July 31, 2003 | Read Time: 2 minutes
Q. I’ve spent almost 30 years as a lawyer in private practice. I’ve done a lot of pro bono work for charities and am interested in devoting the next decade in service to a philanthropic organization. My questions: Is there a registry of charities that have legal departments? Are there training programs that focus on legal issues relevant to nonprofit groups? And is it realistic to search for a legal position on the staff of a charity?
A. It’s certainly realistic to search for jobs at a charity because many organizations have lawyers on their staffs, and your pro bono work has gotten you off to a good start. Unfortunately, although it would certainly come in handy in your job search, there is no single, national registry that maintains a list of charities with legal departments. However, you may find that certain segments of the field maintain lists of their own, says Joseph J. Iarocci, general counsel at CARE, a humanitarian organization based in Atlanta. For instance, he notes, CARE belongs to an organization of international humanitarian charities called Interaction, whose membership directory lists members that maintain legal departments. Also, commercial directories of lawyers, such as Martindale, allow you to search by specialty and location, so if you search in your area for lawyers who have a specialty in nonprofit work — or search under the “corporate” tab on the site — you might turn up a number of lawyers who work in nonprofit legal departments.
Some law schools have programs focused on nonprofit legal issues, notes Mr. Iarocci, who advises you to check your local law school to see if it offers a seminar on that topic. “Over all, though, I do not see that formal training in ‘nonprofit law’ is critical for landing a job at a charity,” he says. “I came to CARE from a business law firm. Most of my counterparts in organizations like CARE also came from private law firms or from corporate legal departments.”
To learn more about making the switch from corporate law to nonprofit law, you might find these books helpful: What Can You Do With a Law Degree? A Lawyer’s Guide to Career Alternatives Inside, Outside & Around the Law, by Deborah Arron, which covers nonprofit jobs (Niche Press, 1997, $29.95), and The Lawyer’s Career Change Handbook: More Than 300 Things You Can Do With a Law Degree, by Hindi Greenberg (HarperCollins, 2002, $14).
