2015 Summer Legal Internship Opportunity at NELP
The National Employment Law Project (NELP) is seeking dynamic law students for our 2015 summer legal internship program in New York City.
About NELP:
The National Employment Law Project is a non‐profit research and advocacy organization that partners with national, state and local allies – including community groups, immigrant advocacy organizations, worker centers, unions, faith-based organizations, policy makers and think tanks – to develop and promote policies and programs that create good jobs and enforce hard-won worker rights. NELP is one of the country’s leading workers’ rights organizations, developing innovative policy models, conducting research and education, supporting worker organizing, and engaging in strategic communications. To learn more about us, please visit the website.
The Internship:
With a staff of lawyers, social scientists, and policy experts, NELP’s approach is to work in close partnership with grassroots organizing groups and reformers to test new models in the states and cities and translate them to the federal level, in order to respond to the key problems of the U.S. labor market in the twenty‐first century. Our work includes:
- Developing new strategies to improve enforcement of basic workplace rights in order to combat the growing number of low‐wage and immigrant workers who are not paid the minimum wage or overtime, endure unsafe workplaces, and face retaliation when trying to organize;
- Research and policy development to address the rise of outsourcing and contingent work structures to ensure fair wages and job quality;
- Developing policies and providing campaign support to raise minimum wage and labor standards at the federal, state, and local levels, with a particular focus on supporting ongoing worker campaigns for $15 an hour and the right to unionize and eliminating loopholes that exclude immigrants, people of color, and contingent and temporary workers from core minimum wage protections.
Summer legal interns will assist NELP attorneys in all aspects of this work, including:
- Providing legal, policy and strategic assistance for campaigns, including drafting legislation, legal analyses, and policy briefs;
- Strategic participation in litigation related to wage and hour and other labor standards issues, including drafting of amicus briefs;
- Drafting reports, op-eds, and community educational materials and engaging in strategic communications.
Because this internship opportunity is unpaid, applicants must secure their own funding. Interested students should submit an application (resume, cover letter and writing sample) via email with the subject line “Summer Legal Internship.” Applications will be accepted on a rolling basis, but students are encouraged to apply as early as possible.