Joshua Jolly '27
Staff Editor
The Public Service Center recently put on their third installment of the “Real Deal” series, where they bring in speakers from different segments of public interest law to share their journey. This week’s edition showcased four alumni working in the Legal Aid and Nonprofit sphere.
Ruby Cherian ’23 is an attorney with the Charlottesville based Legal Aid Justice Center (LAJC) in the Civil Rights and Racial Justice branch. She shared her experience recently joining the organization after working with them during her time in law school. Cherian emphasized how gratifying it is to do work that impacts the local community in a way that is tangible and visible. Cherian expressed how one-on-one interaction with community members and finding out what their priorities and concerns are are the most rewarding parts of her work. Among her many endorsements of the LAJC is the variety that each day brings with it. One day you may be lobbying members of the Virginia General Assembly, and the next you’re working on media strategy for the Center’s projects.
Megan Keenan ’18 is a staff attorney for the ACLU Voting Rights Project. She joined the ACLU after two clerkships and working as an associate at Covington & Burling LLP. Keenan shared that the scope of her work being voting rights, the substance varies widely based on what point in the election cycle the country is in. With an election upcoming in the next few months, day-to-day activities with the Project involve a lot of fielding questions from voters who feel they have been adversely impacted in some way, and helping in decision-making for on-the-ground strategies relating to voting rights. Keenan talked about how now, being more than five years out of law school, she is getting to a point in her career where she is starting to feel more like an expert in some areas, emphasizing how rewarding it is to be confident in the work you’re doing, despite it still being very challenging. As the ACLU Voting Rights Project is primarily focused on impact litigation, Keenan said she had expected a bit more of an arms-length relationship with clients, though she was pleasantly surprised. She found that even with the impact litigation model, she has found ample opportunities to work with people on the ground and to find ways to bring their considerations to bear in her work.
Sujaya Rajguru ’22 is a staff attorney at the Pennsylvania based Women’s Law Project. She praised the experience of working with the Project for a combination of the personal quality of life she can have and the consistent victories she is able to win on behalf of clients who would otherwise be lacking legal representation, or even brief legal advice. Rajguru shared an anecdote which stood out to her, in which a client reached out with concerns over lactation discrimination, where her employer was not giving her adequate time to breastfeed. She said she was able to instruct the client as to the relevant laws in the client’s area, and upon sharing an obligation of breastfeeding time with the employer, the client was granted adequate time. This was just one example, but one which Rajguru says is representative of working with the Women’s Law Project.
Kolleen Gladden-Sorensen ’21 is a staff attorney at Restoration Immigration Legal Aid. She recently transitioned to this position after doing public interest housing work. Giving an overview of her week-to-week experience, Gladden-Sorensen said that she is primarily working with defensive asylum cases. She described these as cases in which an individual is before an immigration court facing deportation, as opposed to what she called affirmative asylum cases where an individual initiates the process by seeking asylum. She contrasted this position with from her old housing work in terms of the responsibilities from day to day. Previously, she would handle many cases at a time, with daily juggling of different clients but now she is working on a much more flexible schedule with a more manageable client load.
The thing on much of the room’s mind seemed to be the viability of working in public interest for those anticipating a considerable amount of student debt . The panelists, all recent graduates of UVA Law, were transparent with their experiences but all framed a similar message: It’s doable if you do it right. Primarily, “doing it right” seemed to mean being aware of the cost of living. Rajguru and Gladden-Sorensen talked about their experiences with high cost of living cities, and encouraged people to think about this when considering both what position and what geographic area they want to enter practice in. Keenan, on a positive note, explained how national public interest organizations have higher starting salaries than people are generally anticipating. She explained that in her experience, it did not need to be a choice between financial stability and working in the field she wanted to.
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ebj6gs@virginia.edu