Crag is a great place to work. I’ll admit that I am biased. As a law student I volunteered at Crag during my first semester. The first-year curriculum didn’t allow for me to take any environmental law courses, but I wanted to find out if practicing environmental law was really all it was cracked up to be. At Crag I found a place where I could get my hands into cases and learn some basics of environmental law even while my coursework was limited to torts, contracts, and the like. I went on to do other things with my law school summers, but after graduating and a year-long judicial clerkship in Alaska, I found myself back at Crag.
Now I have the pleasure of working with law student externs and summer associates. At the moment, we are looking to fill our remaining positions for summer associates. We rely on law students to help increase our capacity to serve our clients, and we take on the responsibility of mentoring the next generation of environmental advocates as part of our mission.
For anyone who is considering applying for our summer program, I want to offer four reasons to apply:
1. We need you. Law clerks help us increase our capacity to serve our clients’ needs. That means that we put you to work writing motions, briefs, complaints, and other legal documents that, with our supervision and review, will be used directly in service of our clients. We simply don’t have time to have our clerks researching hypothetical issues or drafting memos to be put in a file and forgotten.
2. We share. Each summer associate works closely with a supervising attorney. You two share an office, which means that you have access to your supervisor to ask questions and discuss issues. You also can easily observe your supervising attorney’s work style, communications with clients and opposing counsel, and daily activities. We have weekly staff meetings to discuss current cases as a group. This allows for open exchange of ideas and the opportunity to engage with other attorneys in the office about their work.
3. We play. We know that an office job can be a difficult transition for students who are used to a more flexible schedule. We believe that getting out of the office, whether to meet with our dedicated clients, visit a site at issue in a case, or explore the Pacific Northwest, can be enormously revitalizing. Our staff are active climbers, kayakers, hikers, skiers and riders. We hope our summer associates will take time to enjoy the natural beauty of the Pacific Northwest that we work so hard to protect.
4. We win. Crag has represented over 100 conservation groups and individual clients on a wide range of environmental and natural resource issues, from oil and gas exploration on the North Slope of Alaska, to logging in Oregon’s coast range. We are tackling one of the biggest issues of our time, climate change, through our involvement in the Atmospheric Trust Litigation. At the same time we are working with small rural communities to protect their air quality and drinking water. We respond to our clients’ needs, evaluating the issues, educating their communities, and when necessary, winning in court.
We have already hired a few of our 2015 summer associates, and I have no doubt that they will be fantastic. I’m excited to see who else will join our team, and looking forward to a great summer!