Since 1997, the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School’s Legislative Clinic has provided students the opportunity to gain real experience in legislative lawyering and the formation of public policy, combining fieldwork with a robust weekly seminar.
Legislative placements can include roles in Congress, state legislatures or local city councils, executive branch agencies engaged in legislative or policy work, or nonprofit advocacy organizations pursuing a legislative agenda.
“I created the Legislative Clinic 28 years ago to offer students a clinical experience in legislation and public policy by immersing them in legislative process, legislative drafting, and legislative advocacy, and providing opportunities for students to be at the center of wherever public policy is made,” said Louis S. Rulli, Morris M. Shuster Practice Professor of Law and Director of the Law School’s Civil Practice Clinic and Legislative Clinic.
The classroom component examines legislative process, drafting, and advocacy, and gives students the chance to interact with clinic alumni in legislative positions while learning federal and state legislative drafting techniques to apply to their chosen placements.
Frequent guest lecturers in the Legislative Clinic include Sandra Strokoff CW’71, L’75, the first woman to serve as Legislative Counsel for the U.S. House of Representatives, and Mary Gay Scanlon L’84, U.S. Representative from Pennsylvania’s 5th Congressional District.
A New Perspective on the Law
For students who have spent much of their law school careers mastering litigation and the interpretation of laws in court, a central benefit of the Legislative Clinic is the chance to gain a new perspective by delving into the legislative process by which those laws are crafted.
“I believe strongly that law students should maximize their legal education by participating in many different experiences that involve all three branches of government,” Rulli said. “In this way, students may unlock future interests and will be well prepared for whatever turns their professional careers may take.”
In Spring 2024, students with placements in the Senate Judiciary Committee gained direct experience with the judicial nominations process. Students helped legislators vet judicial candidates and drafted questions for Senators to help them prepare for nomination hearings.
For William McDonald L’24, who extensively vetted judicial candidates for an open court seat in the state of the Senator he worked for, gaining an inside view of the path to becoming a judge was invaluable.
McDonald, a self-described “nominations nerd,” said that having a “front-row seat” to the nominations process was “easily my favorite part of the semester.”
Diverse Placement Opportunities
Over the past several years, students have chosen to satisfy their legislative placements in exciting positions with federal organizations like the Senate Judiciary Committee, Senate Finance Committee, Senate Committee on Homeland Security & Government Affairs, Senate HELP Committee, White House Office of Science and Technology, House Office of Congressional Ethics, House Foreign Affairs Committee, House Judiciary Committee, Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, and the Office of Legislative Affairs at the Department of Justice (DOJ) and Federal Communications Commission (FCC).
Student have also enjoyed placements with the Pennsylvania and Delaware state legislatures, local legislative bodies such as the Philadelphia City Council, and leading nonprofits engaged in legislative work such as the Brennan Center for Justice and the National Institute for Reproductive Health in New York City.
The variety of placements in the Clinic enables students to learn from each other’s experiences.
“Legislative and public policy placements are more diverse than ever,” Rulli said. “Students choose to pursue their interests in Congress, the White House, the Department of Justice and other high level executive agencies, state and local legislatures, and major nonprofit organizations pursuing legislative change.”
Students in the Spring 2024 Legislative Clinic worked at placements ranging from the U.S. Treasury Office of General Counsel for International Affairs to United Nations Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) Committee.
“I would advise students who would like to take the Clinic to be open and ready to explore not just their placement but the things that their placement will reveal to them about themselves,” said Hayley Fitzgerald-Smith L’24 on her CEDAW experience. “I would encourage them to choose a placement that they believe aligns with their future career goals and to really be curious about the work that they are doing.
“As a class, we were able to have the hard discussions and poke at the weakness and fallacies that underly our ideas about the world,” she added. “Seeing our tiny class discuss hard issues provided me with a glimpse of what ‘could be.’”
Solid Career Foundations
For many students, the Legislative Clinic helped open the door to exciting careers and important positions shaping public policy.
Nicole Isaac L’04, a Commissioner at the White House Fellows Foundation, previously developed North American public policy at LinkedIn and served in various positions on Capitol Hill, including Special Assistant to President Barack Obama and Deputy Director of Legislative Affairs for former Vice President Joe Biden.
More recently, Sabrina Merold L’20 (pictured above with Rulli) spent two years at the Center for Reproductive Rights as a Legal Fellow with the Federal Policy Team, working on critical Federal legislation to protect access to reproductive healthcare.
“My opportunity in the Clinic directly translated into the work that I was able to do after law school and really provided me with critical skillsets to understand the inner workings of legislative drafting and how Congress functioned,” said Merold, now an Associate in the Antitrust Practice Group at Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll PLLC. “And that was essential in order for me to hit the ground running in my fellowship.”
Other Legislative Clinic alum include Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold L’11 (the youngest elected secretary of state in the nation at the time of her election); Deputy Chief Counsel at the U.S. House of Representatives Office of Congressional Ethics (OCE) Helen Eisner L’12; Chief Counsel for the U.S. Senate Committee on Rules and Administration Benjamin Driscoll L’14; Chief Counsel for the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee on Competition Policy, Antitrust, and Consumer Rights Phillip Berenbroick L’10; and Senior Counsel to the U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary (Senator Amy Klobuchar) Adam El-Sahn L’18.
“My strong advice to students is to seek career work about which you are passionate,” Rulli said. “You can have a real impact that makes a difference in our society, and there is nothing more rewarding than that.”
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