much.
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November 12, 2009, 12:44 pmMark N. says:
Yeah, engineering firms do this too, explicitly advertising “entry-level” positions. They usually don’t want to interview anyone with more than a few years experience for those positions, because the assumption is that senior people who accepted a job with entry-level pay would start off with one foot out the door.
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November 12, 2009, 12:49 pmyankee says:
Given the extremely low quality of the analysis in last week’s posts by the guestblogger from IJ, I think they need all the help they can get.
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November 12, 2009, 12:54 pmB.D. says:
Given the extremely low quality of your post, I think you should step away from your computer immediately.
See how easy it is to make a snarky yet completely thoughtless comment?
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November 12, 2009, 1:37 pmPhil says:
I clerked at IJ for two semesters in law school. It was a great environment with friendly yet clearly driven people. Highly recommend!
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November 12, 2009, 1:52 pmHouston Lawyer says:
Age discrimination is prevalent throughout the legal profession. Apparently, law firms and corporations are not required to hire the best qualified person for the job.
Posts for jobs almost never say that they want someone with a minimum number of years experience without also including a maximum number. Also, you seldom see anyone posting a job looking for in excess of 10 years of experience.
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November 12, 2009, 2:07 pmBob from Ohio says:
I thought the exact same thing Yankee.
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November 12, 2009, 3:23 pmtroll_dc2 says:
I hate to tell you this, but nobody is required to hire the best-qualified applicant for anything. The only requirement is not to discriminate on the basis of specified characteristics. If you hired the best-qualified person (or the person whom you thought was best qualified), that is strong, but not conclusive, evidence that you did not discriminate. If you hired someone else instead, that can raise a question as to whether you relied on an illegal characteristic, but it does not prove that you discriminated. While it can be evidence that fits into the mosaic that a factfinder can decide establishes that you discriminated, the factfinder is not compelled to reach that conclusion, especially if there is evidence of some other non-discriminatory explanation.
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November 12, 2009, 4:10 pmArthurKirkland says:
Without assigning spots along the quality continuum to particular guests, I suggest that the range of quality among the VC’s guest-bloggers has been strikingly broad. Some have contributed thought-provoking, insightful, enjoyable-to-read scholarship. Others have offered lesser, sometimes remarkably poor content.
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November 12, 2009, 4:20 pmSteve says:
If I post a job opening for a first-year associate, I hardly think I’m obligated to hire some veteran lawyer just because he’s “better qualified” to be a lawyer in general. That seems like a legal theory dreamed up by some unemployed veteran lawyer.
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November 12, 2009, 4:49 pmyankee says:
Snarky, sure, but I stand by the point. Rowes’s posts lowered my opinion of IJ considerably, and if his is at all representative then IJ really does need all the help it can get.
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November 12, 2009, 5:29 pmAJK says:
I think it makes much more sense to read it as a general idea of the responsibilities and qualifications that go along with the position, not as a firm declaration that no one with 49 months of litigation experience will be considered.
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November 12, 2009, 5:43 pmArthurKirkland says:
My involvement with Institute for Justice attorneys has indicated that the Institute has some fine lawyers (I have encountered no clunkers) and that the Institute’s libertarianism is restrained by a conservatism of which it dares not speak.
Mr. Rowe did not strike me as the worst guest-blogger to have visited this precinct.
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November 12, 2009, 8:33 pmTom T. says:
Is the Institute for Justice Larry Klayman’s old shop?
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November 12, 2009, 9:50 pmtheobromophile says:
Had the same thought as AJK: the four-year maximum is about the responsibilities of the person to be hired and not about age. Reality is that every organisation needs people to do grunt work; part of the qualifications for the job include the ability and the desire to do that type of work.
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November 12, 2009, 11:03 pmNickM says:
Tom — NO. Larry Klayman was Judicial Watch.
Nick
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November 13, 2009, 3:29 amSplunge says:
Libertarian litigators. I love it. I am reminded of Richard Stallman’s GNU Publc License, a widget that uses copyright law to prevent copyrighting of GNU and GNU-derived code.
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November 13, 2009, 4:34 amJoseph Slater says:
Explicit age discrimination — favoring younger folks over folks over 40 because of age — is, in fact, illegal, at least as regards the clear majority of employers covered by the ADEA. The tricky bit is whether something like “4 years or fewer of experience” is age discrimination.
Sure, that requirement likely will, as a generalization, exclude many more folks over 40 than folks under 40. Which means it would be a “disparate impact” type of case. But the Supreme Court has made it even harder for plaintiffs to win disparate impact suits under the ADEA than under Title VII, so it’s very unlikely such a suit would prevail. And indeed, it’s likely the real intent of the requirement here was to get people who you could pay less and require to do more grunt work.
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November 13, 2009, 8:20 amAultimer says:
Libertarian =/= anarchist
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November 13, 2009, 8:54 amDebauched Sloth says:
yankee –
Just so you know, Jeff Rowes’s first appearance in court (any court, ever) was when he found and took over a free-speech case after a bad panel decision, en banc’ed it, and argued the case to all 15 judges of the Sixth Circuit, winning by one vote — as a first-year staff attorney. His subsequent work has been of the same caliber.
So while you’re certainly entitled to your opinion about the quality of Jeff’s posts, your slur about his probable abilities as a lawyer was as ill-informed as it was ill-mannered.
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Monteconde says:
Spent a summer at IJ. Amazing firm. Loved the work I did, and I really respect the people with whom I worked. It’s truly a legal job in which you could wake up every day feeling great about your work. They’re smart about the cases they take, they’re well managed, and they have a solid base of donors.
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November 16, 2009, 2:27 am