National Women's Law Center

EJF Vice-President Anya Prince discusses her summer at the National Women's Law Center:

Currently, women make 77 cents to every man's dollar. Public interest law students make, on average, 0 cents to every law firm summer associate dollar. Thanks to the stipend provided by Georgetown's Equal Justice Foundation, this summer I am able to work towards pay equality for women while actually being paid for my summer, public interest work.



This summer I am working at the National Women's Law Center in the Employment and Education team. This opportunity has provided my with many chances to work for women's equality both in the workplace and in schools. For example, this week I was able to attend an exciting rally to raise awareness of the need to pass equal pay legislation in the Senate. At the rally I was fortunate to hear great women leaders of our time, Senator Barbara Mikulski, Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, and Lily Ledbetter, speak about women's pay equity and their fight to get equal pay legislation through Congress.

Throughout the summer I have also been able to work on a variety of projects ranging from doing research on an appeal of a Title IX, athletic discrimination case to working towards ensuring that pregnant students are not discriminated against in their high school and college educations to writing posts for the NWLC Women'stake blog. I have really enjoyed working in the Washington realm of the mixture between law and policy. I have learned a great deal about how legal advocacy can be paired with policy work to affect meaningful change. Additionally, I have been able to participate in a few coalition meetings which have taught me the importance of working together with many public interest, civil rights organizations to champion broad, effective change.

My internship at NWLC has given me the opportunity to research and write about federal Title VII and Title IX cases, as well as dabble a bit in some of the state laws protecting women's rights. I have also been able to participate in the legislative process and help to research findings for proposed bills and work with Senator's offices to draft language for the bills. This breadth of knowledge I am gaining is invaluable. After this summer's work I look forward to a lifelong commitment of working in civil rights and employment rights.

I am thankful everyday that I go to work that I am able to participate in such an amazing organization with empowered and passionate women and men. As a rising 3L, it was intimidating to accept a public interest job instead of a firm job. However, the Equal Justice Foundation and its donors made this decision easier and I am so glad that I am able to have such a fulfilling summer.

National School Boards Association

EJF has made it possible for Laura Klein to intern this summer at the National School Boards Association (NSBA) in Alexandria, Virginia. NSBA is a federation of school board associations from across the country. I was initially interested in interning at NSBA because of my experience tutoring in a West Philadelphia middle school. As an intern in NSBA’s Office of General Counsel, I have had the opportunity to see the impact of both common law and legislation (like No Child Left Behind) on the day-to-day activities of school boards.



A lot of legislation impacts school boards. There is federal legislation affecting everything from employment of teachers to accommodating the needs of special education students. One of my most interesting projects has been researching legislation for reducing childhood obesity. I was interested to find out that physical education is not required by federal law, and when state law mandates it, some school districts just ignore those requirements because of weak enforcement mechanisms. I also learned that some states have cracked down on candy and other snacks in schools (one state even forbids candy from being used as a reward in classrooms!).

A big part of what NSBA’s Office of General Counsel does is get involved as amicus in Supreme Court cases that may impact school districts. On my second day, the office had a meeting to decide whether they should write an amicus brief in a case for which the Court had recently granted cert. I realized how much this internship differs from my pre-law school internships when the attorneys asked for my opinion on the matter! Since then we have had weekly meetings about amicus briefs, which has been a great education in the Supreme Court.

One of the more entertaining aspects of my job is a listserv for all the school board attorneys (both in-house and outside counsel) that are members of NSBA’s Council of School Attorneys. I believe there are about 600 attorneys on the listserv, and they put me on it for the summer so I could learn about education law. The attorneys send out the facts of situations that have arisen and ask the other attorneys for advice on how to proceed. The other attorneys give their opinions and the names of cases on point. The issues cover as broad a range of circumstances as you can imagine, from employment problems (can a school district fire a teacher who drunkenly resisted arrest at a local bar one weekend?) to First Amendment questions (can a church that uses school grounds for services on Sundays include wine in communion in violation of a school policy prohibiting alcohol on school grounds?).

I have genuinely enjoyed my time at NSBA’s Office of General Counsel. All the attorneys are very dedicated to what they do and have been extremely welcoming. My enthusiasm for practicing law has multiplied after just a month of applying the legal skills we learned last year to real-life situations.