For more than three years now, Cato has been running a highly successful legal associate program. Talented recent law school grads have come to work for us during the time that their law firms have “deferred” their start dates (from a few months to a full year), with commensurate stipends, and many law schools have created post-grad fellowships with similar conditions.

As we approach 2013, it’s time to put out my semi-annual call for more potential legal associates. We can always use the extra brain, you can always use Cato on your resume, and your schools/future employers can always use your counting as “employed” for US News rankings/getting substantive legal experience – we all win!

And so, the Cato Institute invites graduating (and recently graduated) law students and others with firm deferrals or post-grad funding – or simply a period of unemployment – to apply to work at our Center for Constitutional Studies. This is an opportunity to assist projects ranging from Supreme Court amicus briefs to policy papers to the Cato Supreme Court Review.  Start/end dates are flexible.

Interested students and graduates should email a cover letter, resume, transcript, and writing sample, along with any specific details of their availability to Jonathan Blanks at jblanks [at] cato.org. Note again that this announcement is for a non-paying job: we’ll give you a workspace, good experience, and an entree into the D.C. policy world, but we will not help your financial bottom line. You don’t have to be a deferred law firm associate or funded by your school, but you do have to be able to afford not being paid by us.

Please feel free to pass the above information to your friends and colleagues.

For information on Cato’s programs for non-graduating students – or graduates who would like to be part of our internship program (which does come with some minimal compensation) – contact Michael Hamilton at cbishop [at] cato.org.