By Gwyneth K. Shaw
Berkeley Law recently held its first-ever career fair with plaintiff-side firms, the latest step in an initiative by the school’s Career Development Office (CDO) to highlight and foster a broader set of career pathways for students.
“The CDO has been working tirelessly to make it easier for students to find, apply, and secure coveted summer and post-grad jobs with nonprofit organizations, government agencies, and plaintiff-side and public interest law firms,” says Assistant Dean of Career Development Eric Stern. “We are excited to continue our partnership with the Plaintiffs’ Law Association (PLA) to make this joint CDO/PLA career fair an annual event and to increase the number of plaintiff-side and private public interest firms recruiting our students through our organized campus interview programs.”
The CDO worked with the student-led PLA to host the event, which drew more than 60 students and 18 plaintiff-side firms from the Bay Area, Southern California, and beyond. Many of the attorneys who attended were law school alums — and they were enthused, says Associate Director for Private Sector Counseling and Programs Leslie Hauser.
“The most common refrain from alumni in attendance was that nothing like this ever happened when they were in law school, and they often felt lost while in law school trying to look for jobs in this sector,” she says. “They were incredibly impressed by the students and their dedication to plaintiff-side work and the variety of practices the firms represent.”
Having seen the level of enthusiasm from students and support from the CDO, she says many firms represented at the fair expressed interest in learning how to recruit Berkeley Law students. All said they’d never been invited to an event specifically aimed at plaintiff-side firms, Hauser added.
The fair reflects both the growing interest among students in this type of work and the law school’s efforts to support it. The PLA has around 200 members and a 14-student board, and is connecting with a larger national movement to promote the field as an alternative to large firms and corporate defense work for students interested in litigation.
“The PLA was only founded a few years ago, but in those years the group has sought to chip away at the idea that students only have the choice between corporate defense and government/nonprofit jobs,” PLA Co-President Becca Cooley ’25 says. “This event was the first step in a long-term effort to bring plaintiff-side firms into Berkeley’s organized recruiting process.
“This way, students have an opportunity to make informed decisions about their options without being rushed into the seeming security of corporate defense jobs.”
Cultivated relationships bear fruit
PLA’s previous leaders — particularly Leila Nasrolahi ’25 and classmate Kate Walford — worked hard to foster a relationship with the CDO and the firms that attended, developing a vibrant community of students, academics, and practitioners who are committed to advancing social, economic, and racial justice. PLA Co-President Léo Mandani ’26 says the fair provided an opportunity to get them all in the same room and strengthen those ties.
“The truth is that students pursuing public interest/public service roles are often frustrated by the fact that public interest and public service employers don’t typically make the same kind of postgraduate return offers that Big Law does, making it more difficult for students to land their first job out of law school,” Mandani says. “This creates a false dichotomy between those roles and Big Law. It’s important to show students that there is another option in the private sector that will allow them to pursue their public interest aspirations at firms usually with greater resources than government agencies or nonprofits.”
The fair also highlighted the wide-ranging practice areas available to students interested in this arena, drawing firms specializing in employment, securities, consumer protection, antitrust, civil rights, personal injury, environmental law, and more.
“As Big Law recruitment creeps earlier and earlier, it’s important to make sure law students are exposed early to the variety of options, including these public interest private firms that represent plaintiffs,” Cooley says. “Through this event, we hope students will consider plaintiff-side practice in whichever area they’re interested in.”
Lecturer Ted Mermin ’96, executive director of the law school’s Center for Consumer Law & Economic Justice, praised the efforts of both the PLA students and the CDO leaders for building a program that simply didn’t exist before.
“They have opened doors where most students didn’t even know there were walls,” he says. “All of this effort has generated enormous enthusiasm among students and admiration throughout the Berkeley Law community.”
Mermin even helped when an unexpected power outage threatened to dampen the event. He stepped in and called in a favor with the school-affiliated East Bay Community Law Center — off campus and thus unaffected by the blackout — to move the fair. (The outage did reduce turnout a bit, as a few firms that had committed to attend didn’t make it.)
“We weren’t going to let a little power outage stand in the way of the crowning event of a years-long effort to build a new career path for Berkeley Law students and alums,” Mermin says. “We brought the ice and the Girl Scout cookies, and the rest is history — or, at least, a very well-attended, lively, and fruitful gathering.”
Looking forward, Cooley and Mandani hope the fair can become an annual event, standardizing what had been a haphazard recruiting timeline based on each firm. The CDO is working closely with the PLA and the plaintiffs’ bar to make sure that going into the upcoming recruiting season students have a clearer picture of which plaintiff-side firms are hiring for summer and post-graduate positions, when applications are due, and whether students should apply through a CDO-run interview program or directly.
The fair happened to occur during the annual Admitted Students’ Weekend, and Mandani and Cooley have already received emails from prospective students interested in joining the PLA, presumably from seeing posters advertising the event around the campus.
“The fact that we had over 60 students attend the fair shows that students are ready to learn and engage with plaintiff-side work,” Mandani says. “There’s definitely a hunger for these kinds of events and we’re so excited to be growing the PLA.”