How to become a Capitol Hill lawyer?

December 4, 2010 3:48 PM

What are the best resources and/or approaches for an attorney seeking employment on Capitol Hill?

A friend who currently lives and practices in the NYC area is looking for attorney positions in Congress. If you have friends, family, or acquaintances who are attorneys on Capitol Hill, how did they go about their successful job hunt?

posted by snorkels to Work & Money (5 answers total)

The best advice I can give your friend is to move here. Especially in this economy, most employers vastly prefer to hire someone who already lives here over someone who will have to be brought in for interviews, may flake out and decide not to move, and will need time to relocate. It's expensive and time consuming, and with hundreds or thousands of applicants for every open position, cutting the non-locals is an easy way to reduce the resume-reader's workload.

Beyond that, it will really depend on the specifics of the situation. What sort of attorney is your friend? Does s/he have political experience? What kind of attorney job does s/he want? Does s/he want to actually practice law (counsel's office, etc.) or do legislative/policy work? Does s/he know anyone who already has this sort of job and could recommend her/him? What kind of work is s/he doing now? All of these questions and more will be relevant. So, all I'll say now is to get here. But if you want more advice and don't want to post personal info to the thread, feel free to MeMail me. I've worked on the Hill and done hiring, so I may be able to give more specific advice.
posted by decathecting at 4:12 PM on December 4, 2010

Republican or Democrat? That will affect the places he/she will look.
posted by Jahaza at 4:44 PM on December 4, 2010

Yeah, it really depends on what kind of job he or she wants, what the experience is, etc. Maybe Roll Call.
posted by Pax at 10:34 PM on December 4, 2010

I don't have experience looking for gigs as an attorney but I have been living and working in DC for nearly 7 years. The best advice I have for this situation in general is make a list of the places where you would like to work or are interested in working, find out where and how they advertise openings, and check those openings early and often.

I'm on plenty of email lists for jobs. I've looked for jobs on Twitter and done a small amount of networking but one day, I thought of this organization I heard of when I first moved here from a girl who said that she loved working there. I looked on their website and they had an opening that sounded pretty cool. I applied sometime in September and my first day was last Monday.

People make a big deal about connections and networking and I wouldn't neglect that and I certainly don't work on the hill or at the White House but neither my husband nor I have gotten hired (IMO) as a result of our connections.
posted by kat518 at 1:59 PM on December 5, 2010

Sorry, I just saw that your friend is specifically interested in working on the hill. The Senate has an employment bulletin. The House does too but I think it's not available online.
posted by kat518 at 2:02 PM on December 5, 2010