Public Interest Law Opportunities

Taylor Yocom: Welcome back to Applying Yourself, a law school admissions podcast from Washington University School of Law in St. Louis. I am your host today, Taylor Yocom, an admissions specialist here at WashU Law. Usually, I’m behind the scenes producing this season of the podcast, but today I have the pleasure of being the host.

I’m so excited to welcome to our podcast Merce’de Savala, Senior Career Counselor in the Career Center here at WashU Law. Merce’de counsels students on career paths, specifically in the area of public interest. She is also a lecturer in law and the director of our Government Lawyering Externship. Welcome, Merce’de.

Merce’de Savala: Hi — thank you so much for having me.

Taylor Yocom: Of course. Can you share with us how long you’ve been with WashU Law?

Merce’de Savala: Okay. So, officially, in my professional capacity, I’ve been at WashU Law since August of 2022 — but I am a WashU Law alum and a WashU undergrad alum as well.

Taylor Yocom: Amazing. Yeah, St. Louis — WashU just keeps good people around, I feel like.

Merce’de Savala: Yes, it does. Yes, it does.

Taylor Yocom: Yeah. Before we get too far into the Summer Public Interest Program, can you please share what the Career Center at WashU Law does, and how it helps students find internships during the program and jobs for post-graduation?

Merce’de Savala: Absolutely. What I love about the Career Center is the number of services we offer our students. As soon as you commit to coming to WashU, we are there to help you.

We’ll help you get your resume in a legal format and make sure you’ve got it ready to go. So if you’re at a Cardinals game and you run into a potential employer and they’re like, “Hey, can I have your resume?” — it’s set and ready to go.

We will also work with you on creating your cover letter, and we will work with you on refining your writing sample. We’ll help review that as you’re getting your application materials together. For any students who are applying to diversity positions, we will help you with your diversity statements.

That’s how we help out on the materials side. We also conduct mock interviews. Part of the application process is landing those callbacks and landing the screener interviews, and we want to make sure that all of your answers and responses are as polished as possible. So you can meet with any of the career strategists at the Career Center, or any of our peer career advisors, and conduct mock interviews.

We also strategize with our students and have meetings to find out where you want to be over the summer and where you want to be after graduation. We try to help make connections with WashU Law alums in the places that you want to be, so that you can get information on what it is like to be in practice and see what it is to do the day-to-day lawyering.

Additionally, networking is huge. We will host networking events throughout the year where you can meet attorneys — some alums and some not — who talk about their practice areas and what it took to get on their path. We also have a bunch of judicial conversations. We bring judges in, sometimes in person, mostly virtually, who talk about what it is to clerk, what has helped them in their roles to get them to their path, and what they admire in seeing clerks who work for them.

And then finally — because I know I’ve been going on for a while — we also have a number of publications. We’ve got a blog that comes out on Saturdays. We’ve got a newsletter that is focused on our LLM students, one focused on clerkships, and one on public sector work. So we do everything that we can to help get you where you want to be.

Taylor Yocom: Amazing. Thank you for all of that.

So, first off, in case our listeners don’t know what the term is — can you share what types of work public interest encompasses?

Merce’de Savala: Public interest can mean a variety of things. Basically, it’s working in the public sector — working in a position where it’s not necessarily for profit. You can work in a judicial internship or a judicial clerkship. That counts as public sector work.

You can work for the public defender’s office, or you can work for the ACLU or a prosecutor’s office. That counts as public sector work. You can also work for the government. You can work for the Department of Education or the Department of Justice. That would also count as public sector work.

Basically, any position where you can help the public would count as public sector and public interest work.

Taylor Yocom: Amazing. So it seems like there are lots of different avenues and lots of different interests that public interest could touch.

Merce’de Savala: So many options.

Taylor Yocom: Yeah. So WashU does have the Summer Public Interest Program. Can you share what that is?

Merce’de Savala: Yes — so the Summer Public Interest Program, or SPIRE…

[Note: A portion of Merce’de’s response describing SPIRE appears to be missing from the source transcript. The audio should be checked and the explanation of the program — likely including details about funding for unpaid summer public interest internships — inserted here.]

Taylor Yocom: Amazing. What a great opportunity. What types of internships do students pursue with the funding? Where do they go in the country or around the world?

Merce’de Savala: The students go everywhere. Anywhere that you can imagine, we try to help you find that position. We’ve had students who have gone abroad to do part of our abroad programming down in South Africa. We’ve had students who go and work at a local city counselor’s office back in Portland. We have students who go to the Department of Justice in D.C. Anywhere that you could potentially find a public interest job, that is where we send you. We’ve even had a student who worked for the prosecutor’s office in Alaska. So our students really do go everywhere.

Taylor Yocom: Amazing. How do you see this type of work benefiting students’ careers and resumes, too?

Merce’de Savala: Oh, it’s fantastic, because you get a lot of practical experience. So even if public interest isn’t what you want to do long-term, the skills that you develop your first summer are fantastic. You get the opportunity to be at the forefront of what’s happening and work with attorneys — learn from experienced and very talented attorneys on how to litigate, for example, if you’re working with the public defender’s office, or how to write contracts if you are working with the legal services offices.

It gives you a lot of skill and a lot of experiences that you can use to go forth with whatever you want to do in your legal career. If you want to stay in public sector work, that’s fantastic. If you want to move on to what we call big law, that’s fine too — but it’ll give you skills that’ll help you learn how to lawyer.

Taylor Yocom: Amazing. Thank you. We also love to hear from our guests about what they love in St. Louis. Can you share your favorite places to go, favorite restaurants, stuff like that?

Merce’de Savala: Yay, yes. So, I’m not a St. Louis native. I’m a military brat, but my parents are from here.

As far as great places to get sandwiches, Blues City Deli down in South City is delightful and delicious. If you want to explore the outdoors, I recommend any of our numerous parks. Tower Grove Park is my personal favorite. That’s where we have the Festival of Nations. They do Food Truck Fridays, and it’s just a glorious park.

And if you are looking for entertainment, I’m slightly biased — I’m a Cardinals fan, so I like going to Busch Stadium over the summer.

Taylor Yocom: Yes. Ah, Tower Grove is so great. And they have a horse — they have two horses there, too.

Merce’de Savala: Yes, I’ve seen the horses. They scared my dogs.

Taylor Yocom: No.

Merce’de Savala: Yes. But no — Tower Grove is fantastic. The city is lively year-round, and it’s just a great place to be.

Taylor Yocom: Amazing. Is there anything else you would like to share about your work at WashU for our listeners?

Merce’de Savala: I’d say this: my favorite thing about my work at WashU is interacting with the students. Being a former WashU Law student, I don’t think I would have landed in the career that I did had I not been encouraged by the Career Center. I just remember being nervous about my first summer job and the Career Center saying, “You’ve got this. You can do this.” It ended up leading to a decade-long career, and it was just fantastic.

So now, to be back on the other side, I’m very excited to see all of our students go on their journeys.

Taylor Yocom: Amazing. What was your first summer job?

Merce’de Savala: So, I was at the Public Defender’s Office. I was nervous because I don’t like to argue, but as I was telling that to the career services team, they were like, “But you’re arguing with us right now.” So I went ahead and I did it. That first summer, I was hooked. I was a public defender for nearly 12 years.

Taylor Yocom: Amazing. Well, thank you so much for sharing your background, and for coming on the podcast. And for our listeners — thank you for tuning in. If you have any questions about the school or the admissions process, you can reach out to us at applylaw@wustl.edu, or head to our website to check out our campus, schedule a tour, or do a virtual consultation with an admissions specialist or student.

Thank you so much, Merce’de. It was so great to chat with you today.

Merce’de Savala: All right — have a good day.

Taylor Yocom: Thanks.