Law Clerks, Externs, & Interns
Advocates for the West is an important training ground for the next generation of leaders in environmental law. Through our Environmental Law Clerks, Externs, and Interns Program we host, train, and mentor students and recent graduates from leading environmental law schools and colleges across the United States.
Participants receive high-quality mentoring and boots-on-the-ground experience. The program is a springboard to a successful career in public interest environmental law and advocacy and is critical to the future of our mission. We host paid law clerks each summer, in addition to fall, spring, and summer externs and communications and engagement interns.
Clerks and externs work with our attorneys to investigate and prosecute new cases by meeting with clients, conducting legal and factual research, going on field visits, attending court proceedings, and drafting court filings. All participants are educated on critical conservation issues facing the West. They are included as full members of the Advocates for the West team and participate in and contribute to our staff and board meetings and retreats, and our public education and fundraising events. Participants also gain knowledge of non-profit management, fundraising, communications, outreach, and other aspects of a non-profit organization.
Through this work, participants help us achieve our mission of using law and science to protect the West. Additionally, the program helps us achieve a critical objective to provide public education. By training new lawyers and environmental champions, we are educating the next generation of conservation leaders who will support and promote our goals. We maintain strong relationships with past participants with whom we partner on cases, and who we continue to support on their career path.
Meet our Summer 2024 Law Clerks, Externs, and Interns
To Inquire about Opportunities
If you are currently a law or undergraduate student looking to further your knowledge of environmental litigation, consider a clerkship, externship, or internship with us! If you are a Lewis and Clark Law School student interested in externing or interning in our Portland office during the school year, please contact the school’s externship coordinator for placement information.
To inquire about other legal clerkship or externship opportunities, submit a cover letter, resume, transcript, and recent writing sample to bhurlbutt@advocateswest.org.
To inquire about a non-legal communications and engagement internship, submit a cover letter, resume, transcript, and recent writing sample to wshoemaker@advocateswest.org.