Originally published in Student Lawyer magazine (American Bar Association Law Student Division), Vol. 30, No. 4 (December 2001)
LIAISON NOTEBOOK
State and Local Government Law Covers a Variety of Career Opportunities
The ABA Section of State and Local Government Law is concerned with a variety of legal areas: land use, environmental, public finance and contracts, labor and employment, and governmental operations and liability, to name a few.
One misconception is that to practice government law you must work for a government entity. Yet private practitioners of government law can provide needed expertise to state and local governments.
This year the section is waiving its usual $10 student membership fee to help open law students' eyes to the diverse career possibilities working for and with state and local governments. A free law student membership puts you in contact with more than 5,000 lawyer members of the section. For more direct involvement, you can attend a fall or spring section meeting. The section's fall 2001 meeting was in Savannah, Ga. Topics included the legal challenges of gated communities and public law in law schools.
The section is a very prolific publishing group. Law students at the University of Missouri-Kansas City produce a law journal, The Urban Lawyer, on behalf of the section. Abstracts of recent journal topics may be viewed at www.abanet.org/statelocal/urbanlawyer/abstracts.html. Appalachian School of Law professor Dale Rubin produces a quarterly newsletter for the section, State and Local Law News. Abstracts of recent newsletter topics may be reviewed at www.abanet.org/statelocal/lawnews/ home.html. Each publication is free with your free section membership.
In addition to these periodicals, the section produces for sale numerous practice guides on subjects ranging from AIDS and Governmental Liability to Freedom of Speech in the Public Workplace.
Take advantage of a free one- year membership in the Section of State and Local Government Law. For more information, check out the section's web site at www.abanet.org/statelocal. To join the section, call 800-285-2221.
Matthew James Michel
Matthew James Michel, student liaison to the Section of State and Local Government Law, is a student at Lewis & Clark School of Law.