Spend a Semester Protecting Alaska’s Environment!

Arctic National Wildlife Refuge protects the Porcupine Caribou Herd’s critical habitat. Trustees for Alaska works to protect the Arctic Refuge. USFWS photo.

Trustees for Alaska, a public interest environmental law firm with a busy and diverse docket, is now accepting applications for Spring 2016 legal externs. For over 40 years, Trustees has been working to protect Alaska’s environment. Trustees provides counsel to local, regional, and national conservation organizations, Alaska Natives and tribal councils, fishing organizations, and others in environmental and natural resource matters. Trustees’ work generally focuses on state and federal law issues concerning clean water, public lands and wildlife, climate change, coal mining and combustion, protection of marine resources, and hard rock mining.

Trustees provides a unique spectrum of public interest law experience to its externs, including conducting legal research and writing, drafting pleadings, drafting comments to administrative agencies, assisting with preparation for arguments in federal and state court, interacting with clients, and more. Externs will have the opportunity to work closely with Trustees’ six staff attorneys on all aspects of litigation and on projects that typically involve the Clean Water Act, National Environmental Policy Act, Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act, the Alaska Constitution, and various state laws. To read first-hand accounts of our past interns’ and externs’ experiences in Alaska and at Trustees, click here. 

Alaska has over 98 percent of the United States population of brown bears (Ursus arctos), also known as grizzlies. NPS Photo

Qualifications: The ideal candidate will have excellent writing, research, and analytical skills, solid interpersonal skills, and a demonstrated commitment to public interest law and the environment. Law students with coursework in administrative and environmental law are preferred.

To apply: Applications are accepted on a rolling basis and positions are open until filled. Preference for Spring 2016 externships will be given to applications received by November 1, 2015. Electronic applications are encouraged and may be sent to Suzanne Bostrom at sbostrom @ trustees.org. Please include a cover letter, resume, transcript (unofficial or official), short writing sample, and list of three references with contact information.